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.
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.
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.
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.config kernel 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.
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.
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
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.
This is what mine has. I was able to get it working with bumblebee on kali. Just switched to Debian 12, and I thought it would work after installing the non-free drivers, but nope. So guess I get to do some reading up on that now. Maybe look into bumblebee again.
I did get mine working eventually. Though that laptop died years ago. I did not get it to switch though so when I ran Linux it was always on the Nvidia GPU. But that wasn't an issue for me.
I remember there being a name for this that made it easier to search for a solution. But for the life of me I cannot remember what it was.
Good luck on your quest and I hope you get it working.
If you haven't already, check for Nouveau support. And if your card is supported, you may need a kernel parameter. I needed nouveau.config=NvClkMode=15 (but be warned some parameters like that have some risk, like possibility of overheating, and may or may not be applicable or safe for your GPU).
For me, it has worked to just set environment variable DRI_PRIME=1 to use the Nvidia GPU for that specific application. (Maybe this is what Bumblebee does; I don't know.)
In the future, though, I recommend avoiding Nvidia hardware.
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!
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.
"Works on my machine..." Classic dev response, lol.
Manager: "Then ship your machine to the custumer"
Developer: Invents Docker...
I've never had a problem with the Nvidia driver in Arch. I'm convinced more often than not it's your distros fault it's not working right
Yeah, I've had no problems either, my distribution handles the NV drivers without issues. I use a Laptop with Intel+NV3060.
People there just blindly hate nvidia and praise amd. And when I tried once tell the fact, that amd opensource drivers suck - I got a lot of minuses at my comment. Oh well, anyway, I really hope, that all that people will buy amd card one day and suffer as I did. I doubt that will change their opinion, cause they will still hate just_working nvidia drivers, cause "oh no, they not support VRR on my experimental wayland DE". They focking dumb man, I tell ya. Anyway, I will try to sell my "awesome and opensource" amd 7900xtx and buy cheaper nvidia card. Just cause at cheaper nvidia card I could at least play fucking games and it will not crash my video driver every now and then.
Driverctl is busted as ass with it, but for daily use I havent found really any issues (Idk if thats distro agnostic or not)
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.
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.
Same. Thankfully I found that pop!_os works beautifully out of the box and serves my purpose. But I’m done with nvidia. Once my 3090 lives till EOL I’m getting whatever XTX model AMD has
services.xserver.videoDrivers = ["nvidia"]; go brrr
Every once in a while, a new snapshot gets released for OpenSUSE Tumbleweed and mailing list gets flooded with "nvidia PC no longer boots" messages. Meanwhile Radeon users can't get certain positive changes in the distro because nvidia users get no-video'd from it.
Nvidia is a plague. They purposefully make the experience worse in any way possible if you don't buy Nvidia products. Meanwhile AMD makes their drivers open source and promote open source software.
The outrage after Starfield announced they would support FSR and didn't comment about DLSS was frustrating. FSR works on all hardware, while DLSS only works if you buy Nvidia products. Most people I saw were complaining about AMD being an issue though...
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
Team red ftw
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
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
On Arch, upgrading is pretty simple. The only extra step is you need a hook to run mkinitcpio, but that script is on the wiki and you never need to touch it again once set up. From that point onward you just upgrade the driver via pacman.
Don’t get me wrong, I do not like the fact NVIDIA’s drivers aren’t open source and their linux offerings aren’t the greatest, but your issue appears to be due to the way your distro handles the driver.
It always blows my mind how much broken shit Ubuntu gets away with and all their users blame literally everything else without ever once even considering it's Ubuntu that's to blame.
Packages having a hard coded version name and then installing a completely different version is a Ubuntu repo classic.
The vast majority of nvidia system breakage complaints I see seem to come from users of Ubuntu or it's derivatives. I've been on arch based distros for 6 years now and every pc or laptop I've owned in that time has been nvidia and I have never had any problems.
This is why I haven't switched to Linux yet. I have a gaming laptop and a desktop pc is not an option at the moment.
It has been pretty stable, this is the only issue I have got since last year, but yeah I can understand ur reasons.
Just buy/use AMD and get rid of problems, in pc I'm still using my rx490 and never got any problem since I bought it.
This is not accurate at all. It always works using Ubuntu's GUI and you don't have to reboot or anything. Only issues I had was that you have to reinstall those drivers each time you upgrade to a new version of Ubuntu
No, my sister's system has the exact same symptoms, despite using the Ubuntu GUI. So at least under some conditions it's accurate.
My last nvidia card (a 1050) had some weird non-obvious (likely hardware) issue that caused it to utterly lose its mind when faced with certain OpenGL shaders, but only when running the proprietary driver. It would throw bands of static on the screen or randomly drop the signal to the monitor. This persisted through several changes of kernel and driver version. It was solid under nouveau, but the performance suffered such that I noticed a lag even for just normal desktop use. In the end, I replaced it with an AMD card rather than attempt to troubleshoot it any further. My previous nvidia cards were solid, though.
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...
I have an old Nvidia-Intel setup in my laptop, and dealing with that Nvidia driver is kinda of a hassle. Mostly it works fine thanks to mhwd (Manjaro's driver installation script), but damn, every time I reinstall the OS, it takes several hours for me to figure out what's wrong. Luckily I don't reinstall it too often, maybe every 5 years.
Before this I had AMD, and it always worked like a charm. And I've heard Intel's drivers are working well too.
Personally, I'm planning to go for AMD next time.
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Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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