7 ms·

Wayland Nvidia

65 points by breve 11mo ago

superkuh 11mo ago
To be clearer, as each wayland desktop pretty much creates their own incompatible wayland compositor (because wayland protocol is minimal and not feature complete) this is just a guide to fixing the hyperland broken wayland desktop. Not all waylands' broken desktops.
- ChocolateGod 11mo ago
  What protocol is missing from Wayland? Yes Wayland doesn't have a printer protocol like Xorg, I know.
  - singron 11mo ago
    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/tree/main?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/t... This is an incomplete list of protocols that aren't part of core Wayland. Compositors implement additional protocols that aren't even part of this process (e.g. wlr-screencopy-unstable). See the wlroota protocols here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/tree/master/protocol?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/tree/master...
    - ChocolateGod 11mo ago
      Right but there's the xdg-portal for screen capture which runs through Pipewire and supports sand-boxing (because its negotiated over dbus), which all the main compositors support. Just because a protocol isn't part of Wayland, doesn't mean a standard protocol does not exists.
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - superkuh 11mo ago
    The big ones missing for me are accessibility support (ie, screen readers) and mouse/keyboard input support for basic things like keyboard sharing.
tietjens 11mo ago
When can I reliably run ~95% of Steam titles on Linux with a Nvidia card? That's what I'm waiting for, then it's bye-bye Windows.
- brettermeier 11mo ago
  ~30+ years
- marginalia_nu 11mo ago
  I don't even know when I ran into a game that didn't run off Steam on Linux. There's some fiddling gamescope on Wayland to get them to perform well, but most just run out of the box with great performance. The stuff that doesn't work typically don't work because kernel level anticheats, so a few competitive titles but even in that space many titles still run.
- everdrive 11mo ago
  Wait no longer! Per capita I doubt 5% of games use kernel-level anticheat. Almost anything else runs pretty painlessly.
- embedding-shape 11mo ago
  https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard > Top 10 - 20% Platinum - 30% Gold - 10% Silver - 30% Bronze - 10% Borked I'd probably say at least Gold is "reliably click and play without fiddling", so probably we're around 20-50% there right now, if we consider the top 10 games on Steam. Once you start considering top 100 or top 1000, it starts to look a lot better. But still, mainstream games are lagging seemingly.
  - morshu9001 11mo ago
    Gold isn't really play without fiddling. Like look at BeamNG or AOE2DE
- windsurfer 11mo ago
  It has been my experience that this is currently the case. I haven't had to even open protondb or search for a workaround in over a year. The only titles I know that don't work are a handful of multiplayer games that have intentionally disabled linux support.
pshirshov 11mo ago
But still no console, right?
bogdan 11mo ago
Is this stable on a multi-monitor mixed resolutions & refresh-rates setups?
- Havoc 11mo ago
  Yeah haven't had issues with mine (3090) 3840x2160@59.99700 3840x1080@143.99899 ...there is a nvidia bug on some cards where they idle high with multi monitors ~50W. Pretty sure that's OS independent though
cedws 11mo ago
Meanwhile Grandma says: "what's a wayland?" How can anybody seriously argue Linux is an OS ready for ordinary users when you have to do crap like this? Complete delusion.
- lawn 11mo ago
  Linux isn't a single OS. It's hundreds of different and weird combinations. There are Linux distributions that are better than Windows or iOS for grandma to use as well as distributions where you need to be an expert to do anything.
  - cedws 11mo ago
    It doesn't matter, your options are either X11 or a Wayland-based compositor, both of them come with their respective headaches that a regular user has NO IDEA how to fix.
    - jamesnorden 11mo ago
      >both of them come with their respective headaches that a regular user has NO IDEA how to fix. Unlike Windows, right? Right? Guys?
    - deleted 11mo ago
      [deleted]
    - lawn 11mo ago
      You're making this issue much bigger than it is in reality. Dare I say that you frankly have NO IDEA what the experience on modern Linux is today.
    - ninth_ant 11mo ago
      This is only accurate for people who choose enthusiast-centric DIY distributions such as Arch. “Regular” users have plenty of distribution choices where there are zero of these types of headaches.
    - heavyset_go 11mo ago
jwcooper 11mo ago
Most of this article seems unnecessary in 2025 and is very specific to Arch. For most distributions you can simply install the (proprietary) nvidia drivers and you're good to go. There is generally no tweaking or command line changes necessary for Nvidia to work on Wayland, including multi-monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates.
- _79px 11mo ago
  My "gaming" laptop is completely effed on most distributions, and forces me to use Linux Mint to select an older driver (which also causes problems.)
  - kachapopopow 11mo ago
    that sounds like a firmware issue rather than a driver one, laptops are known to have horrible apic including on windows (ex: asus laptops). https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive
  - everdrive 11mo ago
    I assume you have 2 GPUs and one is integrated?
    - _79px 11mo ago
      Yes, the laptop screen works fine but my external monitor connected to my gpu seems to run at about 10 fps when it should be 120.
  - godelski 11mo ago
    > completely effed on most distributions How does the distribution make this an issue? You can always freeze drivers and install old ones. I get that it might not work out of the box, especially with rolling-release distros like Arch, but you also don't want rolling-releases for an older machine.
    - 11mo ago
juliangmp 11mo ago
Careful there, I was almost able to see some parts of the article through the ads
- jjuel 11mo ago
  Came to say something about the ads too. Ended up not even reading the article it was so bad.
  - kachapopopow 11mo ago
    It feels surprising that there's people on hackernews without adblock considering that adblock is not just for blocking ads, but also malware, illegal tracking and blocking annoying and useless banners.
    - mnmalst 11mo ago
      Totally agree. Every time I see someone complaining about ads, I think "What ads?"
      - a012 11mo ago
        Their adblock shamming overlay is also blocking part of the screen (on mobile) by the way
        prmoustache 11mo ago
        Don't see that overlay on fennec + adblock, what are you using?
        kachapopopow 11mo ago
        brave seems to have some special sauce since it appears to be able to hide the fact that ads were removed. I am guessing they are doing so without triggering dom events.
    - nottorp 11mo ago
kachapopopow 11mo ago
Interesting coincidence, yesterday I was using a similar article to hopefully fix kwin starting to slow down after 10+ days of uptime.
- 64718283661 11mo ago
  I noticed this myself, both gnome and kde. It turned out to be that leaving Firefox open for long periods of time caused this.
  - kachapopopow 11mo ago
    I think for me jetbrains applications cause a memory leak in KWin which actually is becoming less of a problem now that I am switching to neovim slowly but surely.
- baobun 11mo ago
  Hm, I've recently noticed kwin taking up what seems like way too much CPU at idle. Fedora with KDE. Happens on both X11 and Wayland with Wayland being worse and perceptibly slower.
rmrfchik 11mo ago
nvidia on linux [for desktop] is utterly broken. I ran nvidia cards for almost 15 years (shame on me): laggy X11 compositing, fragile and broken wayland. Broken suspend/resume. Too many moving parts (selected drivers, modprobe quirks, suspend/resume scripts). Moved to amd: slick x11, reliable wayland, NO MORE DRIVERS AT ALL, works like charm. And yes, I do playing in Linux.
- graynk 11mo ago
  Suspend/resume is broken in general (and everywhere besides Mac), including AMD on Linux. No more drivers is just..false? The rest was true up to roughly 3 years ago. Now I'm a happy camper
  - rmrfchik 11mo ago
    Suspend/resume was broken in nvidia since release on aug 2024. I have internal bug id for it. And dozen links with suspend scripts. No more drivers I mean I don't need to install dozens of packages. While it not big deal by itself, but reverting broken driver is huge deal. Laggy desktop -- this is my experience until nov 2025 when I dumped nvidia. Desktop on both intel and amd feels like magic after nvidia.
    - graynk 11mo ago
      Suspend/resume is broken for my friend with an AMD card right now. That's what I mean: it's broken everywhere in slightly different ways, yes even on Windows. Thankfully I never use it anyway. Dunno anything about dozens of packages, I installed 1 (one) package from my distro and haven't touched it since, no issues with updates either. That same friend with an AMD card keeps getting random hard PC freezes during gaming though. Also absolutely zero issues with lags/latency for me (on GNOME. I did experience a bunch of weird bugs with KDE, but again - no lags) One thing that is very real is DirectX 12 performance. This one really does suffer due to poor nvidia drivers. Hope they iron it out at some point
      - rmrfchik 11mo ago
thenthenthen 11mo ago
Wow the ads are killing this page
antonyh 11mo ago
Having failed to get Wayland working on Debian Trixie with a 1050 Ti as an upgrade from X11, I've given up for now and will try again when I switch to AMD. This is a workstation not used for games so it'd be good to have Wayland working right but I'm not wasting time fighting it, and it'll get the GPU from the gaming rig when it becomes due nullifying the problem. What I don't get is if these are proscribed steps (and they do read as such) why are they not automated with the module install? Why are we still fighting these issues if the 'workaround' is linear and well described? Is it as flimsy a reason as "write-an-article, collect-advertising-revenue" rather than contribute code to the installer?
- bjoli 11mo ago
  I have 3 intel gpus. One for light gaming and desktop use (3 screens), another one for light gaming and one for video transcoding. The experience is flawless for me. One of the cards seems to have issues with qemu and opengl rendering, but it is an older model and is no longer sold retail.
letwhile 11mo ago
The monthly wayland news, that we would be there already. Reminds me of fusion energy.
lacoolj 11mo ago
Hey Gemini Take this article and submit PRs to all major distros that applies all the fixes in each different situation. Thanks!
yokoprime 11mo ago
I have an intel/nvida 4080 pc and im running a regular Arch install, rocking KDE on Wayland. It works flawlessly, just installed the drivers and that was that. Stop inventing problems that do not exist.
j3th9n 11mo ago
What a nightmare.
melonpan7 11mo ago
I’ve been running CachyOS with Hyprland on my RTX3070 with no glaring issues. But eventually I plan to switch to a Radeon card.
darkteflon 11mo ago
I still get fairly regular graphical glitches on Bazzite (Wayland) with a 3060ti. Certainly better than it used to be, but doesn’t quite feel there yet.

65 points by breve 11mo ago

To be clearer, as each wayland desktop pretty much creates their own incompatible wayland compositor (because wayland protocol is minimal and not feature complete) this is just a guide to fixing the hyperland broken wayland desktop. Not all waylands' broken desktops.

ChocolateGod 11mo ago
What protocol is missing from Wayland? Yes Wayland doesn't have a printer protocol like Xorg, I know.
- singron 11mo ago
  https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/tree/main?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/t... This is an incomplete list of protocols that aren't part of core Wayland. Compositors implement additional protocols that aren't even part of this process (e.g. wlr-screencopy-unstable). See the wlroota protocols here: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/tree/master/protocol?ref_type=heads https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wlroots/wlroots/-/tree/master...
  - ChocolateGod 11mo ago
    Right but there's the xdg-portal for screen capture which runs through Pipewire and supports sand-boxing (because its negotiated over dbus), which all the main compositors support. Just because a protocol isn't part of Wayland, doesn't mean a standard protocol does not exists.
- deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
- superkuh 11mo ago
  The big ones missing for me are accessibility support (ie, screen readers) and mouse/keyboard input support for basic things like keyboard sharing.

tietjens 11mo ago

When can I reliably run ~95% of Steam titles on Linux with a Nvidia card? That's what I'm waiting for, then it's bye-bye Windows.

brettermeier 11mo ago
~30+ years
marginalia_nu 11mo ago
I don't even know when I ran into a game that didn't run off Steam on Linux. There's some fiddling gamescope on Wayland to get them to perform well, but most just run out of the box with great performance. The stuff that doesn't work typically don't work because kernel level anticheats, so a few competitive titles but even in that space many titles still run.
everdrive 11mo ago
Wait no longer! Per capita I doubt 5% of games use kernel-level anticheat. Almost anything else runs pretty painlessly.
embedding-shape 11mo ago
https://www.protondb.com/dashboard https://www.protondb.com/dashboard > Top 10 - 20% Platinum - 30% Gold - 10% Silver - 30% Bronze - 10% Borked I'd probably say at least Gold is "reliably click and play without fiddling", so probably we're around 20-50% there right now, if we consider the top 10 games on Steam. Once you start considering top 100 or top 1000, it starts to look a lot better. But still, mainstream games are lagging seemingly.
- morshu9001 11mo ago
  Gold isn't really play without fiddling. Like look at BeamNG or AOE2DE
windsurfer 11mo ago
It has been my experience that this is currently the case. I haven't had to even open protondb or search for a workaround in over a year. The only titles I know that don't work are a handful of multiplayer games that have intentionally disabled linux support.

pshirshov 11mo ago

But still no console, right?

bogdan 11mo ago

Is this stable on a multi-monitor mixed resolutions & refresh-rates setups?

Havoc 11mo ago
Yeah haven't had issues with mine (3090) 3840x2160@59.99700 3840x1080@143.99899 ...there is a nvidia bug on some cards where they idle high with multi monitors ~50W. Pretty sure that's OS independent though

cedws 11mo ago

Meanwhile Grandma says: "what's a wayland?" How can anybody seriously argue Linux is an OS ready for ordinary users when you have to do crap like this? Complete delusion.

lawn 11mo ago
Linux isn't a single OS. It's hundreds of different and weird combinations. There are Linux distributions that are better than Windows or iOS for grandma to use as well as distributions where you need to be an expert to do anything.
- cedws 11mo ago
  It doesn't matter, your options are either X11 or a Wayland-based compositor, both of them come with their respective headaches that a regular user has NO IDEA how to fix.
  - jamesnorden 11mo ago
    >both of them come with their respective headaches that a regular user has NO IDEA how to fix. Unlike Windows, right? Right? Guys?
  - deleted 11mo ago
    [deleted]
  - lawn 11mo ago
    You're making this issue much bigger than it is in reality. Dare I say that you frankly have NO IDEA what the experience on modern Linux is today.
  - ninth_ant 11mo ago
    This is only accurate for people who choose enthusiast-centric DIY distributions such as Arch. “Regular” users have plenty of distribution choices where there are zero of these types of headaches.
  - heavyset_go 11mo ago

jwcooper 11mo ago

Most of this article seems unnecessary in 2025 and is very specific to Arch. For most distributions you can simply install the (proprietary) nvidia drivers and you're good to go. There is generally no tweaking or command line changes necessary for Nvidia to work on Wayland, including multi-monitors with different resolutions and refresh rates.

_79px 11mo ago
My "gaming" laptop is completely effed on most distributions, and forces me to use Linux Mint to select an older driver (which also causes problems.)
- kachapopopow 11mo ago
  that sounds like a firmware issue rather than a driver one, laptops are known to have horrible apic including on windows (ex: asus laptops). https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive https://github.com/Zephkek/Asus-ROG-Aml-Deep-Dive
- everdrive 11mo ago
  I assume you have 2 GPUs and one is integrated?
  - _79px 11mo ago
    Yes, the laptop screen works fine but my external monitor connected to my gpu seems to run at about 10 fps when it should be 120.
- godelski 11mo ago
  > completely effed on most distributions How does the distribution make this an issue? You can always freeze drivers and install old ones. I get that it might not work out of the box, especially with rolling-release distros like Arch, but you also don't want rolling-releases for an older machine.
  - 11mo ago

juliangmp 11mo ago

Careful there, I was almost able to see some parts of the article through the ads

jjuel 11mo ago
Came to say something about the ads too. Ended up not even reading the article it was so bad.
- kachapopopow 11mo ago
  It feels surprising that there's people on hackernews without adblock considering that adblock is not just for blocking ads, but also malware, illegal tracking and blocking annoying and useless banners.
  - mnmalst 11mo ago
    Totally agree. Every time I see someone complaining about ads, I think "What ads?"
    - a012 11mo ago
      Their adblock shamming overlay is also blocking part of the screen (on mobile) by the way
      - prmoustache 11mo ago
        Don't see that overlay on fennec + adblock, what are you using?
      - kachapopopow 11mo ago
        brave seems to have some special sauce since it appears to be able to hide the fact that ads were removed. I am guessing they are doing so without triggering dom events.
  - nottorp 11mo ago

kachapopopow 11mo ago

Interesting coincidence, yesterday I was using a similar article to hopefully fix kwin starting to slow down after 10+ days of uptime.

64718283661 11mo ago
I noticed this myself, both gnome and kde. It turned out to be that leaving Firefox open for long periods of time caused this.
- kachapopopow 11mo ago
  I think for me jetbrains applications cause a memory leak in KWin which actually is becoming less of a problem now that I am switching to neovim slowly but surely.
baobun 11mo ago
Hm, I've recently noticed kwin taking up what seems like way too much CPU at idle. Fedora with KDE. Happens on both X11 and Wayland with Wayland being worse and perceptibly slower.

rmrfchik 11mo ago

nvidia on linux [for desktop] is utterly broken. I ran nvidia cards for almost 15 years (shame on me): laggy X11 compositing, fragile and broken wayland. Broken suspend/resume. Too many moving parts (selected drivers, modprobe quirks, suspend/resume scripts). Moved to amd: slick x11, reliable wayland, NO MORE DRIVERS AT ALL, works like charm. And yes, I do playing in Linux.

graynk 11mo ago
Suspend/resume is broken in general (and everywhere besides Mac), including AMD on Linux. No more drivers is just..false? The rest was true up to roughly 3 years ago. Now I'm a happy camper
- rmrfchik 11mo ago
  Suspend/resume was broken in nvidia since release on aug 2024. I have internal bug id for it. And dozen links with suspend scripts. No more drivers I mean I don't need to install dozens of packages. While it not big deal by itself, but reverting broken driver is huge deal. Laggy desktop -- this is my experience until nov 2025 when I dumped nvidia. Desktop on both intel and amd feels like magic after nvidia.
  - graynk 11mo ago
    Suspend/resume is broken for my friend with an AMD card right now. That's what I mean: it's broken everywhere in slightly different ways, yes even on Windows. Thankfully I never use it anyway. Dunno anything about dozens of packages, I installed 1 (one) package from my distro and haven't touched it since, no issues with updates either. That same friend with an AMD card keeps getting random hard PC freezes during gaming though. Also absolutely zero issues with lags/latency for me (on GNOME. I did experience a bunch of weird bugs with KDE, but again - no lags) One thing that is very real is DirectX 12 performance. This one really does suffer due to poor nvidia drivers. Hope they iron it out at some point
    - rmrfchik 11mo ago

thenthenthen 11mo ago

Wow the ads are killing this page

antonyh 11mo ago

Having failed to get Wayland working on Debian Trixie with a 1050 Ti as an upgrade from X11, I've given up for now and will try again when I switch to AMD. This is a workstation not used for games so it'd be good to have Wayland working right but I'm not wasting time fighting it, and it'll get the GPU from the gaming rig when it becomes due nullifying the problem. What I don't get is if these are proscribed steps (and they do read as such) why are they not automated with the module install? Why are we still fighting these issues if the 'workaround' is linear and well described? Is it as flimsy a reason as "write-an-article, collect-advertising-revenue" rather than contribute code to the installer?

bjoli 11mo ago
I have 3 intel gpus. One for light gaming and desktop use (3 screens), another one for light gaming and one for video transcoding. The experience is flawless for me. One of the cards seems to have issues with qemu and opengl rendering, but it is an older model and is no longer sold retail.

letwhile 11mo ago

The monthly wayland news, that we would be there already. Reminds me of fusion energy.

lacoolj 11mo ago

Hey Gemini Take this article and submit PRs to all major distros that applies all the fixes in each different situation. Thanks!

yokoprime 11mo ago

I have an intel/nvida 4080 pc and im running a regular Arch install, rocking KDE on Wayland. It works flawlessly, just installed the drivers and that was that. Stop inventing problems that do not exist.

j3th9n 11mo ago

What a nightmare.

melonpan7 11mo ago

I’ve been running CachyOS with Hyprland on my RTX3070 with no glaring issues. But eventually I plan to switch to a Radeon card.

darkteflon 11mo ago

I still get fairly regular graphical glitches on Bazzite (Wayland) with a 3060ti. Certainly better than it used to be, but doesn’t quite feel there yet.