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> No NVIDIA GPU, because I want to use Linux and NVIDIA hates Linux Is this a voting-with-your-wallet position for open drivers / better Linux support, or have

> No NVIDIA GPU, because I want to use Linux and NVIDIA hates Linux Is this a voting-with-your-wallet position for open drivers / better Linux support, or have you experienced issues in the past with the proprietary drivers? I ask because Linux with an Nvidia gpu is my daily driver (desktop), and I’m likely to build another system like that again, was just curious what I don’t know.

chrismorgan 6y ago
A bit of both, really. I’ve never tried to run Linux on a machine with an NVIDIA GPU, or on a machine with two GPUs. But from what I have read, this is the impression that I get: It’s quite common to have a bit of trouble getting anything working, and you will run into problems far more often than with any other brand of GPU (which will just work perfectly). Many things won’t work with the proprietary drivers, because they implement everything their own way, and so software has to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, rather than using the standard tools that everything else uses like OpenGL and Mesa. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-asus-zephyrus-g14-with-ryzen-9-4900hs/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-asu... is the sort of thing I’ve heard of: there, the NVIDIA GPU is trouble from start to end. Admittedly it might have gone more smoothly with something other than Ubuntu, with more recent versions of kernels and other such stuff (I like Arch, so this wouldn’t be a problem for me), but it’s still just bad. But then too, I mentioned Wayland: because of how NVIDIA made their own world on Linux, the proprietary drivers are completely incompatible with Wayland—basically NVIDIA hardcoded support for X (again, rather than using the standard approach everyone else settled on) and haven’t done so for Wayland. If you use Nouveau instead of the proprietary drivers, you’re left with a GPU missing a substantial fraction of its functionality, stuck at a low clock speed in power-draining mode. But I think you might be able to use Wayland. I gather that Linux has problems in any dual GPU environment, but that the issues are far worse with NVIDIA than with anything else. If you’re operating a single-GPU machine and are content to use the proprietary drivers, I gather it’s not such a problem, though many applications may be unable to use GPU acceleration. I welcome any corrections to what I’ve written here. As I say, this is all just hearsay.
- mattnewton 6y ago
  I see, I guess I must just be on Nvidia’s happy path: I use a Debian distro similar to Ubuntu at work and Ubuntu at home with X windows and have experienced no problems; I didn’t know that there might be dragons if I try to stray from that.
- marmaduke 6y ago
  just a few datapoints, the Dell Ubuntu machines (4+) we've received, I just do the "Additional Drivers", click Nvidia, reboot and stuff like TensorFlow just works. CentOS (RHEL) same. I think if you start messing with one of distributions not on the CUDA download paper, you get stuck easily, but at least for work purposes, I don't see the point of using something other than RHEL/CentOS/Fedora/Debian.
- jandrese 6y ago
  For what it's worth I've had a fairly easy time with nVidia on Linux. My daily driver is an Ubuntu 20 machine where I just selected the nVidia binary blob option from a menu and it just works, even through kernel upgrades. But this is also just about the easiest setup. I might feel differently if I were on a laptop with dual graphics cards.
- deckard1 6y ago
  If you're trying to do anything with the latest hardware, it's always going to be a pain on Linux. Even Windows doesn't have flawless support with every game on day one. > It’s quite common to have a bit of trouble getting anything working, and you will run into problems far more often than with any other brand of GPU (which will just work perfectly). That's a joke. I've been using Linux on Nvidia since the Riva TNT. It was always Radeon that had garbage drivers and really didn't give two shits about Linux. Not sure how much this has changed with AMD owning them, but I never bothered to look at Radeon since Nvidia was always the best card and always worked. It's almost never more than just doing a single package install. > software has to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, rather than using the standard tools that everything else uses like OpenGL and Mesa. I think you fundamentally do not understand Mesa or OpenGL to say this. And no, nothing has to be "written against" Nvidia. It's literally OpenGL (or Vulkan, today). Unless you're talking CUDA or something, which I don't touch. This all just sounds like so much FUD that you wrote.
nicolaslem 6y ago
Not OP but I'm also avoiding anything with Nvidia in it. Half of the reason is voting with my wallet, as you mentioned. This other half is feeling much more confident that the hardware will be supported and compatible with Linux in the long term.
drwu 6y ago
About better linux support: VDPAU does not have browser hardware accelerated video decoding yet. It seems both AMD and Intel based on VA have this feature already. However, I had to choose NVIDIA only because of CUDA.
Bluerise 6y ago
OpenBSD obviously doesn't have NVIDIA support, but amdgpu(4) works pretty well. I'd also prefer to use AMD's own GPU, not only because I can't use NVIDIA, but also because I don't support NVIDIA's business practice.
fossuser 6y ago
This was largely my experience too and always confused me about people saying AMD was better for Linux. Nvidia proprietary drivers existed and worked, the AMD stuff was worse. It makes more sense if it's about open vs. proprietary rather than what works better. Though sounds like things may have changed since then.
- awill 6y ago
  I've run intel/nvidia with Arch Linux for the last 14 years. I upgraded recently from an intel/nvidia setup (GTX 1070) to a zen3 w/ a Radeon 6800. Honestly, both nvidia and AMD have excellent support on Linux. Both hardware decode, play steam games, are stable, support the latest kernel etc.. However, latest steam games (and proton in particular) is better tested against Mesa (AMD OSS drivers), so it's the place to be for gaming on linux. AMD also tears less on Linux, and supports Wayland (though Wayland support could be the reason for less tearing). Either way, I'm fully AMD now and wouldn't go back. I see zero downsides, and a few upsides.

chrismorgan 6y ago

A bit of both, really. I’ve never tried to run Linux on a machine with an NVIDIA GPU, or on a machine with two GPUs. But from what I have read, this is the impression that I get: It’s quite common to have a bit of trouble getting anything working, and you will run into problems far more often than with any other brand of GPU (which will just work perfectly). Many things won’t work with the proprietary drivers, because they implement everything their own way, and so software has to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, rather than using the standard tools that everything else uses like OpenGL and Mesa. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-asus-zephyrus-g14-with-ryzen-9-4900hs/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/04/linux-on-laptops-asu... is the sort of thing I’ve heard of: there, the NVIDIA GPU is trouble from start to end. Admittedly it might have gone more smoothly with something other than Ubuntu, with more recent versions of kernels and other such stuff (I like Arch, so this wouldn’t be a problem for me), but it’s still just bad. But then too, I mentioned Wayland: because of how NVIDIA made their own world on Linux, the proprietary drivers are completely incompatible with Wayland—basically NVIDIA hardcoded support for X (again, rather than using the standard approach everyone else settled on) and haven’t done so for Wayland. If you use Nouveau instead of the proprietary drivers, you’re left with a GPU missing a substantial fraction of its functionality, stuck at a low clock speed in power-draining mode. But I think you might be able to use Wayland. I gather that Linux has problems in any dual GPU environment, but that the issues are far worse with NVIDIA than with anything else. If you’re operating a single-GPU machine and are content to use the proprietary drivers, I gather it’s not such a problem, though many applications may be unable to use GPU acceleration. I welcome any corrections to what I’ve written here. As I say, this is all just hearsay.

mattnewton 6y ago
I see, I guess I must just be on Nvidia’s happy path: I use a Debian distro similar to Ubuntu at work and Ubuntu at home with X windows and have experienced no problems; I didn’t know that there might be dragons if I try to stray from that.
marmaduke 6y ago
just a few datapoints, the Dell Ubuntu machines (4+) we've received, I just do the "Additional Drivers", click Nvidia, reboot and stuff like TensorFlow just works. CentOS (RHEL) same. I think if you start messing with one of distributions not on the CUDA download paper, you get stuck easily, but at least for work purposes, I don't see the point of using something other than RHEL/CentOS/Fedora/Debian.
jandrese 6y ago
For what it's worth I've had a fairly easy time with nVidia on Linux. My daily driver is an Ubuntu 20 machine where I just selected the nVidia binary blob option from a menu and it just works, even through kernel upgrades. But this is also just about the easiest setup. I might feel differently if I were on a laptop with dual graphics cards.
deckard1 6y ago
If you're trying to do anything with the latest hardware, it's always going to be a pain on Linux. Even Windows doesn't have flawless support with every game on day one. > It’s quite common to have a bit of trouble getting anything working, and you will run into problems far more often than with any other brand of GPU (which will just work perfectly). That's a joke. I've been using Linux on Nvidia since the Riva TNT. It was always Radeon that had garbage drivers and really didn't give two shits about Linux. Not sure how much this has changed with AMD owning them, but I never bothered to look at Radeon since Nvidia was always the best card and always worked. It's almost never more than just doing a single package install. > software has to be written against the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, rather than using the standard tools that everything else uses like OpenGL and Mesa. I think you fundamentally do not understand Mesa or OpenGL to say this. And no, nothing has to be "written against" Nvidia. It's literally OpenGL (or Vulkan, today). Unless you're talking CUDA or something, which I don't touch. This all just sounds like so much FUD that you wrote.

nicolaslem 6y ago

Not OP but I'm also avoiding anything with Nvidia in it. Half of the reason is voting with my wallet, as you mentioned. This other half is feeling much more confident that the hardware will be supported and compatible with Linux in the long term.

drwu 6y ago

About better linux support: VDPAU does not have browser hardware accelerated video decoding yet. It seems both AMD and Intel based on VA have this feature already. However, I had to choose NVIDIA only because of CUDA.

Bluerise 6y ago

OpenBSD obviously doesn't have NVIDIA support, but amdgpu(4) works pretty well. I'd also prefer to use AMD's own GPU, not only because I can't use NVIDIA, but also because I don't support NVIDIA's business practice.

fossuser 6y ago

This was largely my experience too and always confused me about people saying AMD was better for Linux. Nvidia proprietary drivers existed and worked, the AMD stuff was worse. It makes more sense if it's about open vs. proprietary rather than what works better. Though sounds like things may have changed since then.

awill 6y ago
I've run intel/nvidia with Arch Linux for the last 14 years. I upgraded recently from an intel/nvidia setup (GTX 1070) to a zen3 w/ a Radeon 6800. Honestly, both nvidia and AMD have excellent support on Linux. Both hardware decode, play steam games, are stable, support the latest kernel etc.. However, latest steam games (and proton in particular) is better tested against Mesa (AMD OSS drivers), so it's the place to be for gaming on linux. AMD also tears less on Linux, and supports Wayland (though Wayland support could be the reason for less tearing). Either way, I'm fully AMD now and wouldn't go back. I see zero downsides, and a few upsides.