• Get the required dependencies: yum install kernel-devel gcc
• Grab the proper NVIDIA drivers there
• Get rid of nouveau. That’s the hard part. I found several methods but none of them worked. Most notably, most or all of them required me to install NVIDIA’s drivers (they propose to use the RPM Fusion repository, but I wanted to use the drivers straight from nvidia.com, in order to be more easily up-to-date) then follow some instructions to make it beat nouveau. The problem is: NVIDIA’s drivers from nvidia.com refused to install with nouveau already running, so I had to kill it first. The solution I found was:
  1. blacklist it: edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add blacklist nouveau at the end
  2. blacklist it again in Grub: edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add rdblacklist=nouveau at the end of the line starting with “kernel” in the proper section (NB: I have this file because I’m using Grub from an old Ubuntu installation, but I was told that Fedora 12 uses Grub 2, which has a totally different configuration file structure… I don’t know it, sorry)
  3. set the default init level to 3 (otherwise, nouveau will load when the GUI gets loaded): edit /etc/inittab and replace id:5:initdefault: with id:3:initdefault:

  This is the only working solution I found. As long as the GUI gets loaded, nouveau will get loaded too and the NVIDIA drivers will refuse to install. You will easily know if nouveau is loaded by the size of the font in the console: if it’s a large font it’s okay, if it’s a small font because the console is like in high-resolution, you did something wrong and most likely NVIDIA’s drivers will refuse to install

• reboot
• run the NVIDIA drivers installer (during the process, when it asks you whether it should try to update config files, say yes)
• reboot

You’re now done. I chose to let the default init level to 3 because with every kernel update we have to reinstall the NVIDIA drivers (the version installed for the previous kernel will crash with a various severity, most likely preventing you from running the installer). To load the graphical desktop after booting in init level 3, just log in as root and type init 5.

Sources I used:

• Fedora 12 – Nouveau + Nvidia Driver Solution
• Howto install nVidia driver on Fedora 12 (and just disable the nouveau driver)
• RPM fusion – nVidia – Nouveau compatibility
• RPM fusion – nVidia – Fedora 12
• Gnome Fedora 12 (Xorg 1.7.1) + 190.42 + Xv = instability
• Installing the Drivers as Provided by nVidia

Update (June 20): added dependencies, this also works for Fedora 13.

During the last month, I tried really hard to find a way to upgrade the GeForce 9650M GT drivers on my Asus M50Vn laptop. At first I tried every possible version, both under Windows and Linux, which at least gave me the occasion to post an updated version of my old Fedora Core 3 nVidia drivers installation guide. Then I gave up for a few weeks, until yet a new stable drivers version got released (version 195.62 on December 4). I tried those ones again… only to be a victim of yet the same bugs. This was too much, I had to at least notify the customer service about the apparently broken drivers.

So there I went, to nvidia.custhelp.com. Created an account, submitted a “wtf you could at least test your drivers on the supposedly supported 9650M GT” claim, and went back to my slow but (almost) stable 180.70 drivers. To my surprise (it was a Saturday), I quickly got a rather large reply, asking for more information. A few hours later I was told that:

[since I] have installed Windows XP on [my] laptop which is not shipped as OEM, [...] drivers on NVIDIA website will not work because the NVIDIA graphics driver for laptops works only with preinstalled operating system with laptop

Therefore, [they] request [me] to kindly contact [my] laptop manufacturer to get the compatible and updated driver for [my] laptop graphics card.

This came a bit as a shock, since I wondered how they’d expect to see customers with OEM Linux, and also I wondered what’s the point of providing drivers if they can’t replace the traditionally totally outdated version provided by laptop manufacturers (NB: for the M50Vn laptop, Asus provide no Windows XP drivers and their Vista drivers were last updated in August 2008). But this made me go to the Asus driver download website (precisely to be able to tell NVIDIA how outdated Asus was ). And after some browsing there, I found this:

BIOS 212
Update VBIOS to fix VGA flicker and freeze problem.

Looks like the solution, doesn’t it? So I updated the BIOS, reinstalled the newest drivers… and everything worked fine, finally.

Congratulations, problem solved

NB: after some research, it turned out that my model wasn’t the only one affected. For instance, in A possible solution to Nvidia 9650M GT DriverProblems and [Résolu] Karmic / Nvidia 9650M GT / Freeze de l’affichage, it’s mentioned that the same problem and fix occurs in M70Vn, N80Vn, X72VN and any M50 Asus laptops, as long as it has a GeForce 9650M GT graphics card. Just make sure that you grab the proper BIOS, from Asus Support (downloads). The version of the BIOS fixing this issue may vary depending on laptop model.

NB2: since this is a BIOS issue, this applies to any OS: the issue occurs (and the fix works) as well on Windows XP, Vista or Seven, but also on any Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora…), and I guess also on Solaris and FreeBSD.

On my laptop (Adus M50Vn), I’ve had a lot of trouble with Linux (both Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.10) lately. After trying to update my NVIDIA graphics drivers on Windows XP, it turned out that the same problems starting to occur their too. So I was able to conclude that these issues were probably caused by the NVIDIA drivers and not by the OS itself. For Windows, I reverted back to the latest version I had installed without problem, version 180.70 (18 Nov 2008). For Linux, Ubuntu let me downgrade to 173 from the hardware drivers control panel (which at the moment seems to apply only to graphics drivers), and at first I didn’t understand why there wasn’t any other old version available (there were 2 choices only: 173 and 185). Then I did Fedora, but for this I had to go to NVIDIA’s website since Fedora doesn’t offer automatic installation for proprietary software. I eventually managed to find the legacy drivers page, which explained why Ubuntu let me only pick 173 as an old driver: it’s the latest legacy driver. Here is the Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris driver download page: http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html. Just pick the 173.14.20 and it should work fine. And actually, I just tried the 190.42 and it seems to work okay too on Fedora so you may want to try that one instead nvm it’s buggy too (NB: the 195.39 doesn’t work well on Windows XP: performances are much better but there are some important glitches).
Don’t forget that for Fedora (or any Linux installation which implies using NVIDIA’s official installer), with every kernel update you’ll need to re-run the NVIDIA driver installer… so keep it somewhere easy to find. Full installation procedure on Fedora 11:

1. CTRL+ALT+F2 to go to a text console
2. su to connect as root (of course you can also use sudo)
3. init 3 to shutdown X
4. run the installer (cd /directory then ./installer.sh). During the process it should be able to successfully update Xorg.conf.
5. init 5 to restart X without restarting the whole computer

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