NVIDIA Driver Stability After Kernel Updates?
Hey everyone, (If TLDR please skip to the last paragraph)
Been using Fedora OS's for ~5yrs exclusively. Nearly the perfect OS for me. Little history with me and NVIDIA cards/drivers...
On Fedora 27 I bought a NVIDIA card for scientific computing. I installed it through the usual process, but once a new kernel came along everything broke, but I had backups in triplicate. At that point I made a decision not to update my kernel ever again as the work on my computer was very important to me (sounds ironic right?), and it was a time sink getting everything back in working order (lost about 2 days to install the specialized soft-ware I needed).
Now, I am rocking Fedora29, and wow I loved the 3rd part NVIDIA driver installation tool (excellent job!). I had my first glimpse of a linux OS doing everything I wanted. I was able to update the kernel a week ago or so, with those drivers, and it was absolutely glorious. Then this week, I do my usual DNF update and get black screen on boot. No startup services, modemmanager, can't get to console, you name it. I was able to recover the disk, through a live image after sinking a few hours into debugging the actual problem, but there I was again; a kernel update shattered my work computer.
I'm not sure what I mind more: not updating my kernel and being vulnerable to fashionable exploits, or trying everything I can to recover important files as days are taken off my life from stress. Is there a more practical way other people have managed to keep their system up to date with NVIDIA cards? This type of hardware assurance is something I'd happily pay for, does CentOS/RedHat have good 3rd party support for graphics cards that don't get mangled after updates? Any advice appreciated
