KDE Lands NVIDIA Hardware Cursor Support & Other Last Minute Plasma 6.0 Features

[cl333r]

Michael posts a (positive) news about Nvidia, the avg phoronix reader seeking to join the "conversation":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IY7P_W3My20

[avis]

For half a year your Wayland experience has been much better now than it used to be on your Nvidia cards.

It's good to know that you upgraded. Now we know your Wayland experience is also improved.

No wasteland experience for me.

Ping me when wasteland is not limited to gnome and kde.

[JackLilhammers]

What are you on? I've been on Radeon 780m for half a year already.

I need cuda for work. We started with machine learning when cuda was the only practical option and we don't really have the time or the need to move to rocm

[Daktyl198]

My g-sync monitor doesn't work with AMD. I'm vendor locked-in now until I buy a new monitor, which I don't intend to do for quite a while.

Another feature I can't get with AMD is the ability to run LTS kernels but still being able to update the GPU drivers. Unless I'm mistaken, with AMD the GPU driver is part of the kernel, not an external stand-alone driver? So if I want updated drivers, I need to run the latest kernel version, but I want to stick with LTS.

I also dual-boot Windows for gaming, and nvidia works better for me there.

In any event, for as long as I can run X11 on Linux, nvidia is fine. By the time X11 really bites the dust and it's not even practical to run it anymore, I'll consider upgrading. I am not going to throw perfectly fine working hardware to the trash. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's easy to say "switch to AMD" when you're not the one who'll pay the bill for a new, overpriced AMD GPU.

For the first part, you can run an LTS kernel and have an up to date driver. GPU drivers do have a kernel side, but all GPU drivers have them (including Nvidia) but on Linux those drivers are modular and not directly included in the kernel. You can use newer "modules" (drivers) with older kernel versions. As an example, there are repos for Ubuntu that gives up to date AMD/Intel drivers even for the oldest supported Ubuntu version.

As for the second part, I'd never recommend somebody to throw away a perfectly good GPU and go out and buy another one. My only suggestion is that if you're in the market for a new GPU anyway, and you only run Linux, then it's important to know that most (but not all) of the Nvidia specific features which give them a huge edge on Windows don't really work on Linux. NVidia GPUs still have a bit better performance, and DLSS is better than FSR (but IMO not by as much as some people want you to believe), but that's about it.

Since you're dual-booting with Windows, I'd recommend sticking with NVidia 100% though, as on Windows NVidia GPUs are just better all around. The NVidia tax still hurts though.

[Daktyl198]

A bit more. DLSS also works (both nativly and in proton nvapi), gsync, bunch of quadro specific features like mosaic also works on X server. Also from what I seen in tests with DXVK, there is more games refusing to work with AMD or Intel right, then with NVidia. Like almost never I saw benchmark here with Michael when game with Nvidia doesn't work, but plenty i seen with AMD.

I'd be interested to see the "plenty" of games that refuse to work with AMD drivers. I don't read every phoronix article, but afaik games refusing to run is a pretty rare occurrence overall, and the few I have seen have been either Nvidia, or pre-release AMD hardware with a pre-release driver.

[MorrisS.]

My g-sync monitor doesn't work with AMD. I'm vendor locked-in now until I buy a new monitor, which I don't intend to do for quite a while.

Another feature I can't get with AMD is the ability to run LTS kernels but still being able to update the GPU drivers. Unless I'm mistaken, with AMD the GPU driver is part of the kernel, not an external stand-alone driver? So if I want updated drivers, I need to run the latest kernel version, but I want to stick with LTS.

I also dual-boot Windows for gaming, and nvidia works better for me there.

In any event, for as long as I can run X11 on Linux, nvidia is fine. By the time X11 really bites the dust and it's not even practical to run it anymore, I'll consider upgrading. I am not going to throw perfectly fine working hardware to the trash. Money doesn't grow on trees. It's easy to say "switch to AMD" when you're not the one who'll pay the bill for a new, overpriced AMD GPU.

Actually, Nvidia proprietary drivers are the best for linux.... and they will be for Wayland too.

[skeevy420]

I'd be interested to see the "plenty" of games that refuse to work with AMD drivers. I don't read every phoronix article, but afaik games refusing to run is a pretty rare occurrence overall, and the few I have seen have been either Nvidia, or pre-release AMD hardware with a pre-release driver.

I don't know if I'd call it plenty, but damn near every single multi-GPU benchmark done on Phoronix it seems like there are 1 or 2 games that don't work on AMD for whatever reason. As someone who has used AMD GPUs for the past decade, that's been my experience, too. Occasionally 1 or 2 games will just stop working until something is fixed. Something can be anything from the kernel to Mesa to Proton to DXVK to Steam preload cache to ???.

You'll be playing a game, go to bed, start the game up the next day, and it'll just not launch or run.

I'm saying "games" up there, but I really mean "Steam games". They just up and quit working for a few hours to a day. It's damn annoying. I've never actually had these problems outside of Steam/Proton that didn't involve me doing source-built DXVK and Proton updates using 1337 optimizations.

[Vistaus]

No wasteland experience for me.

Ping me when wasteland is not limited to gnome and kde.

Ping. Enlightenment supports it, LiquidShell supports it, Liri supports it, Maui Shell supports it, several window managers support it, Cinnamon, Deepin and LXQt are working on it (though Deepin takes it more seriously at the moment and will release a non-experimental Wayland session next year), etc.

[Vistaus]

I don't know if I'd call it plenty, but damn near every single multi-GPU benchmark done on Phoronix it seems like there are 1 or 2 games that don't work on AMD for whatever reason. As someone who has used AMD GPUs for the past decade, that's been my experience, too. Occasionally 1 or 2 games will just stop working until something is fixed. Something can be anything from the kernel to Mesa to Proton to DXVK to Steam preload cache to ???.

You'll be playing a game, go to bed, start the game up the next day, and it'll just not launch or run.

I'm saying "games" up there, but I really mean "Steam games". They just up and quit working for a few hours to a day. It's damn annoying. I've never actually had these problems outside of Steam/Proton that didn't involve me doing source-built DXVK and Proton updates using 1337 optimizations.

Same experience here with Steam and AMD. And I'm only using stable hardware, kernels and drivers (though on openSUSE Tumbleweed).

[Vistaus]

Actually, Nvidia proprietary drivers are the best for linux.... and they will be for Wayland too.

…said no one ever, lol.