Thats why i never buy their shit after having one laptop with one of their graphics.
Worst part? I’m still using that laptop, im doing troubleshooting right now.
Anyone else?
The context seems to be missing.
Not an nvidia dev, but so far all my cards been nvidia, went over a quite a few of them, both laptop and desktops. In my experience they just work once you install proprietary drivers and the only type of a problem is when ubuntu silently decides to upgrade it behind your back - in this case you need to restart the machine so kernel modules match the drivers.
In my experience they just work once you install proprietary drivers
That’s not my experience with dual-GPU (Intel+Nvidia) hardware and multiple displays, where the standard xrandr functions are often used to modify the output configuration.
In my case, the Nvidia GPU is supported by Nouveau, so I can compare it with Nvidia’s proprietary drivers “side-by-side”. With Nouveau, display output configuration and per-application GPU selection both “just work” (I did add a
nouveau.configkernel parameter to enable acceleration). I’ve never been able to make the proprietary drivers do those things reliably.So I suggest that users with simple single-display, single-GPU systems are likely to have a better experience with the proprietary drivers.
As is the general consensus here, I do not plan to purchase any Nvidia GPU hardware in the future, especially considering that more recent Nvidia GPUs now require signed firmware, making Nouveau support impossible.
I agree. Nvidia drivers work fine for desktop systems with a single GPU and a single display. Everything else is a bit hit and miss. Here are a couple of real world experiences I’ve had with using linux on systems with nvidia.
Laptops with switchable graphics are the worst. You might have set up switchable graphics with bumblebee or something thinking that everything works fine. Until you need to connect your laptop to a projector for holding a presentation or something. Then you find that you can’t connect an external display without disabling the integrated graphics in UEFI settings (causing terrible battery life), because the hdmi out is only connected to the nvidia GPU.
I’ve also had issues on a desktop with two monitors recently, where nvidia wouldn’t respect my preferences for main monitor. The XFCE main panel would be stuck on my secondary monitor, as nvidia has decided that it is the primary display, even if I’ve selected something else in settings. If I worked around this by creating a new panel on the correct monitor, this panel would not be visible if I try to connect remotely with XRDP.
Do agree for the most part, I had issues every now and again with having to downgrade cause some games didn’t work on the newest driver. But for the most part they’ve been pretty ok
That’s still neither Ubuntu, Linux or the user’s fault. It’s still 100% Nvidia’s responsibility. So, even with context it looks bad. OS auto-updates should never break the system, and if it does, you’re a bad engineer doing bad things. An update causing the system to show no video signal is awful.
Online updates are unsafe but it is Ubuntu’s fault for how they manage kernels. Fedora gets it correct keeping multiple versions around.
Having multiple versions of a kernel doesn’t solve this issue. It’s the driver dying and video signal stops working until system reboot that is really a bad implementation. Your new driver should work at least well enough with the previous kernel as to at least prompt the user that a reboot is necessary to finish the update. Bad engineering.
I think you misunderstood their problem.
I think you misunderstood their problem.
Proprietary nvidia driver consists of (at least until recently) from two parts - closed userspace part and open kernel part. Those parts talk to each other with some protocol they change every once in a while and the only combination they support is that kernel module and userspace part must be of the same version. When they mismatch you still get video, you don’t get acceleration. And reboot fixes the problem.
the only combination they support is that kernel module and userspace part must be of the same version
AKA bad engineering.
I upgraded to a 6700xt from my 1660 and AMD has absolutely no problems in my system. It’s amazing.
Same, Recently updated my AMD card. Literally did nothing but turn the computer off, remove the old one, install the new one,turn it back on, and it just worked.
I’ve had enough experience with trying to get nvidia cards working in linux that I know that I’ll never, ever, ever use a nvidia card, and thats including trying to use distros that supposedly bake nvidia bullshit in to make it no hassle, like Pop.
Which sucks. I’m not a corporate fanboy, I just want something affordable and that works… and right now, on linux, thats just amd. Intel is a close second, though they need another generation or two to iron out their flaws.
Presses “That was easy” ‘easy’ button
first thing i faced while distrohopping before i settle with fedora, is the instability of nvidia on linux.
it was short path to decision to spare myself of waiting for driver fixes, googling for driver statuses, waiting, posting questions, messing around, switching this and that in hope for better stability, getting frustrated in the end because wherever i search for fixes, there were posts about same problems with same subject: nvidia.
stable system throughout distro/kernel/driver/system updates is hugely more valuable than having GTX Ti 90000 inside my system and it was a very short bye bye.
since i ditched nvidia card and went for amd one, my system just works, it’s been years, I’ve never looked back and very honestly, i couldn’t care less about never ending stubborn struggle with nvidia.
Same, I’m still using my powerful rx 490 in desktop and not even once has gave me problems.
I bought this laptop back when I was still using windows, a really good Asus x450LN, wich still allows me to play battlebit, xcom, openxcom, sunless sea/sky, and so on. Not even talkin about office work. So yeah, I’m gonna change it in maybe 2 or 3 years.
For now ? Dealing with nvidia shenanigans. I have a GUI again wich is good, but steam is fricking dead, so yeah, hopefully I’m not gonna need to reinstall.
“Works on my machine…” Classic dev response, lol.
Manager: “Then ship your machine to the custumer”
Developer: Invents Docker…
*Apple silicon enters chat*
This reminds me of the nightmare of those laptops with intel and nvidia gpu so you could switch to nvidia if you wanted to game. And what a nightmare it was to even get the nvidia gpu working in linux.
When I’m buying new hardware I’ll make sure never to buy nvidia again. However sometimes I am gifted things and it would be rude to refuse to accept.
As I mentioned in another comment, in my experience Nouveau does a much better job with multi-display and multi-GPU systems than Nvidia’s proprietary drivers. Unfortunately Nouveau’s actual hardware support is somewhat limited, so that is only relevant for a subset of Nvidia GPUs.
I, too, don’t want any more Nvidia hardware.
Thanks for the info!
nouveau is hardly better than software rendering in most cases. heck, for pretty much every GPU from the last decade, it isn’t even able to adjust the GPU clock frequency (so it’s permanently stuck on the lowest frequency).
I remember finding large text file in the win 10 base install that was just a list of game titles. I assumed it was so they could specifically choose which processes should always use the dGPU. I’m searching around now and can’t find any evidence it ever existed though. Anyone else remember seeing it? I feel like there was something about an inappropriate/porn game being included on the list.
Now that sounds interesting. I did not know about that.
On the Radeon camp, it’s just “apt dist-upgrade; systemctl reboot”
Done.
The only time I had issues with the open source AMD drivers was when I was doing GPU pass through to play Elite: Dangerous, the drivers really didn’t like the state Windows left the card in when it was time to reattach it to Linux.
Do you have any good suggestions on where to start with using pass through? Have an AMD card as well and would love to be able to do this but I always get stuck at one point or another
first is to have a second graphics card - it can be an integrated one, like on Ryzen 7xxx or Intel CPUS - or a second computer that can SSH into the gaming box, just in case you need to open a terminal to fix stuff that broke. Then hit the Level1Tech forums, there’s a lot of knowledge there about the stuff.
As soon as I saw Mesa support for AMD I knew that’s my jam. If Intel starts competing with them, I might give them a shake due to being supported too.
Nvidia is just not worth it.
Fuck Nvidia. Never again.
I have an Nvidia 3080 TI, and I want to sell it to buy an AMD equivalent. Fuck Nvidia indeed.
I did that a few months ago, from a 3060ti to a 6700xt. Best decision since I decided to erase my windows partition.
Wanna change? I have amd 7900xtx, and that
shitawesome video card withnot workingopensource drivers just awesome! I’m sure you will have fun with it.
NVidia just needs to open source their drivers so it can be integrated into the kernel, like all other drivers. Then the kernel team can help maintain them, and users won’t have to worry about shit like this
Sauce?
Linux mint forum, and my own laptop with plasma.
Steam still dead, and the nvidia config got fuck up, gonna try reset xorg and then launch nvidia settings later
is there any possibility to lock the nvidia version to make this not happenning instead of having problem with every update each time?
I don’t think nvidia drivers update automatically on ubuntu, right? Pretty sure I’ve had to manually switch to new drivers every time
I think, because ubuntu has recommended version as I remember
This exact same thing happened on my Ubuntu desktop. I had to restart into safe mode, dpkg configure -a. Dunno what dumb ass thought having your screen go black and not respond to any input was acceptable during an update
I use Linux at home but as an IT technician have experience with Nvidia in the Windows world. And it was pretty terrible there too.
You have to create an Nvidia account just to get the latest driver (🤦♀️) and despite its supposed prowess Photoshop struggled. Solidworks (CAD Software) also had issues with Nvidia and would only work with specific driver versions.
Overall a real pain.
I would only recommend AMD especially on Linux as they say least provide open source drivers. Plus their CPU’s are actually very good. I’ve seen some ancient pcs running Windows 10 on AMD CPU’s.
Team red ftw
I’m still getting the hard lock issue with driver 535 and a laptop running Arch. I’ve did a quick searches for issues and lots of different complaints in the results. I’ve been waiting for nvidia to put out these fires. Whatever they are. Still waiting since the 535 release…
