NVIDIA 390.12 Linux Driver Reaches Beta

[starshipeleven]

Most people kept the nVidia card and pulled Linux. Windows for gaming, Android for your phone and Linux is for, uh, everyday PC use.

fixed. It's not like you need a NVIDIA card for showing a desktop and doing non-gaming tasks. If your screen has different inputs or if you use a display switch (20-30$) you can leave cables connected and switch GPU/outputs when you reboot in Windows.

On laptops it's even easier, as "dedicated" GPU on linux is completely unnecessary if you don't want to game.

When people ask why I'm not supporting gaming under Linux or crowd-funding the Librem phone I just say "not my problem!"

Sure sounds better than "my employer (the NSA) does not want me to".

[mike44]

Nvidia games since around 2001 without problems. Without NV I would still be using Windows...

[Guest]

So much hate for NVidia. I salute NVidia for their work on the excellent Linux drivers which the silent majority of Linux gamers and users appreciate and enjoy. I am a hardcore gamer and haven't used Windows for several years now, thanks to Steam and also the excellent drivers by NVidia.

I think most hate towards NVIDIA is from people who don't care for computer games. NVIDIA has excellent 3d performance in games on Linux. You can't top NVIDIA with game performance. NVIDIA just exposes issues in Gnome and KDE that Intel graphics drivers don't. That's why desktop software developers (Gnome and KDE) stick to Intel graphics. NVIDIA is an extra layer that they cater for without the ability to control and many times even understand. I've reported very weird issues in Gnome that only existed on nvidia graphics and Gnome developers had no way of telling what's happening because nvidia gl libraries don't have debug symbols.
Now if you have a monster PC that is just dedicated for gaming, nvidia is obviously the correct path. Otherwise, it may just not be worth the trouble.
This is coming from someone who's been using nvidia graphics cards since 1999 when 3dfx died so I've bought my large share of their cards over the years.
I mean I've been a loyal customer. I'm just not as satisfied right now as much as I was a decade ago. Availability is a big key here.
It's difficult to find a AMD pci-e graphics card in local markets where I live but you can always find the newest nvidia card in local stores.

[xpander]

Whatever works best for you. Windows for gaming works best for me, although I'm tired of the Nvidia driver crashing semi-regularly recently.



The straw that broke the camel's back was their shim failing to compile correctly so approx. 1/5 kernel updates result in broken system. Their is hope for a relatively painless AMD experience now at least.

i don't know what system you have been using to get broken drivers with kernel updates. On arch for example nvidia-dkms takes care of the module compile when you update your kernel. yeah git kernels usually don't work, but thats not a problem cause you don't usually need git kernel as a nvidia users, thats more to get some AMD gpu driver features etc. i have been using ArchLinux testing repositories quite some time( at least 2 years now) and never broke nvidia driver. So no idea whats your problems with those.

[pinguinpc]

In this driver version shadwen works ok

[brrrrttttt]

I think most hate towards NVIDIA is from people who don't care for computer games. NVIDIA has excellent 3d performance in games on Linux. You can't top NVIDIA with game performance. NVIDIA just exposes issues in Gnome and KDE that Intel graphics drivers don't. That's why desktop software developers (Gnome and KDE) stick to Intel graphics. NVIDIA is an extra layer that they cater for without the ability to control and many times even understand. I've reported very weird issues in Gnome that only existed on nvidia graphics and Gnome developers had no way of telling what's happening because nvidia gl libraries don't have debug symbols.
Now if you have a monster PC that is just dedicated for gaming, nvidia is obviously the correct path. Otherwise, it may just not be worth the trouble.
This is coming from someone who's been using nvidia graphics cards since 1999 when 3dfx died so I've bought my large share of their cards over the years.
I mean I've been a loyal customer. I'm just not as satisfied right now as much as I was a decade ago. Availability is a big key here.
It's difficult to find a AMD pci-e graphics card in local markets where I live but you can always find the newest nvidia card in local stores.

The failure occurs when either kernel headers or compiler change (i.e. diagnostic changes) and the dkms build fails. Google nvidia dkms fail and you'll find plenty of instances. Not that hard to recover but just not necessary hassle for me. As I said, whatever works best for you.

[Vash63]

i don't know what system you have been using to get broken drivers with kernel updates. On arch for example nvidia-dkms takes care of the module compile when you update your kernel. yeah git kernels usually don't work, but thats not a problem cause you don't usually need git kernel as a nvidia users, thats more to get some AMD gpu driver features etc. i have been using ArchLinux testing repositories quite some time( at least 2 years now) and never broke nvidia driver. So no idea whats your problems with those.

The Arch packages usually pick up temporary patches around breaking kernel releases to fix up the compatibility issues, this is probably why you haven't run into them. The patches are usually ready before a kernel gets pushed even to 'testing'. If you were trying to manually compile the shim against every new kernel you'd probably have more trouble (I'm not sure why you'd want to do that when that's what maintainers are for, but it does explain brrrrrttttttttttttttttt's issue).

[theriddick]

I suppose once my 1080ti mini turns up I should roll back my kernel to mainline 4.14 from the 4.15RC which is really just to get benefits for AMD hardware. I don't see why people can't just use the kernels that work best for the NVIDIA hardware unless you REALLY need specific features in bleeding edge kernels. Hope I don't get Tty issues, hate blackscreens...