How is the current Nvidia driver situation on Linux? I wanted to give it a shot on my gaming PC for a long time now but was deterred by the various driver horror stories…
For gaming? I haven’t really run into any issues. If you’re trying to virtualize your GPU for VMs and stuff like that, Nvidia is a lot more locked down. I use the proprietary drivers - the open source ones don’t seem to perform as well. Most Distributions will just give you a prompt where you select which drivers you would prefer to use.
people always complain about nvidia drivers on linux, but personally my experience has never required anything more than sudo apt install nvidia-driver
Arch is similarly this easy. I think where I usually see the most people complaining is when a new shiny version of the driver has come out and they try to update manually, breaking system packages and borking their system.
I’m not saying I have personally done this before. Nope. Not saying that at all…
It works fine on a desktop with a single GPU mostly. Though I have had issues with multi monitor setup at work with xfce and xorg. I actually had a better experience with gnome and wayland, in terms of multi monitor support.
That said, all my own non work computers I use AMD/intel these days though. It just works now. I did have a bad experience years ago with an nvidia optimus laptop, where I couldn’t use the displayport without permanently enabling the nvidia GPU, killing battery life.
Not great for my use case but your mileage may vary
I need very high res with 240hz which is only in beta drivers atm so it’s very difficult to find a distro I can use without messing about
I’m a Plasma on Wayland enjoyer, running a 1080ti, and pretty much every bug I’ve encountered since I’ve started using Linux has been resolved. There’s probably some stuff I don’t know about, purely because it doesn’t affect me, but it’s been smooth sailing here
I’ve been using Linux full time on my desktop since 2019 and while I don’t think I’ll buy nvidia again, the experience in the meanwhile has been fine. The things I can do with my computer are much more limited, especially when it comes to Wayland. But assuming you’re just using your computer like a normal person you can stick to Xorg and basically have a totally normal computer experience.
Personally, one of the worst parts about nvidia proprietary drivers with Wayland is that I cannot use the night light feature in Gnome, which makes my display unreasonably uncomfortable during night time usage. When will nvidia provide the necessary support for the thing that makes it work? Who knows.
Ancient computer and nvidia card here. Not sure what Gnome’s nightlight is ultimately based on, but you might try Redshift or f.lux which - I assume - do pretty much the same thing.
I’ve used both and am currently using Redshift. f.lux stopped working for me a few years ago and I haven’t bothered trying to find out if that was a fluke and whether it will work again now. Redshift uses geolocation by default, but that can be turned off.
I’m currently using pop os with an etc 3070, and I haven’t noticed any major issues. I had some weird glitches on fedora because they use the open source driver by default, but using the proprietary Nvidia driver is totally usable. I even got ray tracing working on cyberpunk 2077
tbh it’s overblown. I have been holding off on wayland for this and various other reasons, but gaming on x11 with nvidia proprietary drivers is fine. The only difficulties I’ve ever run into is installing/updating the package using a distro-specific method. I’ve never hit a driver bug.
How is the current Nvidia driver situation on Linux? I wanted to give it a shot on my gaming PC for a long time now but was deterred by the various driver horror stories…
For gaming? I haven’t really run into any issues. If you’re trying to virtualize your GPU for VMs and stuff like that, Nvidia is a lot more locked down. I use the proprietary drivers - the open source ones don’t seem to perform as well. Most Distributions will just give you a prompt where you select which drivers you would prefer to use.
You don’t need to do work around for nvidia GPU’s for VM’s anymore, works pretty much the same as AMD
people always complain about nvidia drivers on linux, but personally my experience has never required anything more than
sudo apt install nvidia-driverArch is similarly this easy. I think where I usually see the most people complaining is when a new shiny version of the driver has come out and they try to update manually, breaking system packages and borking their system.
I’m not saying I have personally done this before. Nope. Not saying that at all…
@DaPorkchop_ @Echolot nice
Cyberpunk, Witcher and Mount & Blade II won’t boot for me on Nvidia. I have to use Windows in VM or dual boot for those games
It works fine on a desktop with a single GPU mostly. Though I have had issues with multi monitor setup at work with xfce and xorg. I actually had a better experience with gnome and wayland, in terms of multi monitor support.
That said, all my own non work computers I use AMD/intel these days though. It just works now. I did have a bad experience years ago with an nvidia optimus laptop, where I couldn’t use the displayport without permanently enabling the nvidia GPU, killing battery life.
Running Arch and Steam on an HP Omen with 3060 GPU and have no problems. I do play older games tho.
Not great for my use case but your mileage may vary I need very high res with 240hz which is only in beta drivers atm so it’s very difficult to find a distro I can use without messing about
X11 and multi monitors is also a mess.
I’m a Plasma on Wayland enjoyer, running a 1080ti, and pretty much every bug I’ve encountered since I’ve started using Linux has been resolved. There’s probably some stuff I don’t know about, purely because it doesn’t affect me, but it’s been smooth sailing here
The drivers break in some way or another often, but you can recover if you are good w Linux… if not stick with AMD.
I’ve been using Linux full time on my desktop since 2019 and while I don’t think I’ll buy nvidia again, the experience in the meanwhile has been fine. The things I can do with my computer are much more limited, especially when it comes to Wayland. But assuming you’re just using your computer like a normal person you can stick to Xorg and basically have a totally normal computer experience.
Personally, one of the worst parts about nvidia proprietary drivers with Wayland is that I cannot use the night light feature in Gnome, which makes my display unreasonably uncomfortable during night time usage. When will nvidia provide the necessary support for the thing that makes it work? Who knows.
Ancient computer and nvidia card here. Not sure what Gnome’s nightlight is ultimately based on, but you might try Redshift or f.lux which - I assume - do pretty much the same thing.
I’ve used both and am currently using Redshift. f.lux stopped working for me a few years ago and I haven’t bothered trying to find out if that was a fluke and whether it will work again now. Redshift uses geolocation by default, but that can be turned off.
I would bother but I have other issues with nvidia+wayland so I just stick to xorg, which seems to be the thing nvidia really supports.
I’m currently using pop os with an etc 3070, and I haven’t noticed any major issues. I had some weird glitches on fedora because they use the open source driver by default, but using the proprietary Nvidia driver is totally usable. I even got ray tracing working on cyberpunk 2077
tbh it’s overblown. I have been holding off on wayland for this and various other reasons, but gaming on x11 with nvidia proprietary drivers is fine. The only difficulties I’ve ever run into is installing/updating the package using a distro-specific method. I’ve never hit a driver bug.