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.
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
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.
Pretty sure they’re installed by default. At least in ubuntu.
https://ubuntu.com/server/docs/nvidia-drivers-installation