Hey folks. I’m a new dad which means my gaming time is at a premium, but I am going through a big cleanse of the enshittification era of the internet right now, and Windows 11 is kinda giving me bad vibes.
Last time I tried to run Linux it was ok and worked the majority of the time, but ray tracing and a few games caused some issues. I was also using game pass which of course doesn’t work on Linux, so I dropped back to windows.
How is Nvidia life these days? I’ve got a 3080 and an AMD 9800X3D so it should be fine for most games I imagine.
If you’ve already got an Nvidia card, there’s no sense in going out and buying a new one just for Linux. Just make sure you choose a distro that explicitly supports Nvidia out of the box.
I started with Nvidia as well and then just got AMD at the next upgrade.
I have a laptop and a desktop with a GTX 1060 that run fine, and another laptop with a GTX 1050ti that is also great. Running Arch with KDE and Wayland. No problems.
I’ve never needed to do more then
sudo apt install nvidia-driver
, after that it Just Works™.debian btw
The only trouble I have with my card is having to prepend prime-run to every program that I want to use it.
I’m not sure if AMD gaming laptops have the same issue, but if they don’t then that would be a huge benefit in their favor.
I have a laptop with an Rx 7600s. There was two games I had to use prime-run because they wanted to use the igpu instead. Other then that haven’t had to. The two games were Verdun and Tannenberg. Isonzo works perfect though.
I have an RTX 3080 Ti working beautifully on EndeavourOS (Arch based).
I haven’t done any research into GPUs on Linux in awhile. I wasn’t aware nvidia finally released an open source driver. Looks like it’s recommended for the 3080. Seems like this was a fairly recent development so you may have more luck?
I’ve been running Fedora for over a year now with an Nvidia 4090 RTX with no major problems. I can think of one game (Path of Exile 2) where I needed to make a minor configuration tweak to get it working.
Boycott Nvidia, their new cards are just overpriced hardware keys to fixing their software.
OP isn’t asking what card to buy. He already has a Nvidia card and is asking if it’s going to work on Linux.
Amd also have bugs and stuff, and they Arent much cheaper then Nvidia tho, but way worse features
This is the unfortunate reality.
AMD piggybacks on Nvidia’s scumminess.
Yep, no wonder why they lost 80% of theyre 50% marketshare last 7 years
I’m using Garuda with Nvidia and it’s been painless. I do feel like a get a little less performance, but it’s been good enough to keep me happy.
I had a 3070 and now I upgraded to a 4070 ti super and havent had issues with either. Maybe I got lucky but I never understood all the negative views on nvidia and Linux.
I daily drive Linux, gaming quite a bit and I have a 3080.
There are occasional annoyances, for example when I wake from suspend one of my monitors doesn’t activate until I change display settings (which I do now with a script bound to a hotkey, though a fix is in the pipe). Most of the time it doesn’t cause me any issues.
I’ve kept a Windows install on a partition as a backup in case I have real compatibility issues but I haven’t booted it in weeks (even then, it was to play an anti cheat game, nothing NVIDIA related).
I use Hyprland (on Arch, btw) so I’m technically using unsupported software but I have had no major issues.
On the plus side, I can run local AI easily and DLSS/DLAA, to me, produce higher quality results and with less overhead. Ray tracing is technically in the plus column but most of the time I’d rather just have higher FPS than the visual quality.
I don’t have HDR gaming just yet (my biggest complaint) because gamescope likes to crash, assuming it launches in the first place. However, a Wayland update is going to fix this imminently (next major release) so you can get HDR without gamescope.
Basically, there were trying times in the past but currently (assuming you’re using current versions of things and not some LTS release from a year ago) it’s largely a smooth experience.
I got a 3080 and I have not encountered any issues on the latest drivers, released a few days ago.
Before that, I had a minor issue (artifacts) on some websites when on a high refresh rate. Fixed with latest drivers.
My next card is going to be nvidia, too.
Alrighty, I’m going to give it a real go when I finish moving house and see how it goes.
I have a 7900 XTX. It just works™.
This. I moved to the 7900 XTX after trying to get my 4080 to work properly for a solid month. Works perfectly now.
To me, Nvidia isn’t worth the trouble on Linux unless you have specific (non-gaming) needs that can’t be met with AMD hardware.
With this in mind, I kept using my last Nvidia card until it needed replacing, and then switched to AMD. Seems like that might make sense for you, too.
The lack of VRR support while running multiple monitors by Nvidia was the deal breaker for me for a long time. However, I have been running the 570 beta drivers for a couple weeks now, and it just works. Not sure why it took them so long. I am very happy to be back on linux.