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> If you really want to see Linux on the DE, boycott NVIDIA, or write them a letter. I was watching a video on youtube (can't find it now) about gaming on Linu

> If you really want to see Linux on the DE, boycott NVIDIA, or write them a letter. I was watching a video on youtube (can't find it now) about gaming on Linux, and it suggested to update the PPA and install the latest drivers. (this was after I refreshed my desktop to be Ubuntu Budgie) So I did that, installed latest NVidia Drivers. Tried out some steam games, and went to bed. Next day I couldn't boot into the desktop, got stuck in a loop, couldn't remove the drivers and get into desktop at all. It completely bunged my computer. Apparently alot of people had similar issues.

godelski 8y ago
This is literally my only (big) complaint about Linux. Video drivers just SUCK. I have NEVER had a plug and play solution for display from my laptop. I do expect to be able to plug in an HDMI cable and be able to give a presentation. And I expect to be able to do this with an nvidia card. But they have always failed me and I don't understand why this problem still exists (I would actually be interested if someone knows).
- darkpuma 8y ago
  It's an Nvidia problem. Nvidia's proprietary drivers suck and they're nasty to anybody who tries to develop open source drivers for their cards. AMD and Intel GPUs have been flawless plug-and-play for years now. AMD plays nice with linux developers and you should give them, not Nvidia, your money.
  - shrimp_emoji 8y ago
    I was surprised when I saw the newest Vega firmwares show up in my /lib/firmware/amdgpu/ with a kernel update only 6 days after the release of the last AMD GPU -- and on Manjaro, where updates are supposedly delayed a little. AMD touted "day one Linux support", which I don't know if they fulfilled, but they're certainly more committed to Linux than Nvidia. Unfortunately, Nvidia's so dominant (and rightly-so from a price-per-performance unit standpoint). Also, though: would someone on Ubuntu or a point release distro (which is the majority of Linux end users) have these new firmwares, ever, until they reinstalled to the next OS version? Since hardware driver support seems so tied to the kernel version, I would think not unless they manually updated the kernel (which, not only is that scary on a distro meant to run with a specific kernel but it's something they have to go out of their way to do), which also means they'd miss out on DE improvements and other hardware/protocol support by as much as a year or more, depending on their upgrade cadence. TL;DR: rolling release provides the best Windows-like experience, and an Arch-based distro that emphasizes usability and mitigation of updates that break the system is what best fills that niche, so Manjaro master race.
    - godelski 8y ago
      > Nvidia's so dominant And rightly so, like you said. That's why I can't take the other user's advice and just shell out money to AMD. And while I do love Manjaro, I still have this problem. In fact I get no detection of my HDMI port. When I had Ubuntu I could (sometimes) get it to display if I restarted the computer with the HDMI plugged in. I'm also not sure why the linux devs don't take this (or at least not that I've seen) as seriously. Linux is in such a good state now that it is easier to convert people. But this problem prevents A LOT of people from switching, and rightly so. As for the NVIDIA sucks and doesn't play nice. There needs to be a better argument than that. Like why? There's so many people developing on linux with their cards. They are dominant. Most gpu programmers use cuda and a significant amount of ML researchers are using linux boxes. It doesn't make sense (to me) to just say f you to all those developers. Nvidia doesn't have a motive to push people to Windows.
    - jay_kyburz 8y ago
      >Unfortunately, Nvidia's so dominant (and rightly-so from a price-per-performance unit standpoint). I'm not sure about the price-per-performance. I just bought a new system with a Vega 64, and if you take into consideration I could use FreeSync instead of paying an extra $200 for GSync in a monitor, it works out better.
      - theevilsharpie 8y ago
        Pascal and newer Nvidia cards support Freesync as of driver version 417.71.
        jay_kyburz 8y ago
        Oh yeah, they announced that a few weeks after my new PC arrived.
    - darkpuma 8y ago
      > price-per-performance unit standpoint On Windows sure (I assume), but that goes out the window when you use Linux. On Linux with an Nvidia card you're paying for more downtime/breakage, much worse performance with the FOSS drivers, incompatibility with wayland, etc.
  - copperx 8y ago
    The TFA mentions video issues as Nvidia/AMD's fault. To a reader, it might seem they are equally bad.
    - vertex-four 8y ago
      While it says that, it doesn’t actually link to anything about the modern amdgpu driver - developed officially by AMD and now part of the vanilla kernel - and the majority of the complaints are regarding nvidia.
  - philliphaydon 8y ago
    I was really hoping the Radeon 7 was going to be better than it was. Because I want to move to AMD to avoid the Nvidia driver issues on linux.
    - KozmoNau7 8y ago
      I'm using an RX 560 on Linux[¤], I added a PPA to get the newest stable driver and Mesa, and overall it works fine, with a couple of minor annoyances that may be fixed as I'm writing this. One thing that doesn't seem to work is hardware acceleration for Youtube videos in Firefox. Playback in a window is fine, fullscreen isn't. Another is that dual-link DVI did not work, so I had to change to using DisplayPort instead, though that issue may have been fixed in the current driver, I haven't checked. For me that's fine, I wanted to switch to DisplayPort anyway, to use the audio output on my monitor. Those are incredibly minor issues compared to the woes of using the proprietary Nvidia driver. Not to mention the sordid history of graphics drivers on Windows. [¤] KDE Neon, which is based on Ubuntu LTS.
  - zaphirplane 8y ago
    Exactly if s wireless card didn’t work in Linux you’d hardly say Linux is a problem. You’d say don’t use that card You wouldn’t be super happy if you just bought that PC, you’d understand thou. Another example if you buy a car and it doesn’t have android or Apple integration you’d be “damn I should have researched it”
- AsyncAwait 8y ago
  > This is literally my only (big) complaint about Linux. Video drivers just SUCK. Not really. The problem is NVIDIA doesn't give a crap about good user experience. The AMDGPU driver is pretty good and open-source to boot.
- smichel17 8y ago
  About a month ago, I bought an RX 580 [1] and it worked plug-and-play (zero setup) on Fedora and NixOS. On the Windows side of things, I needed to go to the AMD website and download drivers in order to get out of reduced resolution. [1] This one: https://newegg.com/products/N82E16814150794 https://newegg.com/products/N82E16814150794
fyfy18 8y ago
That's just Nvidia. I had the same in Windows two years ago. Windows update automatically installed the latest Nvidia drivers, and after a reboot the screen was black after logging in. I assumed something got messed up (because Windows) so reinstalled Windows. It worked fine for a couple of hours, then I rebooted and had the same thing. Apparently that version of the driver was buggy with my hardware (GTX 1070), so I had to go into safe mode, downgrade and stop Windows automatically upgrading it.

godelski 8y ago

This is literally my only (big) complaint about Linux. Video drivers just SUCK. I have NEVER had a plug and play solution for display from my laptop. I do expect to be able to plug in an HDMI cable and be able to give a presentation. And I expect to be able to do this with an nvidia card. But they have always failed me and I don't understand why this problem still exists (I would actually be interested if someone knows).

darkpuma 8y ago
It's an Nvidia problem. Nvidia's proprietary drivers suck and they're nasty to anybody who tries to develop open source drivers for their cards. AMD and Intel GPUs have been flawless plug-and-play for years now. AMD plays nice with linux developers and you should give them, not Nvidia, your money.
- shrimp_emoji 8y ago
  I was surprised when I saw the newest Vega firmwares show up in my /lib/firmware/amdgpu/ with a kernel update only 6 days after the release of the last AMD GPU -- and on Manjaro, where updates are supposedly delayed a little. AMD touted "day one Linux support", which I don't know if they fulfilled, but they're certainly more committed to Linux than Nvidia. Unfortunately, Nvidia's so dominant (and rightly-so from a price-per-performance unit standpoint). Also, though: would someone on Ubuntu or a point release distro (which is the majority of Linux end users) have these new firmwares, ever, until they reinstalled to the next OS version? Since hardware driver support seems so tied to the kernel version, I would think not unless they manually updated the kernel (which, not only is that scary on a distro meant to run with a specific kernel but it's something they have to go out of their way to do), which also means they'd miss out on DE improvements and other hardware/protocol support by as much as a year or more, depending on their upgrade cadence. TL;DR: rolling release provides the best Windows-like experience, and an Arch-based distro that emphasizes usability and mitigation of updates that break the system is what best fills that niche, so Manjaro master race.
  - godelski 8y ago
    > Nvidia's so dominant And rightly so, like you said. That's why I can't take the other user's advice and just shell out money to AMD. And while I do love Manjaro, I still have this problem. In fact I get no detection of my HDMI port. When I had Ubuntu I could (sometimes) get it to display if I restarted the computer with the HDMI plugged in. I'm also not sure why the linux devs don't take this (or at least not that I've seen) as seriously. Linux is in such a good state now that it is easier to convert people. But this problem prevents A LOT of people from switching, and rightly so. As for the NVIDIA sucks and doesn't play nice. There needs to be a better argument than that. Like why? There's so many people developing on linux with their cards. They are dominant. Most gpu programmers use cuda and a significant amount of ML researchers are using linux boxes. It doesn't make sense (to me) to just say f you to all those developers. Nvidia doesn't have a motive to push people to Windows.
  - jay_kyburz 8y ago
    >Unfortunately, Nvidia's so dominant (and rightly-so from a price-per-performance unit standpoint). I'm not sure about the price-per-performance. I just bought a new system with a Vega 64, and if you take into consideration I could use FreeSync instead of paying an extra $200 for GSync in a monitor, it works out better.
    - theevilsharpie 8y ago
      Pascal and newer Nvidia cards support Freesync as of driver version 417.71.
      - jay_kyburz 8y ago
        Oh yeah, they announced that a few weeks after my new PC arrived.
  - darkpuma 8y ago
    > price-per-performance unit standpoint On Windows sure (I assume), but that goes out the window when you use Linux. On Linux with an Nvidia card you're paying for more downtime/breakage, much worse performance with the FOSS drivers, incompatibility with wayland, etc.
- copperx 8y ago
  The TFA mentions video issues as Nvidia/AMD's fault. To a reader, it might seem they are equally bad.
  - vertex-four 8y ago
    While it says that, it doesn’t actually link to anything about the modern amdgpu driver - developed officially by AMD and now part of the vanilla kernel - and the majority of the complaints are regarding nvidia.
- philliphaydon 8y ago
  I was really hoping the Radeon 7 was going to be better than it was. Because I want to move to AMD to avoid the Nvidia driver issues on linux.
  - KozmoNau7 8y ago
    I'm using an RX 560 on Linux[¤], I added a PPA to get the newest stable driver and Mesa, and overall it works fine, with a couple of minor annoyances that may be fixed as I'm writing this. One thing that doesn't seem to work is hardware acceleration for Youtube videos in Firefox. Playback in a window is fine, fullscreen isn't. Another is that dual-link DVI did not work, so I had to change to using DisplayPort instead, though that issue may have been fixed in the current driver, I haven't checked. For me that's fine, I wanted to switch to DisplayPort anyway, to use the audio output on my monitor. Those are incredibly minor issues compared to the woes of using the proprietary Nvidia driver. Not to mention the sordid history of graphics drivers on Windows. [¤] KDE Neon, which is based on Ubuntu LTS.
- zaphirplane 8y ago
  Exactly if s wireless card didn’t work in Linux you’d hardly say Linux is a problem. You’d say don’t use that card You wouldn’t be super happy if you just bought that PC, you’d understand thou. Another example if you buy a car and it doesn’t have android or Apple integration you’d be “damn I should have researched it”
AsyncAwait 8y ago
> This is literally my only (big) complaint about Linux. Video drivers just SUCK. Not really. The problem is NVIDIA doesn't give a crap about good user experience. The AMDGPU driver is pretty good and open-source to boot.
smichel17 8y ago
About a month ago, I bought an RX 580 [1] and it worked plug-and-play (zero setup) on Fedora and NixOS. On the Windows side of things, I needed to go to the AMD website and download drivers in order to get out of reduced resolution. [1] This one: https://newegg.com/products/N82E16814150794 https://newegg.com/products/N82E16814150794

fyfy18 8y ago

That's just Nvidia. I had the same in Windows two years ago. Windows update automatically installed the latest Nvidia drivers, and after a reboot the screen was black after logging in. I assumed something got messed up (because Windows) so reinstalled Windows. It worked fine for a couple of hours, then I rebooted and had the same thing. Apparently that version of the driver was buggy with my hardware (GTX 1070), so I had to go into safe mode, downgrade and stop Windows automatically upgrading it.