Okay, so I have an old gaming rig (4th gen i7, GTX 1070ti) that I want to turn into a home server. I’d like to use the GPU only for specific tasks, like encoding when watching stuff via Jellyfin. What would be easier?

  • Install Fedora or Rocky Linux with the normal GUI, install and configure the Nvidia drivers with akmod-nvidia, then just remove X/Wayland from the startup process?
  • Install either distro sans GUI, and install the nvidia drivers? Also, does akmod-nvidia work for systems with no display server?

So yeah. Any Linux people out there with nvidia cards and purely CLI servers out there? I’ve got a fair bit of experience with Linux, but I’ve just never done this before. And Google keeps giving me results about troubleshooting black screens after installing the drivers.

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Why not use proxmox? Then passthrough the gpu to distro of your choice? I have 2x headless ubuntu set ups with gpu’s passed through no problem. One for plex/jellyfin, one for cameras

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This rig isn’t really built for virtualization. In fact, I don’t think I can even enable KVM in the BIOS. A regular OS and maybe some containers will have to do.

My only real question is how to get the Nvidia drivers installed sans display server.

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Pretty sure they’re installed by default. At least in ubuntu.

https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/nvidia-drivers-installation

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