They even used to be the best drivers, a long time ago when nobody cared about the graphics stack. Had ATI/AMD? You got the FGLRX proprietary driver and it was really bad.
12 years ago it was probably one of the least broken GPU drivers available. You actually got most of your GPUs capabilities.
Now with Intel and AMD going open-source, those are now the best drivers and NVIDIA is lagging behind and not keeping up with advancements in the Linux graphics stack. Hopefully the open driver and NVK catches up and brings everyone a good open-source NVIDIA experience so we can stop relying on the proprietary driver.
Technically AMD also offers an open Vulkan driver (AMDVLK), it’s just dog shit, and an open compute driver (Rocm), its just also bad, and an open OpenGL driver (Radeonsi), which is solid.
Those three are all primarily developed by AMD engineers and are fully open. Nvidia has no such open equivalents.
While I mostly agree, NVIDIA has NVK and NVIDIA themselves just dropped a bunch of code into it.
The NVIDIA open source kernel modules are also certified ( by NVIDIA ) to work with their driver. So, you do not have to use proprietary kernel modules anymore.
They’re definitely not perfect but in my one year experience on Linux+2080ti, it’s totally usable. The Linux community seems to enjoy those overblown drama, at this point the Nvidia thing is basically a meme, pretty funny to watch.
Meanwhile my experience with my 1080 Ti was so awful I found it preferable to downgrade to an RX 480 for a couple of years.
You shouldn’t dismiss other people’s experiences just because yours has been different.
I believe that your experience has been alright, but Nvidia has definitely had big issues with Linux. It’s not drama, it’s valid criticism of a company openly hostile to FOSS.
You ok? Still thinking about this? Lol, I actually think Nvdia sucks big time! I get my GPUs for free that’s why I use Nvidia. I wouldn’t give them money, unlike you. Stop crying and get an AMD maybe?
It’s not that bad. The drivers are just as buggy as the Windows versions honestly. It’s just that the Radeon drivers are so stable that it makes Nvidia look bad by comparison. And, notably, Nvidia is REALLY slow to add new features like what they need to fully support Wayland.
By some definition. They have always been usable to some degree because I think animators or something use Linux commercially on Nvidia, and for gpgpu they are still top class on linux (nothing comes close)
They haven’t always been the best for gaming or desktop (Wayland) use though, since Intel and AMD opened up their drivers.
Arguably in my experience Nvidia has been far less buggy for the last 30+ years on x11, and with this change they may have finally reached parity on Wayland, haven’t tried it myself.
Unlike AMD and Intel, they don’t get along with the open source community well and generally do whatever they please, which is why they earned the ire of many linux developers. For example, they’re really dragging their asses with implementing explicit sync.
Ah sorry, I got it backward. Nvidia is dragging their asses on implementing “implicit” sync, so Wayland devs and nvidia ended up with a compromise and implemented the explicit sync protocol. IMO it’s just another example of Nvidia doing whatever they please and forcing everyone to do it their way or highway.
They used to be good, almost as good as the Windows drivers. Lately, though, they’ve been kinda trash and the AMD open driver is pretty alright now. (Performance isn’t as good but other than that it’s good.)
Wait nvidia is releasing native drivers for Linux now,? Does RTX work?
They’ve been doing that for a long time. And yes raytracing works.
They even used to be the best drivers, a long time ago when nobody cared about the graphics stack. Had ATI/AMD? You got the FGLRX proprietary driver and it was really bad.
12 years ago it was probably one of the least broken GPU drivers available. You actually got most of your GPUs capabilities.
Now with Intel and AMD going open-source, those are now the best drivers and NVIDIA is lagging behind and not keeping up with advancements in the Linux graphics stack. Hopefully the open driver and NVK catches up and brings everyone a good open-source NVIDIA experience so we can stop relying on the proprietary driver.
They’ll never catch up if Nvidia doesn’t open their driver. Which they don’t show any interest in doing.
Nvidia already opened their driver, at least to the same extent as AMD, which is why NVK is able to exist.
Technically AMD also offers an open Vulkan driver (AMDVLK), it’s just dog shit, and an open compute driver (Rocm), its just also bad, and an open OpenGL driver (Radeonsi), which is solid.
Those three are all primarily developed by AMD engineers and are fully open. Nvidia has no such open equivalents.
While I mostly agree, NVIDIA has NVK and NVIDIA themselves just dropped a bunch of code into it.
The NVIDIA open source kernel modules are also certified ( by NVIDIA ) to work with their driver. So, you do not have to use proprietary kernel modules anymore.
These are all pretty big steps.
Uhh nvidia has had native Linux drivers since the 1990’s…
But it sounds like they’ve been shit?
They’re definitely not perfect but in my one year experience on Linux+2080ti, it’s totally usable. The Linux community seems to enjoy those overblown drama, at this point the Nvidia thing is basically a meme, pretty funny to watch.
Meanwhile my experience with my 1080 Ti was so awful I found it preferable to downgrade to an RX 480 for a couple of years.
You shouldn’t dismiss other people’s experiences just because yours has been different.
I believe that your experience has been alright, but Nvidia has definitely had big issues with Linux. It’s not drama, it’s valid criticism of a company openly hostile to FOSS.
The first sentence says it’s “definitely not perfect” and “in MY experience”. So relax, nobody is dismissing your bad experience.
I’m really sorry I hurt your feelings. I know Nvidia is close to your heart 😥
You ok? Still thinking about this? Lol, I actually think Nvdia sucks big time! I get my GPUs for free that’s why I use Nvidia. I wouldn’t give them money, unlike you. Stop crying and get an AMD maybe?
I do have an AMD GPU. Because I wanted one that actually works properly lol.
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I’m relaxed. I just disagree with your take that Nvidia drivers causing issues in Linux just being a meme and accusing people of made up drama.
The Nvidia driver experience hasn’t been “not perfect”, it’s been far from perfect.
It’s not that bad. The drivers are just as buggy as the Windows versions honestly. It’s just that the Radeon drivers are so stable that it makes Nvidia look bad by comparison. And, notably, Nvidia is REALLY slow to add new features like what they need to fully support Wayland.
Didn’t they say that the core driver code was the same anyway ? (which would make sense)
By some definition. They have always been usable to some degree because I think animators or something use Linux commercially on Nvidia, and for gpgpu they are still top class on linux (nothing comes close)
They haven’t always been the best for gaming or desktop (Wayland) use though, since Intel and AMD opened up their drivers.
Arguably in my experience Nvidia has been far less buggy for the last 30+ years on x11, and with this change they may have finally reached parity on Wayland, haven’t tried it myself.
Unlike AMD and Intel, they don’t get along with the open source community well and generally do whatever they please, which is why they earned the ire of many linux developers. For example, they’re really dragging their asses with implementing explicit sync.
By dragging their asses you mean adding it it their very first beta driver just a few weeks after it was merged into Wayland/Xwayland?
Also after doing a gigantic amount of the work to get it into wayland/xwayland too
Ah sorry, I got it backward. Nvidia is dragging their asses on implementing “implicit” sync, so Wayland devs and nvidia ended up with a compromise and implemented the explicit sync protocol. IMO it’s just another example of Nvidia doing whatever they please and forcing everyone to do it their way or highway.
They’ve mostly worked as advertised. One problem they’ve had was switching from external to embedded GPUs on laptops. I think that’s fixed now.
My desktops have all had nVidia cards for more than 20 years with no real issues. It’s a meme really.
They used to be good, almost as good as the Windows drivers. Lately, though, they’ve been kinda trash and the AMD open driver is pretty alright now. (Performance isn’t as good but other than that it’s good.)
RTX has worked under Linux both natively and via and Wine/Proton/DXVK/VKD3D for quite some time now.