negativo17
negativo17 is a personal repository. It overlaps RPM Fusion rather than complementing it: smaller split packages, more built from source, closer adherence to Fedora packaging guidelines, and a choice between akmods and DKMS for kernel modules. It is organised as several separate repositories — the NVIDIA one is the one most people want.
Why it exists
The split packaging is the point. RPM Fusion ships the NVIDIA driver as one large package with subpackages hanging off it; negativo17 breaks it into smaller pieces, so you can install the CUDA libraries without the display driver, or the 32-bit libraries on their own. It also tracks NVIDIA's short-lived branch rather than the production one, which puts it a branch ahead of RPM Fusion much of the time.
The trade for that is narrower coverage. negativo17 packages only the current driver branch, so an older card needing 580, 470 or 390 has to use RPM Fusion.
Who maintains it
Simone Caronni, a Fedora packager based in Zurich who maintains Fedora's Steam package, among others. He has worked with Fedora developers on getting the proprietary NVIDIA driver to coexist with the Mesa stack through glvnd, which is the problem the repository was built around.
This is one person's infrastructure rather than a group project with a sponsorship process, which is the main structural difference from RPM Fusion. It has a long track record, and that is a judgement about the maintainer, not a change to the trust model.
Enabling the NVIDIA repository
sudo dnf config-manager addrepo \
--from-repofile=https://negativo17.org/repos/fedora-nvidia.repo
That defines fedora-nvidia pointing at
https://negativo17.org/repos/nvidia/fedora-$releasever/$basearch/, signed with
the repository's own GPG key.
Enabling this repository alongside RPM Fusion is fine. Installing the NVIDIA driver from both is not — see Do not mix them.
Sources
- negativo17, the repository's own documentation
- The NVIDIA driver repository, for the packaging split