7 ms·

>I might add that while Nvidia is often reviled for its GPU drivers being proprietary, they are still excellent drivers nonetheless. Couldn't disagree more. Fo

by Jerry2 6y ago

>I might add that while Nvidia is often reviled for its GPU drivers being proprietary, they are still excellent drivers nonetheless. Couldn't disagree more. For the last 4 to 5 months or so, Nvidia's drivers have been horrendous. I've experienced numerous crashes with my GTX 2080 Super card. About once every two days I experience a kernel panic and the only solution is to reboot. There are multiple threads on this issue on Nvidia's official Linux forum and Nvidia's driver developers have stated they don't know what the cause is and cannot reproduce it. [1] My HDMI also doesn't work well after the computer wakes-up from sleep. Sometimes the monitor does work, sometimes it doesn't. It's also a known issue. I'll be looking at AMD and their graphics cards a lot more closely when I build my next computer later this year. I just can't deal with Nvidia's driver issues. It's extremely annoying and it has wasted a ton of my time. I've been using Nvidia's HW with GNU/Linux for about a decade and have never had any major issues and have always been happy with the performance and reliability. However, this is not the case anymore. I'm pretty sure all this mess started when Kernel devs started blocking Nvidia's "GPL condom" effort [2]. [1] https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/c/gpu-unix-graphics/linux/148 https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/c/gpu-unix-graphics/linu... [2] https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Kernel-Blocking-NV-NetGPU\\\ https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-Ke...*

avereveard 6y ago
Even on Windows, the driver batch of 2017 tanked my card performances to the point even old games I used to play on max were stuttering. I hold on the 36x series as long as games let me, but came late 2018 new release started complaining and then stopped starting due the old driver So I jumped on AMD, missed the rtx train, but my card is still running strong in 2021 and I'm not in a hurry to switch; I'll wait until the release of a midrange ready tracing card from them.
bayindirh 6y ago
When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. Moreover, they stay silent in the forums now. They don't listen to customer feedback or at least give any signs of hope or assurance. Their company image became too dominant and arrogant (I think it runs more than skin-deep). Some of the nVidia's huge market share is coming from the momentum they have. Linux users do not refresh their hardware too frequently generally. I'm running a GTX680 on my primary Linux box, but it won't be nVidia next time. I'll be returning back to red team and I'd be a happy camper.
- beojan 6y ago
  > When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. The flip side is that if you want to do GPGPU work (even if it's just local testing) you more-or-less need an nVidia card.
  - bayindirh 6y ago
    You're right but, I'm deeply interested what AMD can do now or what's in the works. ATI was left in the dust while the foundation has been forming, unfortunately, but the history is not that straightforward. TBH, while I appreciate what nVidia is doing, I don't appreciate how did they came to this point. I have some close friends who're doing game engine and very low level 3D development. His thoughts about nVidia's driver behavior, even under Windows, is worth another rant.
- est31 6y ago
  > When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. Have they ever taken proper care of the visual part? I've thought that it exists in the first place because of the SFX industry's heavy use of GNU/Linux and Nvidia. That's a fraction of their market share so only got a fraction of their attention, likely mainly to avoid vacating the area for competitors than to actually make money (bad ROI compared to Windows).
  - sandworm101 6y ago
    >> bad ROI compared to Windows Windows is essentially just the gaming market. Gamers are fickle, only buying a card every couple years and are very price conscious. But AI, and any other datacenter uses of GPUs (mining) buy cards in bulk, are not fickle, and are not obsessed with daily price fluctuations. Those are the markets Nvidea wants to be in and they are dominated by linux. Not playing nice with linux gamers will come back to haunt Nvidea. Also, one should not underestimate the bias that gaming generates. All those linux gamers who suffer poor drivers while gaming saturday night walk into jobs at datacenters and AI research groups each monday. They remember. I certainly do. All things being equal, I lean towards AMD whenever the boss asks my opinion on our next purchase.
MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
> I've experienced numerous crashes with my GTX 2080 Super card. Same with my trusty 1070. The WHQL driver from 2019 didn't crash, but it is now too old for current games.
samhh 6y ago
I never had crashes but, having switched from a 1070 (proprietary) to a 6800 (open) this week, the experience is far better. Things that were previously nigh-on impossible to get right, like fixing screen tearing, or freesync without bizarre performance penalties, just work now.
- jakswa 6y ago
  I keep flip-flopping between these as my needs change. I flipped to proprietary last time I tried some Steam games. I will gladly switch back to open source drivers if I'm wrong in thinking game performance on linux will suffer?
  - ownagefool 6y ago
    probably a whole bunch of depends, but I haven't noticed any performance problems with my 6800xt in linux. Partly this will be because I'm not playing games like CS:GO not cyperpunk, but I'm capped on 144hz with latest OSS drivers.
  - samhh 6y ago
    Not played anything very intensive yet, but Rocket League and Deep Rock Galactic, each via Proton, are performing way better than they were before, in line with what you'd expect moving from a 1070 to a 6800.
secondcoming 6y ago
And to add insult to injury, the nvidia drivers are what, 500MB? and require you to open an nVidia account to download. GTFO with that BS.
- navjack27 6y ago
  You can just download them...
- neogodless 6y ago
  The GeForce experience requires an account but you can download the drivers without it. Still obnoxious and clearly confusing to the end user.
- yanisvieilly 6y ago
  You can still manually download them here, without an account: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/ My guess is the huge file size is due to the GeForce Experience tool that's included. It would be much better if it was a separate download, but you can choose not to install it during the setup process.
devwastaken 6y ago
They're excellent on Windows, which is their main target sadly. I wish AMD did it better.
- GiorgioG 6y ago
  > They're excellent on Windows They are 'OK', I wouldn't say they're excellent. I have an RTX 3080 (prior to that I had a 1080Ti) and games crash more often than I would like. Waking from sleep is hit or miss, random driver crashes where the monitor goes blank, driver reinitializes itself, screen comes back on, etc. This is all with the latest and greatest drivers, 4K 160hz monitor (and an older 4k/60hz monitor), etc.
MawKKe 6y ago
No kidding. Few weeks ago 'apt upgrade' killed my X server and locked up the whole machine. I'm like 99.99999% sure it was the nvidia drivers.
- AtlasBarfed 6y ago
  Yes I used to bemoan ubuntu upgrades for not working. Turns out that it's the NVidia drivers every time.
rrajasek 6y ago
For real. Getting the NVIDIA drivers to work with newer kernels has been a total nightmare. I've had to test out several combinations before I got a relatively stable config. Now I'm afraid to apply an automatic update since I don't want to lose several hours to debugging BS driver issues.
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> a relatively stable config. That's where I was on my last rig (AMD+nvidea). Every driver update was a dice roll. Am I going to play today, or spend three hours googling to figure out why my machine keeps booting into safe mode? Since I switched to AMD+AMD a few months ago: no issues. Maybe nvidea would give me a few more FPS at the same price, but you cannot put a price on "it just works".
volta83 6y ago
Do you have links to the actual threads in which these issues are reported ?
yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
When I was younger, I thought there was a choice between picking free software for ideological reasons, and picking whatever software did the job for pragmatic reasons. But I have mostly come to conclude over time is that this is a false choice; over a majority of use cases and time scales, open source is just pragmatic choice anyways.
- II2II 6y ago
  In times past, open source was a much harder sell. You pretty much had to do things the Unix way or deal with a very limited program that mimicked its Windows counterpart. That has changed. I would argue that open source can be more pragmatic these days. A lot of software offers the features people need. Managing a system based upon open source software is significantly easier since there is no reason to impose restrictions on use or redistribution. To choose an example relevant in this case, open source drivers can ship with a Linux distribution so you have functional drivers the moment you boot from the installation medium. In the case of proprietary drivers, there is typically an extra step once the installation is complete.
  - Tijdreiziger 6y ago
    Personally I would love to switch to OSS tomorrow, but I still see many showstoppers: - Desktop: Linux vs. Windows - worse support for gaming (e.g. anti-cheat), no support for major creative software like Photoshop/Affinity or Ableton/FL Studio - Mobile: FOSS Android distro vs. Google Android - no guarantee that apps I currently use will work without Gapps, no paid apps or in-app purchases I have really been thinking a lot about this in the past months, because I would like to improve my privacy. The only real play seems to be moving to Apple's ecosystem, and buying a console for the games (and paying a lot more and losing customizability and repairability in the process).
- rectang 6y ago
  The event which persuaded me that open source software was the pragmatic choice happened in 1999 (though it took a few years afterwards for me to articulate my advocacy in those terms). That's when the Gibson Guitars, having acquired Opcode Systems previously, abandoned development on Opcode's flagship sequencer application, Studio Vision — leaving its users high and dry. Many music users today are locked into proprietary applications analogous to Studio Vision and their proprietary formats. If the company goes under, or if management decides to kill the product, there goes all your work. Theoretically proprietary software can support open file formats — but there are such strong incentives for companies to leverage network effects and lock in users that at any moment you are one upgrade away from a policy change and silent conversion of your document to a proprietary format. Only FOSS guarantees that your documents will survive the tumult of capitalism. Two decades later, history has repeated itself, with Flash, Macromedia, and Adobe in the roles previously played by Studio Vision, Opcode, and Gibson...
fxtentacle 6y ago
I have the opposite experience. AMD is effectively unusable for AI. As much as I'd like to switch, I need those NVIDIA drivers because CUDA is the only thing that works reliably. So it's AMD CPU + NVIDIA GPU + Ubuntu sigh
cybwraith 6y ago
Even in windows, nvidia drivers have been bad. One particularly nasty example is the SteamVR frame drop bug they introduced last... May? Still isn't fixed, though they finally posted they found the cause and the next patch will supposedly have a fix.
shalmanese 6y ago
Isn't the benefit of open source that you can just revert back to the 5 month old drivers and wait out the instability?

by Jerry2 6y ago

avereveard 6y ago

Even on Windows, the driver batch of 2017 tanked my card performances to the point even old games I used to play on max were stuttering. I hold on the 36x series as long as games let me, but came late 2018 new release started complaining and then stopped starting due the old driver So I jumped on AMD, missed the rtx train, but my card is still running strong in 2021 and I'm not in a hurry to switch; I'll wait until the release of a midrange ready tracing card from them.

bayindirh 6y ago

When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. Moreover, they stay silent in the forums now. They don't listen to customer feedback or at least give any signs of hope or assurance. Their company image became too dominant and arrogant (I think it runs more than skin-deep). Some of the nVidia's huge market share is coming from the momentum they have. Linux users do not refresh their hardware too frequently generally. I'm running a GTX680 on my primary Linux box, but it won't be nVidia next time. I'll be returning back to red team and I'd be a happy camper.

beojan 6y ago
> When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. The flip side is that if you want to do GPGPU work (even if it's just local testing) you more-or-less need an nVidia card.
- bayindirh 6y ago
  You're right but, I'm deeply interested what AMD can do now or what's in the works. ATI was left in the dust while the foundation has been forming, unfortunately, but the history is not that straightforward. TBH, while I appreciate what nVidia is doing, I don't appreciate how did they came to this point. I have some close friends who're doing game engine and very low level 3D development. His thoughts about nVidia's driver behavior, even under Windows, is worth another rant.
est31 6y ago
> When nVidia got what it wanted from Linux by dominating compute space using CUDA, they've just left visual part of their drivers to rot. Have they ever taken proper care of the visual part? I've thought that it exists in the first place because of the SFX industry's heavy use of GNU/Linux and Nvidia. That's a fraction of their market share so only got a fraction of their attention, likely mainly to avoid vacating the area for competitors than to actually make money (bad ROI compared to Windows).
- sandworm101 6y ago
  >> bad ROI compared to Windows Windows is essentially just the gaming market. Gamers are fickle, only buying a card every couple years and are very price conscious. But AI, and any other datacenter uses of GPUs (mining) buy cards in bulk, are not fickle, and are not obsessed with daily price fluctuations. Those are the markets Nvidea wants to be in and they are dominated by linux. Not playing nice with linux gamers will come back to haunt Nvidea. Also, one should not underestimate the bias that gaming generates. All those linux gamers who suffer poor drivers while gaming saturday night walk into jobs at datacenters and AI research groups each monday. They remember. I certainly do. All things being equal, I lean towards AMD whenever the boss asks my opinion on our next purchase.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago

> I've experienced numerous crashes with my GTX 2080 Super card. Same with my trusty 1070. The WHQL driver from 2019 didn't crash, but it is now too old for current games.

samhh 6y ago

I never had crashes but, having switched from a 1070 (proprietary) to a 6800 (open) this week, the experience is far better. Things that were previously nigh-on impossible to get right, like fixing screen tearing, or freesync without bizarre performance penalties, just work now.

jakswa 6y ago
I keep flip-flopping between these as my needs change. I flipped to proprietary last time I tried some Steam games. I will gladly switch back to open source drivers if I'm wrong in thinking game performance on linux will suffer?
- ownagefool 6y ago
  probably a whole bunch of depends, but I haven't noticed any performance problems with my 6800xt in linux. Partly this will be because I'm not playing games like CS:GO not cyperpunk, but I'm capped on 144hz with latest OSS drivers.
- samhh 6y ago
  Not played anything very intensive yet, but Rocket League and Deep Rock Galactic, each via Proton, are performing way better than they were before, in line with what you'd expect moving from a 1070 to a 6800.

secondcoming 6y ago

And to add insult to injury, the nvidia drivers are what, 500MB? and require you to open an nVidia account to download. GTFO with that BS.

navjack27 6y ago
You can just download them...
neogodless 6y ago
The GeForce experience requires an account but you can download the drivers without it. Still obnoxious and clearly confusing to the end user.
yanisvieilly 6y ago
You can still manually download them here, without an account: https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/ https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/drivers/ My guess is the huge file size is due to the GeForce Experience tool that's included. It would be much better if it was a separate download, but you can choose not to install it during the setup process.

devwastaken 6y ago

They're excellent on Windows, which is their main target sadly. I wish AMD did it better.

GiorgioG 6y ago
> They're excellent on Windows They are 'OK', I wouldn't say they're excellent. I have an RTX 3080 (prior to that I had a 1080Ti) and games crash more often than I would like. Waking from sleep is hit or miss, random driver crashes where the monitor goes blank, driver reinitializes itself, screen comes back on, etc. This is all with the latest and greatest drivers, 4K 160hz monitor (and an older 4k/60hz monitor), etc.

MawKKe 6y ago

No kidding. Few weeks ago 'apt upgrade' killed my X server and locked up the whole machine. I'm like 99.99999% sure it was the nvidia drivers.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago
Yes I used to bemoan ubuntu upgrades for not working. Turns out that it's the NVidia drivers every time.

rrajasek 6y ago

For real. Getting the NVIDIA drivers to work with newer kernels has been a total nightmare. I've had to test out several combinations before I got a relatively stable config. Now I'm afraid to apply an automatic update since I don't want to lose several hours to debugging BS driver issues.

sandworm101 6y ago
>> a relatively stable config. That's where I was on my last rig (AMD+nvidea). Every driver update was a dice roll. Am I going to play today, or spend three hours googling to figure out why my machine keeps booting into safe mode? Since I switched to AMD+AMD a few months ago: no issues. Maybe nvidea would give me a few more FPS at the same price, but you cannot put a price on "it just works".

volta83 6y ago

Do you have links to the actual threads in which these issues are reported ?

yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago

When I was younger, I thought there was a choice between picking free software for ideological reasons, and picking whatever software did the job for pragmatic reasons. But I have mostly come to conclude over time is that this is a false choice; over a majority of use cases and time scales, open source is just pragmatic choice anyways.

II2II 6y ago
In times past, open source was a much harder sell. You pretty much had to do things the Unix way or deal with a very limited program that mimicked its Windows counterpart. That has changed. I would argue that open source can be more pragmatic these days. A lot of software offers the features people need. Managing a system based upon open source software is significantly easier since there is no reason to impose restrictions on use or redistribution. To choose an example relevant in this case, open source drivers can ship with a Linux distribution so you have functional drivers the moment you boot from the installation medium. In the case of proprietary drivers, there is typically an extra step once the installation is complete.
- Tijdreiziger 6y ago
  Personally I would love to switch to OSS tomorrow, but I still see many showstoppers: - Desktop: Linux vs. Windows - worse support for gaming (e.g. anti-cheat), no support for major creative software like Photoshop/Affinity or Ableton/FL Studio - Mobile: FOSS Android distro vs. Google Android - no guarantee that apps I currently use will work without Gapps, no paid apps or in-app purchases I have really been thinking a lot about this in the past months, because I would like to improve my privacy. The only real play seems to be moving to Apple's ecosystem, and buying a console for the games (and paying a lot more and losing customizability and repairability in the process).
rectang 6y ago
The event which persuaded me that open source software was the pragmatic choice happened in 1999 (though it took a few years afterwards for me to articulate my advocacy in those terms). That's when the Gibson Guitars, having acquired Opcode Systems previously, abandoned development on Opcode's flagship sequencer application, Studio Vision — leaving its users high and dry. Many music users today are locked into proprietary applications analogous to Studio Vision and their proprietary formats. If the company goes under, or if management decides to kill the product, there goes all your work. Theoretically proprietary software can support open file formats — but there are such strong incentives for companies to leverage network effects and lock in users that at any moment you are one upgrade away from a policy change and silent conversion of your document to a proprietary format. Only FOSS guarantees that your documents will survive the tumult of capitalism. Two decades later, history has repeated itself, with Flash, Macromedia, and Adobe in the roles previously played by Studio Vision, Opcode, and Gibson...

fxtentacle 6y ago

I have the opposite experience. AMD is effectively unusable for AI. As much as I'd like to switch, I need those NVIDIA drivers because CUDA is the only thing that works reliably. So it's AMD CPU + NVIDIA GPU + Ubuntu sigh

cybwraith 6y ago

Even in windows, nvidia drivers have been bad. One particularly nasty example is the SteamVR frame drop bug they introduced last... May? Still isn't fixed, though they finally posted they found the cause and the next patch will supposedly have a fix.

shalmanese 6y ago

Isn't the benefit of open source that you can just revert back to the 5 month old drivers and wait out the instability?