My (Fedora) Linux Challenges and How I Solved Them
While Linux has gotten very far, and has become such a joy to use that I use it daily on my main computer, some issues still have popped up. So far nothing so big that it has scared me away, but still enough for me to find it a good idea to note down some solutions to a few issues here. Also I want to note that I believe these issues I’ve stumbled upon happened because I installed the proprietary NVIDIA driver on my system, and Fedora not expecting it.
This post like most of my posts is a work in progress, and the experiences are from using the Fedora 40 and Fedora 42 distributions.
Unable to install new kernel (update)
When I’ve had a problem with a kernel not being able to be installed it has often been because /boot ran out of space, therefore I decided to delete an old kernel no longer being used. Here are some of the commands that were useful for this.
sudo nano /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
In this conf file I changed installonly_limit=3 to installonly_limit=2.
dnf list installed kernel*
ls -lh /boot
sudo dnf remove --oldinstallonly
uname -r <- Returns which kernel is currently in use.
rpm -q kernel-core <- Lists currently installed kernels.
sudo dnf remove kernel-core-6.15.7-200.fc42.x86_64 <- adjust to the kernel you wish to delete.
Not being able to boot as should.
When this happens I install or reinstall the newest NVIDIA driver through the terminal, since I have a NVIDIA GPU in my computer. It usually does the trick.
How to get the newest driver from the terminal?
If I do not already have the install file for a NVIDIA driver on hand, I will find the download link on another device and wget that link on the computer that needs it. Like this: wget <download link>, real example: wget https://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/580.95.05/NVIDIA-Linux-x86_64-580.95.05.run
How to boot into the terminal?
Go into the command line/terminal on start up through the grub boot menu. When you are in the grub menu on boot up, Press E on your distro/kernel of choice, go to the Linux boot line. Go to the end of the line and make sure it ends with 3 So a space between the last letter and then the number 3. Then press F10. It should now load the command line/terminal.