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

[yoshi314]

i recently bought gtx750ti , because it's probably the last truly power efficient gpu - no need to buy a better psu and no need for a dedicated power cable with that one.

and on efi system it's a nightmare. you get a black screen until you get to xorg. if xorg somehow fails, you have to ssh in or reboot into nouveau enabled configuration to diagnose stuff. a xorg.conf typo, incompatible driver, xorg lockup, login manager segfaulting - anything will screw you up.

i am really considering to take the card out and keep using my apu.

[johnc]

Well, that's one big lie:

According to the Fedora project, Fedora is a great distro for everyone.

And if I disagree, I'm a "liar" by your standards.

[GreatEmerald]

As for the article: well, your assumptions are not wrong in my case, I am a Linux user and I play games. I also record myself playing games.

My experience with that so far has been mixed. I mostly play older games, and they mostly work fine, be it via DOSBox or Wine. Some of the games I play actually have native releases (Unreal{, Tournament{, 2003, 2004, 4}}, X-Com, Heroes of Might and Magic III). But nowadays, I treat games like hardware: I don't buy them unless they work on Linux. So now I have things like Expeditions: Conquistador and Pillars of Eternity. So for the vast majority of the games I play, Linux is just fine.

Then there are a few games that I have that don't work on Linux well enough, so I do have a minimalist Windows 10 installation. That's Unreal II and Mass Effects so far. The latter do work through Wine, but they are demanding enough that I need to squeeze everything out of my hardware (and even then, I can only use 2xAA and 1024x1024 pixel shadow maps which is kinda sad). Maybe they would work better with Wine Nine, but hey, NVIDIA... Speaking of which, the blob on Linux has nowhere near the same performance as on Windows, when VSync is forced (and I need to do that so that it wouldn't tear like crazy).

There are also some curious games that don't work on much of anything any more. For Heroes of Might and Magic I, I had to make a virtual machine with Windows ME (!) on it. But it did work fine that way.

[AsuMagic]

It seems my situation is exactly the opposite
I think I'm Using NVIDIA On Linux or Windows For The Last Time In 10 Years.
I'm tired of these assholes and I care about security and privacy more than performance.
I'm impressed by the advancements of open source AMD driver and I'm definitely gonna buy graphic cards from them in the future.
I

lol, are you implying the amd open source drivers are outperforming nvidia's proprietary drivers?

[schmidtbag]

Personally, I'd tweak the conclusion a little to say this:
AMD - Will be a great choice and investment, possibly will be a better choice than Nvidia (regardless of price) but currently isn't there yet. Waiting is a requirement, and it seems you're better off getting a GCN 1.2 or newer GPU if you want a GPU with sufficient developer attention. I'm guessing AMD will end up being a very solid choice in maybe 1 or 2 years. In 3 years, it'll probably be better than Nvidia, or at least the Linux experience will be better than Windows.
Nvidia - Pay more for a [mostly] feature-complete experience with par performance. Currently the best choice if you expect the most compatibility and performance with new games.

[andrebrait]

Is it really weird that installing the NVIDIA drivers on Arch is a breeze? You don't have to do barely anything after installing it. The files are updated whenever there's a new Kernel available. Even Optimus with Bumblebee works well. In fact, it works better then with Ubuntu, since in Ubuntu you have to manually edit lots of files to make Bumblebee work.

While I would like to use Fedora because I feel like they're pushing changes and I'd like to contribute, I can't help myself when it comes to how easy it is to take a distro like Antergos and have a fully up-to-date Arch system in just a few minutes. I do WANT to switch to Fedora, but whenever I boot it I see how far it is to be as easy as Antergos/Arch. Yes, I just said Arch is easier to get up and running (if you go for Antergos) than Fedora.

The myth that things break in Arch is as widespread as it's false. I HAVE seen things break here, but I have also seen things break even worse in Ubuntu and Fedora. Texstudio in Fedora will only run as root. To this day, they haven't fixed it (at least in F24). When things break in Arch, there's usually an announcement in their home page or it gets fixed in a matter of hours. I think it's surprising how supposedly stable distros manage to behave worse than a rolling-release, purely community-maintained distro like Arch.

[johnc]

and on efi system it's a nightmare. you get a black screen until you get to xorg. if xorg somehow fails, you have to ssh in or reboot into nouveau enabled configuration to diagnose stuff. a xorg.conf typo, incompatible driver, xorg lockup, login manager segfaulting - anything will screw you up.

Remember when Valve fixed all those problems for SteamOS?

Yeah... still waiting for them to upstream the patches.

Valve Time (TM), I guess.


A few things though.

- Login manager shouldn't be segfaulting. If you have that problem then it's time to find a distro or DM that isn't a pile of turds.

- Xorg lockups don't happen because X.org is 100% bug-free.

- You shouldn't have any incompatible driver problems with a 750 Ti. The latest drivers support that card and once you install them (and blacklist nouveau) you're set and driver upgrades should be fine.

If you don't have a VT to diagnose Xorg errors then I agree that's a problem. You should have working VTs on nvidia drivers though. You shouldn't have xorg.conf typos because you shouldn't be touching xorg.conf anymore.

I agree that Plymouth is a trainwreck on Linux. Always has been and it seems like it always will be. There are workarounds if you feel like wasting time to track them down. But the fact is, most devs of Linux software don't care about a working user experience. They just work on their laptops and if things seem okay with their integrated graphics, then that's good enough for them and they push it out.

[DanL]

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.

No. It's not that simple for non-fanboys. AMD does not get a free pass just because they have a better open driver. The hardware has to be competitive too.
I chose a GTX 950 for my last purchase for that reason. AMD just didn't have anything compelling to compete with the GTX 950 at the time. The closest thing in terms of price and 3D performance was the R7 370, which ran hotter and was an old rebadged GCN 1.0 part.

So yes, I really, really, really wanted to choose AMD and support their opensource efforts, but was not going to buy inferior silicon.I don't feel shame for my informed decision, and any AMD fanboys that want me to feel shame can kiss my ass. I've bought plenty of ATI/AMD cards in the past and will prefer AMD in the future if they have competitive products.

[Ericg]

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

I know! I tried to include pictures where it was appropriate, but its hard with articles like this.

[Ericg]

Fedora is a fine "consumer distro". In Fedora 25 you can install the Nvidia driver from Gnome Software: https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2016/...orkstation-25/

Not quite. I tried. Apparently not all of the pieces have landed yet, because it didn't come up for me when I searched "nvidia"