Nvidia GTX1060 installation question

1

Hi,

I am looking to install AmaLinux, because I have been told that AlmaLinux easily installs Nvidia drivers. In reading the installation instructions I have a question. Here is my hardware.

- **Memory:** 16.0 GiB

- **Processor:** AMD Ryzen™ 5 1600 × 12

- **Graphics:** NV136

The NV136 is an Nvidia GTX 1060. Newer Nvidia GPUs have part of the driver code on the chip (starting with 20xx). That made the Nvidia open driver possible. My card needs the 580.xxx driver. Below are the commands in the instructions to install an Nvidia driver on AlmaLinux. My question is whether those commands will load the driver I need or do I need to do something else. And if something else, where can I find that information. (I have looked before asking.)

sudo dnf install almalinux-release-nvidia-driver

sudo dnf install nvidia-open-kmod nvidia-driver

For a more complete install you can use sudo dnf install nvidia-open.

reboot to load the kernel module, or, if you’re on the latest kernel,

sudo modprobe nvidia_dr

Thanks so much

Kurt

2

Hi Kurt, welcome to the forum.

Regarding your question, the drivers you need are indeed the 580.xx series. However, the versions available in the AlmaLinux repository are the 610, 595 and 590.

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What I did was install version 580 from the RPMFusion repository

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Follow NVIDIA’s “How to” guide and you’ll have the driver installed:

I have an old GeForce 840M that works fine with that driver.

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Regards!

3

There is more to the story than just the version number.
NVidia has two lines of drivers: “proprietary” and “open”

  • The proprietary is now legacy line. It does not, nor will support Blackwell (5000 series) or newer
  • Proprietary version 580.xxx is the last to support pre-Turing (2000 series) cards, like the 1060
  • The open is a more recent line. It never did support pre-Turing cards, not with any driver version

Since AlmaLinux builds only the open version of the kernel module, that module would not support the 1060 even if there were 580.xxx version of it.

Which implies that RPM Fusion does have the proprietary version of 580.

The drivers are in two logical parts:

  • kernel module for the GPU
  • drivers for the X11 / Wayland

RPM Fusion offers both.
ELRepo offers both.
NVidia’s CUDA-repo offers both.

AlmaLinux offers only the kernel module packages and NVidia’s CUDA-repo definition for the other part.

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4

Curious question that can probably be useful for OP.

Should akmod or kmod be used to install on AlmaLinux?
This is mentioned for newest cards in the installation instructions linked to in earlier comment:

sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia # rhel/centos users can use kmod-nvidia instead

But that is removed for the older version that OP needs:

Legacy GTX 800/900/10

Supported on current stable Xorg server release.

This driver is suitable for any NVIDIA Maxwell and Pascal GPU found between 2014 and 2017

dnf update -y
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx akmod-nvidia-580xx
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-580xx-cuda #optional for cuda up to 12.x support

And does that mean that only x11 (and xWayland) is supported for this driver?
Does that work on all versions of AlmaLinux?
It is mentioned that it works on xWayland with newest drivers, so is that true on older drivers and AlmaLinux too?

Wayland

NVIDIA works under Wayland (and Xwayland) starting with Fedora 35 and NVIDIA driver 495 and later. With GNOME 41, Wayland can be selected explicitly with GDM.

Maybe a ping to @pipe would be appropriate too since you indicate you have one of the older drivers installed and working.

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Hi,

In my use case, I installed akmod because I want the module to be rebuilt with each kernel update.

This only applies to the Fedora version. For EL, 580 is still current so, dnf install akmod-nvidia its the command.

PS.: if you have SecureBoot enabled, you should create a signature for akmod.

Regards.

Update 2026-06-06:

Version 580 of “RPMFusion EL” became legacy today. I received the update today and now have the legacy version installed. Therefore, the correct way to do it now is as @Bedna says.

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Thanks pipe, jlehtone, and Bedna.

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The NVidia’s repo has two types of kernel module packages: prebuilt for specific kernel version, and “source” that dkms (from EPEL repo) builds into kernel modules for each kernel. The dkms automatically creates a signature and signs the modules (at least for the from NVidia’s repo packages).

See NVidia’s instructions about that: Rocky Linux — NVIDIA Driver Installation Guide
(They don’t have AlmaLinux listed, so Rocky is close enough.)

The kernel module package from ELRepo has prebuilt modules, but is built such that they work with multiple kernel versions (typically within one point update) and is signed by ELRepo.

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