Kudos to Nvidia

laughs in Pop!_OS

I use mint on two different machines with Nvidia GPUs. One is a several year old desktop with a 1080 and the other is a two year old Dell laptop with a discrete nvidia GPU in addition to the Intel one on the processor.
Now granted I don’t play a ton of games right now, and when I do they usually aren’t cutting edge, but I don’t recall many problems so far. I use NVENC for Jellyfin and editing videos more often, and that has been pretty smooth. The one issue I had was related to that though. Kdenlive (flatpak) updated and could no longer export videos because it was looking for a newer version of something my mint-supplied nvidia driver wasn’t yet updated to have.
Trying to install a newer driver manually was a whole damn thing though, so I rolled back the kdenlive flatpak to the one that worked.
- It was a horror show a decade or two back when I first tried Linux. I feel like this meme is just too late or just old.
- Yeah, I used a 1070 on arch for years without any issue, recently switched over to an Intel arc gpu and that gave me way more problems (admittedly most of it was my "fault" for being on an old mbr scheme, needing to enable rebar, and needing to switch from xorg to wayland... but that's just what happens when a graphics card is so stable you don't feel the need to reinstall your os or change anything major). I am not hired by Nvidia nor do I support their business practices when it comes to making development on Linux difficult or creating proprietary standards like cuda, just stating my personal experience with their drivers.

i just upgraded to an AMD card yesterday because of the Nvidia driver nightmare lol
- Yeah same here a few weeks ago. Glad I did though.

sudo apt install nvidia-driver
- Congratulations, firefox is now crashing
  
  I installed a Nvidia 3060 earlier this year. Ran the command, rebooted the system, everything works fine.
  
  I still cant sleep my computer with a 2070 Ti. I just shut it down and start it up every time, which is pretty shitty.

As a Linux noob I feel that lol... Currently on my Mint Laptop with an nvidia gpu (RTX 4060 Mobile version) and while most stuff worked out of the box, am running into several small annoyances:
steam doesn't launch (steamwebhelper doesn't respond).
Sleep mode just completely crashes the system once in a while.
The GPU runs pretty warm, even if I don't use anything / have the laptop closed.
Tried to tinker around with the 'nvidia-xconfig' CLI in order to use a custom fan curve and it created a config file which completely stopped my desktop environment from even launching at startup... Somehow managed to recover the system through terminal shenanigans
To anyone thinking about switching to linux, do yourself a favor and do it on AMD hardware.

2009 called
- It's asking why things haven't changed in 14 years
- (things are somewhat better)
  IT'S FIXED!

my only issue nowadays is stuttering on wayland.
installing it is actually pretty straightforward on ubuntu.
- Probably should've been "installing and using nvidia drivers".
  
  eh, its not that bad nowadays if you arent doing anything fancy. could be better, could be worse.
  ill still favor AMD on linux, but nvidia users can use linux now without that much friction. exception is maybe optimus laptops.

- LOL isn't that the truth. I wanted my desktop to not bother chugging watts through my 3090 and generating excess heat when barely KDE Plasma and a browser is running, but trying to set up GPU offload just left me with a blank terminal screen.
  Thank God for the geniuses who implemented Snapper rollbacks in OpenSUSE! Otherwise, the Nvidia drivers in the repos work fine and I'm scared to touch them...
  
  Is the power consumption really that much more? I guess there is a significant difference but it might still not cost much.
  In a desktop you use the powerful GPU all the time.
  In my use case the laptop is always attached to a charger.
- Works fine for me? (opensuse tumbleweed)
  Didn't take much effort, hybrid mode got implemented automatically and then I just manually added a widget for quick switching between only integrated graphics, hybrid mode and only nvidia (basically never using that one, just either integrated or hybrid)
  
  That's nice! I'm glad it glad it worked so well for you. That's the thing about configuration, sometimes it works without much effort!
  I wish everyone shared your experience, but I guess it's a YMMV kind of thing, right?

pacman -S nvidia-dkms
Hollywood, here I come!
- Nah, that's
  pacman -S hollywood
  Hollywood
- Partial updates are not supported on Arch. You need to use -Syu.
  
  I think you're misunderstanding what a partial upgrade is.
  A partial upgrade is where you update the database without then upgrading every package (calling pacman -Sy with the u switch).
  pacman -S, therefore, is not a partial upgrade, as the database is not updated with the y switch.
  See System maintenance#Partial upgrades are unsupported for more info.
- Yeah, obviously, who wouldn’t know that
- I thought dkms was recommended only for alternative kernels, and that nvidia or nvidia-open is what’s recommended generally.
  
  Recommended, yes, but I've had issues with the pre-compiled modules before, so I switched to nvidia-dkms to make sure the binaries are always freshly baked.

I never understood this. Maybe because I stick with basic distros like Ubuntu or Mint. But I have not had this issue.
- I had issues in like... 2010 or so. But not for about a decade
  
  I saw a meme about sound cards recently and thousands of likes on social media.
  And I wonder if it's people up voting because they remember that era, if it's bots, or if it's just people who kinda get the joke and don't want to be left out?
  
  I haven't had issues for about a decade. I haven't had an nvidia card for about a decade either. I think the two may be connected.
- It depends a lot on which specific GPU you have and whether it's a laptop.
  New-ish GPU in a desktop with the monitor plugged directly into the GPU? Easy to get working, literally a checkbox on most distros.
  1000 series GPU or older in a laptop and you need reasonable battery life and/or some "advanced" features like DP Alt-Mode? Good luck.
  Edit: Also, no Wayland until very recently. Possibly never, depending on the age of the GPU.
  
  Got a 2070 TI EVGA. They don't make those anymore!
- I used Ubuntu for many years on an nvidia machine and had a shit ton of nvidia problems, but I haven't used Ubuntu for a long time now so I would hope there's been progress. The experience has made me a lifelong AMD user since though.
- Same, I'm on OpenSUSE, nVidia hosts its own OpenSUSE repo. As far back as 8 years(for me) you add the repo and add the driver. Everything works.
  
  Saaame. There was a while there where Wayland didn't work on the repo version so I had to go full manual, but otherwise it's been almost perfect now, Wayland and all.
- Fedora here and same. It's just a few commands to get started and everything else works fine

So true! Last week I did a fresh install of Mint with the recommended nvidia drivers, and only installed Brave, Steam, Discord, and Vampire Survivors on my 3080 PC... 15 FPS at best. Tried the open source nvidia drivers and, which stopped Steam from working (so weird). Re-installed steam and Vampire Survivors and still couldn't get anything to work (even tried, and failed, to run a few other games). Boy it would be nice if nvidia put in more work to support Linux. 2025 will be the year for Team Red!

I've never had trouble installing them. Getting them to work after an update is another story.
- Lolz

All these Nvidia driver memes are why I haven't fully switched to Linux with my main rig (which is used solely for gaming). Servers, fuck yeah boy, Linux all the way. Stable as fuck and super lightweight. But I don't need those to render things in 3D at 60+ FPS.
I also never got Wi-Fi drivers working until Ubuntu first came out and I tried it.
That kinda shit makes it feel like a catch-22: some things don't work on Linux because nobody is developing that thing for Linux, and they aren't developing that thing for Linux because people who use that thing don't use Linux (because it's not there). Partially why I learned to code; sometimes I want something that doesn't exist so I must create it. Unfortunately, I am not learned enough to make drivers/wrappers. 😔
- Meanwhile in reality installing Nvidia drivers is literally just a checkbox in a Drivers menu in system settings. Unless you are using Arch or something.
  
  I recently finally moved to Linux (Mint). I have Nvidia GPU and yes, all I had to do was check the box and the drivers installed automatically. No problems so far.
  I still have Windows 11 installed though (dualboot). I know there's some compatibility problems with Linux that's affecting me, but Linux is my main OS.
- I've had wireless working in linux since 2002. 802.11b was complex but quick. I was still running slackware back then.
- Haven’t had an Nvidia issue for years
  It was slower to adopt Wayland but that’s resolved
  Longevity of AMD is better but that same issue exists on other Operating Systems
- The memes are extremely outdated at this point. I’ve been rocking Linux with a 3070 for the last year and a half and have only seen minor issues and major improvements. Not to say it’s perfect, but my issues have been more from me rocking arch Linux and breaking my system than Nvidia issues

Honestly, I've never had this problem. Two GPUs, two clicks in the gui driver manager.

Installing's easy. Does it work? No 🫠 I still can't daily drive linux because how shitty NVIDIA's drivers are
- I can daily drive linux just fine on 3060ti, the Ollama CUDA AI acceleration works without a single issue straight out of the box.
  I do want to be able to game on my main rig though, but that's what I have a laptop with an Intel low-end integrated GFX card for.
- Depends on what distro you used. What's the distro, driver version and graphic card did you try?
  
  NixOS (same problem, all distros) 570 drivers, RTX 3060
  Currently on hyprland, same issue with sway/other wlroots compositors (KDE/GNOME work fine-ish, but i prefer compositors and they're full of worse NVIDIA bugs on their own)
  The problem's with proton (or DXVK? Dunno) and how input delay increases heavily with V-Sync enabled. Unfortunately i have to use v-sync, so just dealing with it isn't a choice for me, sorry

This is actually an easy thing to do -- usually. But you might get unlucky with the wrong hardware, as perhaps OP did.

Never had issues with nvidia :p.. feels like im the only one
- It's not just you. Perhaps it depends on the distro?
  I just had to click around a little when setting up Ubuntu 22.04 and it's done.
  
  I currently use pop!_os and that just came with them, but even then, most other distros I tried it was one command or one click in the package manager and done
  I know the open source ones are a lot more finicky so maybe also depends on what you get :3
  
  Zorin comes with the Nvidia drivers if you want them
- It's mostly when you're trying to optimize for power on a non standard distro. By default, they're kinda a power hog but you can sorta turn off the gpu when not in use, it's just fininky because Nvidia doesn't want open source drivers that can go that low level. Thankfully don't have to worry about it anymore after getting a non-Nvidia laptop for my latest daily.
  
  Funny thing is.. I was gonna get my PC with an AMD card, but because the one I wanted was out of stock I got upgraded (depending on how you want to look at it) to an nvidia one :3
  I may go AMD next time I swap it, but as I've not had any problems as of yet, im not in a major rush
- Same here. I've always grabbed the latest drivers from the Nvidia page and installed the dot run file manually from a command line. From there everything just works.
- As long as I revert to the open source driver before doing major OS upgrades I haven't had issues either in years. Last time I tried AMD though it was a shit show.

Can I ask for help here?
I've got 3 displays, right...a 1080p75 and a 4k60/444 on my Nvidia GeForce 1660, and a 1080p60 on my onboard graphics (AMD).
Works reasonably under X11, but can't get 4k60 (only 30) in Wayland. And not really sure I've got 4:4:4, either. Seems prime-select keeps forgetting my setting in Wayland, too.
I'm using tumbleweed with plasma as my desktop.
- Not the right place to ask. Try the official forums of your distro, or one of the many Linux communities on Lemmy.
  4k60/444
  Is that HDR? I can tell you right now that HDR is still experimental on all Wayland compositors (Plasma seems to be the farthest along, but still not reliable), and will never be implemented in X11.
  
  Not quite HDR, similar but different.
  4:4:4 refers to chroma subsampling. Essentially how much bandwidth is available for chroma and luma. 4:4:4 allows for an 4x2 array of pixels to each be unique colors, which isn't possible with 4:2:2 or 4:2:0.
  It's a feature you really want when using a 4k TV for a monitor (as I am) because without it, text can be very fuzzy and difficult to read. Especially certain color combinations (i.e. red-on-black, as Konsole will do when there's an error).
- I think it's because of the mismatched refresh rates. I think NVIDIA is working on a fix. But that may be outdated info i'm remembering. NVIDIA has said they are committed to fixing the remaining issues with Wayland support.
- Run this command:
  sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /
  Probably shouldn't be asking for tech support in the Linux meme community.
  
  How about you sudo apt-get better jokes?
  
  Don't do this.

I have a better one. Installing ATI drivers mid 2000s.
- Adjusting for overscan in the 2000s....

it's the same as installing programs on your pc, the biggest issue would be that you have to use a cli because I dont know if you can install Nvidia drivers via gui

I remember around 15 years ago I was excited to get my first computer with a dedicated graphics card, a laptop with Nvidia Optimus. It was also around the time I was just beginning to get into Linux. I found an Ubuntu forum post with detailed instructions on installing Ubuntu and setting it up properly on that exact laptop, so I tried to follow that.
It didn't help that I was unfamiliar with using the terminal at the time. But even so, this was before tools like Bumblebee were in a usable state (is Bumblebee still the preferred way to use Optimus?). I remember getting to the part about graphics switching and seeing some messy confusing hack for it. I don't remember the specifics, but I think it involved importing a script and using diff to patch something. And I think all it did was just disable the very gpu I was looking forward to trying out.
I jumped back and forth between distros and Windows 7 a lot at that time. But it was such a shitty experience all because of Nvidia that I have never purchased any of their products since then. I've owned a lot of computers in that time, and I'm just one customer lost. I hope Nvidia looks at AMD sales and wonders how many of them are users that Nvidia lost because things like that.

- How can it be a skill issue if you did nothing?

Cudas *

Honestly, all it took these days is reading the news.