Problem: the Fedora KDE LIVE installation system apparently tries to drive my graphics system (NVIDIA HDA + Samsung SyncMaster B1940MX) beyond its capabilities (max resolution 1280x1024). The system freezes up when booting into the KDE environment.

Workaround: select Basic Graphics on startup, which uses 1024x768 resolution.

Scope: all KDE Live media that I've tried, including Fedora Scientific 34 and 35 and the vanilla KDE Live spin v34.

Assumption: the problem is common to ALL Fedora KDE spins in at least the LIVE installation media.

Question: is the problem limited to the LIVE media or is it happening in the KDE startup process? I've determined after much experimentation under SL 7.9 that KDE works better for me than Gnome, but I will stay with SL for now if this problem is actually in the version of KDE that works with Fedora 34/35, and if there is no fix other than to set the display mode to 1024x768.

All my (installed) Fedoras (33,34,35) work with Plasma as expected regardless of display, though I rarely use a display of less than 1680x1050, more often 1920x1200 or 2560x1440, and I never use NVidia's proprietary graphics drivers.

There are two FOSS display drivers competently applicable to NVidia GPUs: 1-nouveau DDX (old technology; reverse engineered); 2-modesetting DIX (upstream default; newer technology; not reverse engineered). Both depend on the nouveau kernel device driver (module) properly loading. Maybe the display driver used by default on live media doesn't play nice with your specific GPU. IIRC, "Basic Graphics" means disabling KMS (kernel modesetting), which provides rather limited performance.

Apparently it is not just my specific GPU... this thread on Bugzilla is almost certainly the same problem. In particular, Fedora 33 KDE Live works for me just fine, as it did for the OP in that thread. If so, this will be a problem if I try to use KDE Plasma on F34.

Most of the technology in modern Linux is new to me, but I gather that in F33, Plasma used X Windows, but in F34, it uses Wayland and the nouveau drivers, so the problem seems likely to be in the nouveau drivers. But I'm not sure which driver X uses for NVidia hardware. The workaround, though, seems to be to either use NVidia's proprietary drivers with Wayland or force Plasma to use X instead. I use XEmacs quite heavily and customize it with an ~/.Xresources file, so disabling Wayland would be my preferred solution.

And in any case NVidia has a crapload of drivers for Linux, and I'm not sure which ones are even compatible with the F34 kernel.

Wayland for Plasma still amounts to betaware, and is only Fedora's default. It's not mandatory, and it can be switched from at the SDDM or LightDM login screen.

Nouveau driverS are not mandatory for NVidia GPUs. The upstream default is the nouveau kernel driver on which both DDX and DIX display drivers depend, and the modesetting DIX display driver. Which display drivers get used automatically varies by distro, release version, and GPU. To switch off the nouveau DDX display driver, simply uninstall it, unless something in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ specifically demands it, in which case you can switch it to the other, or remove the .conf file containing the specification. All my installations, Fedora & otherwise, have not any nouveau display driver installed, except for very old GPUs that the modesetting DIX does not support. On none of my Fedora installations have I ever used Wayland intentionally. I don't think I've ever done one unintentionally either. That includes F35. Also I never install any of NVidia's proprietary drivers. My NVidia GPUs all do just fine using exclusively FOSS.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thank you! Any particular reason you never use NVidia's drivers?

Also, do you have a link to the FOSS drivers? A quick google search on FOSS nvidia turned up only instructions on the itsfoss.com site on how to install NVidia's drivers. (Could just be my google-fu is wanting, of course.)

• They're not FOSS
• My NVidia GPUs either don't need them, or NVidia quit providing them
• NVidia's non-contributory attitude toward Linux
• They cause unnecessary extra activity at kernel upgrade times

You shouldn't need any link to any FOSS drivers. They are provided by standard packages by all distros. Upstream, the Nouveau DDX display driver is provided by xf86-video-nouveau. Various distros use various other names, e.g., xserver-xorg-video-nouveau on Debian and its derivatives, xorg-x11-drv-nouveau on Fedora. The Nouveau kernel device modules (drivers) are included in each kernel's package that contains modules (drivers). The modesetting DIX display driver is not available separately, comes in the Xorg server package.

Thanks. As it turned out, I had to give up on Fedora before I even got to testing Plasma. There have simply been too many changes since RHEL/SL 7, that break apps that i depend on (especially xemacs). So I'm back at SL 7.9 for now until I can find a good alternative to xemacs that's supported in recent Fedora releases.

Had the same problem with my install so before login, i took it off of Wayland and put it on X11 works every time now.

1 members found this post helpful.

Yes, I'm quite sure the problem is in the nouveau drivers that Wayland uses. It's all moot for me at this point as I'm not ready to abandon XEmacs.

Add this as a kernel option:
Video=1280x1024

FTR, I tried this and it did not help. The system still froze up soon after entering the Plasma environment.