If I had a dollar for every time the Nvidia driver screwed me over I still couldn’t order anything with it because my graphics driver wouldn’t load.

  • racemaniac@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    2 hours ago

    I get that the lemmings here are enthousiastic about linux, but even as a developer, every time i work with linux, i end up facing the most annoying user hostile problems >_<…

    Since this is gaming related, and i just faced one today: I bought a Legion Go (steamdeck like device), and put bazzite on it (steamos like os). And was trying to run visual pinball on it, which actually has a linux build. Try to run the linux build: shared library libbz2.so.1.0 not found… Google around a bit: a yes, because that’s a fedora distro, unlike most other distros, they named it libbz2.so.1 . But many apps assume libbz2.so.1.0 also exists so try to use that. Fair enough, i’ll add a link with that name. Ah yes, this is a distro with a readonly filesystem. Lucklily as a dev i realized i can probably put the link in the folder of the program itself, and that indeed worked.

    But ffs linux world, why do you fuck up such basic things like just agreeing on how you name basic shared dll’s (googling for it i found people struggling with this when using python, so it’s not something that rarely happens)…

    I love the control linux offers, and got NAS and a little server running linux, and for the handheld it’ll probably give me more battery life or performance too, so linux for sure has some benefits.

    But if you have to be an expert just to get things f’ing made for linux to run due to stupid stuff like this… whyyyyyy???

  • HStone32@lemmy.world
    0·
    3 days ago

    Nvidia hardware is great for anything besides gaming/daily driving. I use my nvidia card all the time for re-encoding large video files in h264. As soon as I can afford an amd though, video encoding will become the only thing I use nvidia for.

    • OmegaLemmy@discuss.online
      0·
      2 days ago

      Why do people still assume Nvidia is bad? Anything 16 and above is working very well even under Wayland, I am facing close to zero issues, graphical issues are all gone

  • AstralPath@lemmy.ca
    0·
    4 days ago

    Nobara Linux has a dedicated driver manager to automate the process of managing NVIDIA drivers. I ran a 2060 for almost a year on Nobara with no issues thanks to the manager. I’m on AMD now and forevermore.

  • Dogiedog64@lemmy.world
    0·
    4 days ago

    This was me with my 4070. Eventually figured it out, but WOW does Nouveau suck until you get the drivers working. Still, loving Fedora 42 more than Windows 10, so I’m not going back.

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      To be fair, Nouveau did phenomenal work (reverse-engineering the driver) they shouldn’t have had to do if it wasn’t for Nvidias stubbornness. Especially for older cards it’s the way to go, and it really isn’t their fault the proprietary driver sucks so much. Since Nvidia now finally fixes their shit with the new driver (hopefully) it wouldn’t make sense to put too much work into supporting any RTX card anymore.

    • nuko147@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      4 days ago

      AMD and Intel have almost the same performance on Linux. NVIDIA has not though. I had something 10-15% less fps with my RTX 3070, even with a gaming distro, latest NVIDIA drivers running and proton-GE.

    • GoldenQuetzal@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 days ago

      Can confirm anecdotally. Put Bazzite on my Intel laptop, works like a dream. Couldn’t install any distro - any - on my PC running a 4080. Had other friends test it and they couldn’t either. Switched to AMD, zero issues just like Intel. What do I need a superpowered card for when most of the games I play are from 2016 anyway lmao

      • yonder@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        4 days ago

        Intel is almost flawless, I say as someone who uses an Intel A750. It does have a bug where putting load on the GPU causes a dramatic increase in latency for GPU compute tasks, but that’s mostly only important for VR. Flatscreen games work great.

  • acockworkorange@mander.xyz
    0·
    5 days ago

    And now* nvidia launched Nova, instead of contributing to Nuveau for some reason. It’s like they want to take wind out of Nouveau.

  • xektop@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 days ago

    endeavourOS with Nvidia since 1,5 years… First on x11, and before several months moved to Wayland. Never had an issue related to the GPU. I’m not sure if the other distros have really such big problems or it’s meme propaganda, that Linux isn’t ready?

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      EndeavourOS shipped with the driver, right? Distros that do so tend to have the fewest problems with it, so you dodged a bullet there. A lot of problems arise during its install process or updates due to inconsistent integration or simply Nvidias incompetence (the driver module suddenly missing or not properly loading on a new kernel, stuff like that).

      • xektop@lemmy.world
        0·
        5 days ago

        I see, the OS installs it and I don’t have to do anything else after installation. I understand now what most people with Nvidia have to go through if they are forced to use a specific distro. I just assumed that most distros will handle that as well for the user.

  • jqubed@lemmy.world
    0·
    5 days ago

    What’s the deal with Linux and Nvidia? Do the official drivers suck, or is it people not wanting to use a closed source driver but not having good open source drivers? I might have access to a good gaming PC soon but it has an Nvidia card.

    • DaPorkchop_@lemmy.ml
      0·
      3 days ago

      I have never had to do anything more than sudo apt install nvidia-driver, even with wacky setups such as:

      • Nvidia GPU connected with an ExpressCard eGPU dock to a ThinkPad with integrated Intel graphics
      • two Nvidia GPUs, an AMD GPU and an Intel GPU all in the same system

      EDIT: debian btw

    • dev_null@lemmy.ml
      0·
      4 days ago

      I use Nvidia on Linux for over a decade now, never had a problem. Using the official closed source drivers. I don’t know if AMD is better because I never tried it myself, but in my experience Nvidia is working as well as on Windows.

      This is on desktop, I don’t know about laptops. My experience is also limited to gaming, maybe it’s bad for CUDA or something.

    • dan@upvote.au
      0·
      4 days ago

      The drivers have gotten a lot better over the last few years, and Nvidia even have an official open-source driver now, but there’s still issues with them. Wayland works very well now, but not perfectly (especially on GPUs with low VRAM).

      If you’re on Linux and are buying a new GPU, stick to AMD. Their driver is part of the Linux kernel, it’s more stable, and it gets all the newest features first.

      • OwlHamster@lemm.ee
        0·
        4 days ago

        As a game developer I would suggest the opposite. Never had a report that came down to an Nvidia graphics card, however AMD will randomly introduce game breaking bugs in their Linux driver and leave it unfixed for years.

    • Natanox@discuss.tchncs.deOPEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      The current official Nvidia driver is known to cause problems during install, during system updates or basically whenever it feels like it (when using Wayland, after hibernation, on rainy days…). Even the most well maintained distros regularly struggle with it, ran into trouble on both Mint and OpenSuse myself in the past.

      If you don’t have your distro already I’d suggest trying one that comes with the Nvidia driver preinstalled (they then also usually take care of all the small adjustments). Saves you some headache.

      Those I can currently think off that ship the proprietary driver (in no particular order): ZorinOS, Pop!_OS, Nobara, Bazzite, EndeavourOS, TuxedoOS, SlimbookOS

  • Someonelol@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    RTX 3080 owner here. I get a black screen whenever I try to play a game after the desktop goes to sleep in Linux Mint. The only workaround is to restart the PC and play it before its screensaver comes on. The struggle is real.

    • RustyNova@lemmy.world
      0·
      4 days ago

      Hey! I had the same issue on my RTX3070! What you need is to install the latest Nvidia driver. Those are not available by default and requires you to add the Ubuntu PPA, then you are able to switch with the driver manager gui

    • Petter1@lemm.ee
      0·
      5 days ago

      Try a distro with a recent kernel and install newest proprietary nvidia drivers

      Like fedora, openSuse TW, bazzite or endeavourOS

      • dan@upvote.au
        0·
        4 days ago

        install newest proprietary nvidia drivers

        On newer cards, the open source drivers work pretty well as of version 555. The process for installing them is usually very similar to the proprietary drivers, but there’s often some flag you need to set to tell it to use the open source ones instead. For Fedora, the instructions are here: https://rpmfusion.org/Howto/NVIDIA#Kernel_Open (ignore the part about it only working for data center GPUs, as that’s no longer true)

        sudo sh -c 'echo "%_with_kmod_nvidia_open 1" > /etc/rpm/macros.nvidia-kmod'
sudo akmods --kernels $(uname -r) --rebuild

        If you use Nvidia’s installer, it automatically uses the open source driver instead of the proprietary one if you have a new enough GPU (20 series or newer)

    • Monstrosity@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      5 days ago

      I might recommend PopOs. It is also based on Ubuntu, is easy to use for beginners & tailored specifically for use with Nvidia. I’ve had great luck w/ my laptop that has Optimus.

      Test it with a USB first. The link I provided is an alpha version of their latest release but you can also try the older, more stable version here.

  • thezeesystem@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    0·
    5 days ago

    Why I bought a steam deck even though I have a laptop that’s better (although a lot older) mainly because my laptop won’t work with Linux (yes including the latest drivers) because of the fucking Nvidia won’t work properly.

    Although tbh I rather play games on my steam deck with potato quality just because it’s portable