Fedora Will End Up Supporting The NVIDIA Driver With Secure Boot

Installing the NVIDIA proprietary graphics driver stack on Fedora currently doesn't jive with UEFI Secure Boot systems and can lead to the OS being unbootable. As such, the NVIDIA driver option was previously removed from GNOME Software. But as the NVIDIA driver is still widely sought after on Fedora by Linux gamers and those wanting to run CUDA/AI workloads especially, Fedora 41 is now cleared to roll-out NVIDIA driver support with UEFI Secure Boot integration.

There has been a change proposal to support the NVIDIA driver installation with Secure Boot in Fedora 41.

The proposal reads:

"The goal of this change is to provide an easy way to install Nvidia drivers in Fedora Workstation. It was removed from GNOME Software because the original mechanism didn't support Secure Boot. When users installed the drivers with Secure Boot enabled, they could not boot the OS. What we're doing this time is using mokutil to create a key for the user to self-sign the drivers. When installing the drivers, the user is asked to provide a password for the key. On the next reboot the user is presented with the mokutil interface to enroll the key."

Thus an easier path for setting up the NVIDIA Linux graphics driver on Fedora for systems all too commonly having Secure Boot enabled.

This change proposal was taken up today by the Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo). They decided to allow this change to proceed even though they aren't enthusiastic about it:

" * AGREED: Change: Nvidia Driver Installation with Secure Boot (+6, 0, -2) (@salimma:fedora.im, 17:38:53)
* INFO: while nobody is enthusiastic about this, the consensus among those who vote in favor is that waiting will just make things worse as we'll lag behind other distros, and the chance of swaying Nvidia is very minimal"

Look for this NVIDIA driver support with Secure Boot in Fedora 41 due out in October.