Nvidia works just fine on Linux despite what anyone says. People are just upset because it’s a closed source driver. I have used Nvidia exclusively for like decades without issue. Just purchased an RTX3090ti (upgrade from a 2060) for Ollama, InvokeAI, and ComfyUi. Plus I do a lot of gaming. All of it works right out of the box with no tweaking.
My experience with Nvidia (granted, 3 years old experience):
Going with the closed source driver means stuff breaking each kernel update.
Going with the opensource driver (while it may work for you): not everything is supported.
So its not just “people being annoyed with Nvidia” i’d say.
Well, every kernel update is overstated maybe, but I had my fixed workflow of dropping to text mode and reinstalling the latest drivers from vendor, which is annoying as hell.
Dropped the card after meddling about for almost a year. Been using Linux since slackware was still hip & happening.
I suppose if you don’t know what you’re doing - that’s true. It’s not something unique to nvidia either - it’s true of any drivers outside the kernel source. But that’s what dkms is for - it automatically handles it for you when you update your kernel.
If you don’t want to learn how the system you use works then you suffer the consequences. Or you just continue to blame nvidia for your own ignorance as I’m sure you will.
No consequences here. I’m perfectly happy continuing on using AMD.
Sure - and you’re limited to systems that use an AMD chip. Consequences. I’m sure you justify this to yourself though.
Why do you think AMD always work out of the box and people constantly have problems with Nvidia? Is it because they’re “ignorant” or because it’s unnecessarily convoluted?
I don’t think - I know. Because one is integrated with the kernel and built and distributed with it and the other is a separate module. This isn’t something unique to nvidia either - my system has modules from system76 as well as v4l2loopback that are also compiled separately.
But since I install my packages using “apt” they are all managed by dkms and I don’t need to worry about it. Because I took a few minutes to learn about how my computer works.
Keeps jumping to the latest kernel instead of the latest stable release.
Blames nvidia for not keeping up…
I’ve been on Manjaro for years and have literally NEVER had your issue. Why, because I don’t just automatically change to the latest kernel and then wonder why shit doesn’t work.
After an update, it’ll tell me if a newer kernel is available, I’ll look at it and if its a new stable release I’ll change to it with no issue because an NVIDIA update was likely included with that update.
Stop forcing early adoption on your computer and then blaming others when it fucks up your shit.
I freely admit that it’s an anecdotal fallacy in that it’s based entirely on my own experience and may or may not reflect the larger reality. But it would only be an assumption if it’s something that I was just guessing was true, whereas I’ve been around the Linux world long enough to see it first hand.
Didn’t say anything about auto-updating. Just can’t be bleeding edge and use proprietary drivers, that’s all. Other (AMD) use the open source drivers, so they don’t have that issue. And that’s great. But if you use the NVIDIA propietary drivers, you can’t race ahead of them.
That doesn’t make the drivers bad; they work perfectly fine; and have far far far better performance than AMD. There’s just the trade-off that you can’t be bleeding edge when using them.
You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have…the facts of life.
You’re argument that drivers are bad because you can’t fuck around with your system without them breaking is disingenuous. If you buy a brand new Wacom tablet, and it turns out that it’s too new and the Kernel doesn’t support it yet, or no one has written a patch to get it working, you don’t claim that Wacom is a shit company. It’s just a fact of life that you have to wait for either the kernel to update or for someone to get a patch working.
But when it comes to NVIDIA…holy shit… WORST, period, COMPANY, period, EVER!!! And that’s just hypocritical.
Bleeding edge in Debian? I was not even using the “testing” release of Debian.
If your point is that it’s fine for a company to get their stuff out there in a timely fashion, that company just sucks balls in my opinion.
Just FYI I am perfectly fine with you having your workarounds and (apparently different) opinion.
I expected some basic civility and more constructive tone of words. But if you start blaming me as a user for something basically ALL other vendors are coping with just fine, thats where the discussion stops with me.
I am definitely not against linux (daily user myself). And honestly, people like you don’t make Linux more attractive of an option.
I agree. User is probably doing unsupported options. If they want to live on the bleeding edge, that is fine, but dont blame the hardware if something does not work.
I’ve tried a 3060 as well, which was a nightmare too. Although that was in a laptop so I’m not sure if that’s a laptop-specific thing.
I doubt it though, since every other update would render it unbootable, and there was excessive flickering, both of which also happened with the 1080 Ti.
I do know that AMD “just works”, though.
Nvidia needs to seriously improve before they’re right for a typical Linux user.
Shit, Valve’s new big picture mode was delayed for like a year because it was unusable on Nvidia hardware. Doesn’t exactly sound bug-free to me mate.
I think it would make sense to actually specify what you mean by nightmare and on what disto to make an argument. Many people have 30xx GPU and they all use the same driver too and if it works for them (same card, same driver) that means it might not be a NVIDIA issue but a distro/setup issue. Don’t expect a proper counter argument if you don’t make a proper argument. I use a laptop similar to OP’s question and the GPU is sleeping all the time because it uses Intel’s integrated GPU for generic tasks, dGPU only wakes up for Vulkan or CUDA tasks like gaming and AI. I don’t remember when was the last time NVIDIA broke the boot process but it was at least 5 years ago back when I was still using Arch and init.d and it was an Arch problem for pushing a kernel which was incompatible with NVIDIA driver and not specifying version compatibility. The GTX 2060 is supported by the opensource kernel driver so that cannot be an issue either anymore. On the other hand I also have a AMD card which does not support hardware acceleration on Fedora by default because of mesa and I have to swap packages to add support which breaks dnf sometimes. So should I hate AMD now?
Nvidia’s issues on Linux are very well documented… even by the inventor of Linux himself. I didn’t realise I had to bring receipts.
As for what do I mean by nightmare, I already said. It would break after updates, I had constant flickering, stuttering, and artefacts. No it wasn’t a hardware issue. They’re Nvidia driver issues.
To me, that’s a nightmare. I need my machine to function, and with Nvidia, it couldn’t.
I’ve had lots of problems with Nvidia over the years; you’re lucky not to. Latest has been with Wayland which are ongoing. That being said Nvidia drivers are much better generally than they used to be, and I’ve not had the myriad of small issues I used to get.
This is less to do with them being closed source drivers so much as their drivers being poorly maintained in the past. They seem much better maintained but even now the software support lags behind windows - you have to use 3rd party open source software to make use of the streaming features for example.
I have no idea how you are having trouble with this. Are you using some weird disto or something bleeding edge? Like with Ubuntu, select “use proprietary drivers” and it always works. NixOS works fine too without hassle.
![[Solved] Sorry if this not related to this community because I don't know where to ask, but should I buy this laptop? and does it play nice with Linux.](https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/a4dfcf61-653f-46ae-bcc4-c3608b2bc33f.jpeg){kind=link}
Nvidia works just fine on Linux despite what anyone says. People are just upset because it’s a closed source driver. I have used Nvidia exclusively for like decades without issue. Just purchased an RTX3090ti (upgrade from a 2060) for Ollama, InvokeAI, and ComfyUi. Plus I do a lot of gaming. All of it works right out of the box with no tweaking.
My experience with Nvidia (granted, 3 years old experience):
Going with the closed source driver means stuff breaking each kernel update. Going with the opensource driver (while it may work for you): not everything is supported.
So its not just “people being annoyed with Nvidia” i’d say.
What distro are you using if nvidia breaks after every kernel update? What do you need to do to fix the breakage?
Debian.
Well, every kernel update is overstated maybe, but I had my fixed workflow of dropping to text mode and reinstalling the latest drivers from vendor, which is annoying as hell.
Dropped the card after meddling about for almost a year. Been using Linux since slackware was still hip & happening.
Installing
nvidia-driverpackage wasn’t enough?https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers#Installation
NVIDIA has improved a lot over the past year.
Explicit sync support in Wayland now.
Even the closed drivers use Open Source components in the kernel now. For newer cards, that is the default.
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
Did you use your package manager and dkms? You need to recompile the driver hook with each kernel update.
I’ve had Nvidia cards since the Riva TNT2 and it’s been reasonably smooth sailing… 🤷♂️
Not even necessary for newer cards:
https://developer.nvidia.com/blog/nvidia-transitions-fully-towards-open-source-gpu-kernel-modules/
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Literally just follow the distro instructions. Even NixOS works fine.
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I suppose if you don’t know what you’re doing - that’s true. It’s not something unique to nvidia either - it’s true of any drivers outside the kernel source. But that’s what dkms is for - it automatically handles it for you when you update your kernel.
If you don’t want to learn how the system you use works then you suffer the consequences. Or you just continue to blame nvidia for your own ignorance as I’m sure you will.
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Sure - and you’re limited to systems that use an AMD chip. Consequences. I’m sure you justify this to yourself though.
I don’t think - I know. Because one is integrated with the kernel and built and distributed with it and the other is a separate module. This isn’t something unique to nvidia either - my system has modules from system76 as well as v4l2loopback that are also compiled separately.
But since I install my packages using “apt” they are all managed by dkms and I don’t need to worry about it. Because I took a few minutes to learn about how my computer works.
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This is the literal definition of a consequence. 🤣
Fucking hell…
Keeps jumping to the latest kernel instead of the latest stable release.
Blames nvidia for not keeping up…
I’ve been on Manjaro for years and have literally NEVER had your issue. Why, because I don’t just automatically change to the latest kernel and then wonder why shit doesn’t work.
After an update, it’ll tell me if a newer kernel is available, I’ll look at it and if its a new stable release I’ll change to it with no issue because an NVIDIA update was likely included with that update.
Stop forcing early adoption on your computer and then blaming others when it fucks up your shit.
Assumptions… Assumptions.
Not an assumption.
I freely admit that it’s an anecdotal fallacy in that it’s based entirely on my own experience and may or may not reflect the larger reality. But it would only be an assumption if it’s something that I was just guessing was true, whereas I’ve been around the Linux world long enough to see it first hand.
You have adapted your way of working around the fact that it can break:
I call that way of not updating “annoying” and insecure IMO.
Other vendors don’t have this issue.
My conclusion: steer clear of Nvidia.
Didn’t say anything about auto-updating. Just can’t be bleeding edge and use proprietary drivers, that’s all. Other (AMD) use the open source drivers, so they don’t have that issue. And that’s great. But if you use the NVIDIA propietary drivers, you can’t race ahead of them.
That doesn’t make the drivers bad; they work perfectly fine; and have far far far better performance than AMD. There’s just the trade-off that you can’t be bleeding edge when using them.
You take the good you take the bad you take them both and there you have…the facts of life.
You’re argument that drivers are bad because you can’t fuck around with your system without them breaking is disingenuous. If you buy a brand new Wacom tablet, and it turns out that it’s too new and the Kernel doesn’t support it yet, or no one has written a patch to get it working, you don’t claim that Wacom is a shit company. It’s just a fact of life that you have to wait for either the kernel to update or for someone to get a patch working.
But when it comes to NVIDIA…holy shit… WORST, period, COMPANY, period, EVER!!! And that’s just hypocritical.
Bleeding edge in Debian? I was not even using the “testing” release of Debian.
If your point is that it’s fine for a company to get their stuff out there in a timely fashion, that company just sucks balls in my opinion.
Just FYI I am perfectly fine with you having your workarounds and (apparently different) opinion.
I expected some basic civility and more constructive tone of words. But if you start blaming me as a user for something basically ALL other vendors are coping with just fine, thats where the discussion stops with me.
I am definitely not against linux (daily user myself). And honestly, people like you don’t make Linux more attractive of an option.
Have a good one.
I agree. User is probably doing unsupported options. If they want to live on the bleeding edge, that is fine, but dont blame the hardware if something does not work.
Not anymore, at least if you not use an outdated distro 😜
I’ll interpret this as “it worked for you”. It did not work for me.
It did not 3 years ago, what kernel was latest then? This is lake ages ago.
Quite possible. Old fogey here 😉
Man I wish my time with Nvidia was as easy as you claim it to be.
I had a 1080 Ti that I was forced to sell because Nvidia drivers made my PC unusable.
The performance drop going from a 1080 Ti to a RX 580 was huge, but it was well worth it for a system that would actually work reliably.
A lot has changed since 1080…
I’ve tried a 3060 as well, which was a nightmare too. Although that was in a laptop so I’m not sure if that’s a laptop-specific thing.
I doubt it though, since every other update would render it unbootable, and there was excessive flickering, both of which also happened with the 1080 Ti.
I do know that AMD “just works”, though.
Nvidia needs to seriously improve before they’re right for a typical Linux user.
Shit, Valve’s new big picture mode was delayed for like a year because it was unusable on Nvidia hardware. Doesn’t exactly sound bug-free to me mate.
😂I would love to travel to you to show that it works
Except, as I and others are telling you, it doesn’t “just work”.
A crying-laughing emoji is not a counter-argument.
I think it would make sense to actually specify what you mean by nightmare and on what disto to make an argument. Many people have 30xx GPU and they all use the same driver too and if it works for them (same card, same driver) that means it might not be a NVIDIA issue but a distro/setup issue. Don’t expect a proper counter argument if you don’t make a proper argument. I use a laptop similar to OP’s question and the GPU is sleeping all the time because it uses Intel’s integrated GPU for generic tasks, dGPU only wakes up for Vulkan or CUDA tasks like gaming and AI. I don’t remember when was the last time NVIDIA broke the boot process but it was at least 5 years ago back when I was still using Arch and init.d and it was an Arch problem for pushing a kernel which was incompatible with NVIDIA driver and not specifying version compatibility. The GTX 2060 is supported by the opensource kernel driver so that cannot be an issue either anymore. On the other hand I also have a AMD card which does not support hardware acceleration on Fedora by default because of mesa and I have to swap packages to add support which breaks dnf sometimes. So should I hate AMD now?
Debian, Fedora, EndeavourOS (arch).
Nvidia’s issues on Linux are very well documented… even by the inventor of Linux himself. I didn’t realise I had to bring receipts.
As for what do I mean by nightmare, I already said. It would break after updates, I had constant flickering, stuttering, and artefacts. No it wasn’t a hardware issue. They’re Nvidia driver issues.
To me, that’s a nightmare. I need my machine to function, and with Nvidia, it couldn’t.
I’ve had lots of problems with Nvidia over the years; you’re lucky not to. Latest has been with Wayland which are ongoing. That being said Nvidia drivers are much better generally than they used to be, and I’ve not had the myriad of small issues I used to get.
This is less to do with them being closed source drivers so much as their drivers being poorly maintained in the past. They seem much better maintained but even now the software support lags behind windows - you have to use 3rd party open source software to make use of the streaming features for example.
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I have no idea how you are having trouble with this. Are you using some weird disto or something bleeding edge? Like with Ubuntu, select “use proprietary drivers” and it always works. NixOS works fine too without hassle.
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You will never convince an Nvidia fan that Nvidia has ever done anything badly.
Don’t know what it is in this thread. “It did not work for you so you must have done something wrong”?
See my thread where some dude says it should just work (when he is just doing LTS kernel updates only and not updating in general).
Comments simply blaming the user based on their limited usecase are hardly constructive.