Editorial: Using NVIDIA On Linux For The First Time In 10 Years

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Editorial: Using NVIDIA On Linux For The First Time In 10 Years

Anyone who read any number of my reviews from a few years ago, when I interned here at Phoronix, should know that I have been a fan of AMD and their open source efforts for a very long time. I remember the years of trying to get Catalyst to work under Arch or Fedora, usually only to have it blow up in my face. I remember the struggle holding back kernel and X server updates, hoping that none of those updates contained security fixes that were pertinent to me.

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=23786

[dungeon]

I wish there were more random pictures into essayistic-style articles like this one, that way i think would be virtually less boring to read

[darkbasic]

Do you want to reward a company who doesn't give a fuck about security, freedom and open source? Then go buy Nvidia and its fuck1ng blob. Otherwise, if you are a sane person, buy AMD instead. It's that simple.

[johnc]

The difficulty level for installing the driver really depends on the distro.

It's kind of sad that Fedora doesn't have a mechanism to make this easy like Ubuntu does. But then again Fedora isn't really intended to be a consumer-type desktop distro.

[bug77]

Do you want to reward a company who doesn't give a fuck about security, freedom and open source? Then go buy Nvidia and its fuck1ng blob. Otherwise, if you are a sane person, buy AMD instead. It's that simple.

Those that do things that you don't, are insane. Nice, mature and very constructive attitude.
Also just throwing this out there, can you name the company that had the first usable, feature packed video driver for Linux? For bonus points, do you recall what a mess video drivers were at the time?

Fwiw, ericg, you picked probably the worst combo. On Ubuntu for example, not only installing the Nvidia drivers perfectly painless (sudo apt-get install nvidia-current), there's actually a GUI for installing any proprietary driver your system may be needing. Just sayin'.

[dungeon]

Do you want to reward a company who doesn't give a fuck about security, freedom and open source? Then go buy Nvidia and its fuck1ng blob. Otherwise, if you are a sane person, buy AMD instead. It's that simple.

Well, maybe he does not like what happens in opensource projects Opensource is good on paper you know, in reality it depends how it runs - like anything else.

I don't think it is mindless if people choose what works for them, well even AMD provides proprietary driver also and that because it might suit some people better

[eydee]

Do you want to reward a company who doesn't give a fuck about security, freedom and open source? Then go buy Nvidia and its fuck1ng blob. Otherwise, if you are a sane person, buy AMD instead. It's that simple.

Open source in the sense that you can read the source code. Not much else. It's mostly done by paid professionals, how it's done depends on business decisions.

[Cerberus]

Fwiw, ericg, you picked probably the worst combo. On Ubuntu for example, not only installing the Nvidia drivers perfectly painless (sudo apt-get install nvidia-current), there's actually a GUI for installing any proprietary driver your system may be needing. Just sayin'.

Not only that, but Ubuntu has Nvidia drivers PPA with up to date drivers, I use it for months now without a single problem, as for AMD vs Nvidia as someone who used AMD graphics card on my previous laptop I can say one thing-never again AMD, lower performance in gaming compared to Nvidia and they never fixed a black screen bug after installing their proprietary drivers on some laptops, NEVER, which means that past a certain release I was no longer able to use proprietary drivers. The issue was reported by numerous users and it was never fixed. If one insists on open source drivers only then AMD is better, but if you want or need proprietary drivers then Nvidia all the way.

[blacknova]

I had some very annoying issues with nvidia's blob on F24 - VT switch and suspend/resume usually lead to lost FBOs as result you get currupted greeter as well as corrupted background in some applications. This issue already exist for almost 4 years I think. Free drivirs do not have problem with preserving FBOs, but they are not always preferable for various reasons.

[pinguinpc]

ericg

Congratulations very good card with very good ratio tdp / performance and size (evga model in photo) without forget driver GUI, compatibility and support in native and non native apps