Sometime in the coming months, I’ll be getting a new mini PC. I’ve been looking at a bunch of configurations offered at various online sellers and I’m always deselectingNvidia when comparing or just browsing. Whether it’s this forum, Arch, CachyOS, Garuda, Debian, Mint, or just about any other distro’s forum… they’re all littered with posts/threads about errors, glitches, blank screens, and a multitude of other issues regarding Nvidia.
So I’m concentrating on Intel and/or AMD Ryzen. You couldn’t pay me to purchase a PC with Nvidia graphics.
Yes, I have tried Wayland compositors on laptops with Nvidia cards. Haven’t noticed major issues. 565 and newer drivers make it much easier for Wayland.
I’ve had an Nvidia RTX 2070 and an Nvidia RTX 3090 never had issues with either, only small issues I has was with Wayland. But I’ve heard that has been fixed with the 570 driver. I also had an AMD RX 6700XTX and now I have an AMD RX 7900XTX. I think both work well on Linux, I just don’t like having to install an extra driver package but maybe next time around when prices are more equal and doable again I may go for an Nvidia gpu again.
I think because of SO MANY issues I see people have with Nvidia/Linux all over the web, I get turned off. Even just here in this forum. Pick any Linux forum, subreddit, or Facebook group… I just won’t want to deal with it.
If Nvidia was really a problem on Linux I would have expected to have issues when I was using both my Nvidia RTX 2070 and RTX 3090 and I didn’t have issues with either except for when using Wayland which were minor issues but from what I’ve read those issues have been mostly solved with the 570 driver. Most of the issues I see come across here seem to be mostly related to new user problems and still learning how it works and then needing some help to figure it out. People treating an Nvidia as the bad guy but people forgetting there was a time when AMD gpu’s where shit on Linux.
There’s even a problem with the amdgpu driver that’s effecting quite a few of people since Linux kernel 6.6.
I dropped nVidia permanently a few years back, - actively switching from an RTX3070 to an RX6700XT. Radeon has been absolutely flawless for Linux, from a driver-stack perspective, they’ve been open-sourced for years, and it shows. I remember reading the posts by David Airlie way back, and recognising that what they were doing was a massive turning point for consumer graphics for Linux.
We’ve come a long way from having to manually configure xfree86 without accidentally frying your monitor..
I’m not saying that “Nvidia is the bad guy”. And I know that many, MANY people do not have issues with Nvidia on Linux. But the threads here in this forum (and elsewhere) don’t lie. Many DO have issues.
I’d venture to guess that if you add the number of posts here and around the web of people with Intel graphics and/or AMD graphics issues on Linux, that number would be nowhere near the number of posts about Nvidia graphics issues.
You’re right. But, for the most part, those days are long gone.
I’m saying if Nvidia is really as bad as people are claiming Nvidia is on Linux. I would have expected to experience those same issues as those people claiming that Nvidia is bad on Linux with both my previous Nvidia gpu’s: RTX 2070 and RTX 3090. I’m actually experiencing an issue with with my AMD gpu on Linux that’s been effecting a lot of people since kernel 6.6, never had such issues with an Nvidia gpu.
I understand and even agree with the sentiment, but in the end it depends on what you have to achieve with the particular setup. Do you want great gaming performance? Do you want good support accelerating productive workloads? Do you just want a rock solid desktop experience? …
Alas every vendor has their strengths and drawbacks.
Actually I have seen a lot of postings of issues with the latest amd cards, but my opinion on it is simply they have been released like a month…and they just need to wait for driver development to catch up a bit.
Had a laptop with RTX 3070, and continually had problems with brightness controls. Every other release NVIDIA would let a regression slip through. Frame drops, lockups, crash-to-desktops with Steam – yeah, I finally got rid of it and got an all-AMD system. Has a few quirks, mostly vendor-created, but it’s been a great piece of kit.
No GPU vendor is immune from issues. We see frequent issues with amd, intel and nvidia that impact certain users/configurations.
The nvidia issues have gotten better over time.
nvidia drivers introduce more complexity than amd/intel due to the need to manage out of kernel modules.
Most non-hybrid nvidia issues are caused by a failure to manage those modules properly.
The way linux handles hybrid graphics on laptops is fairly terrible.
That last point is really important in my opinion. It is the cause of many of the issues that often get blamed on nvidia. This is because the vast majority of laptops with hybrid graphics use nvidia.
Ultimately, it comes down to what you are using your GPU for in the first place. If it is for casual use, I think going amd makes a lot of sense. It eliminates the hassle of dealing with out of kernel modules.
If you have GPU-intensive workloads, you need to decide what is best for your needs. nvidia often offers performance that amd/intel can’t touch in these workloads.
As with most things, there is no one size fits all answer to the best GPU.
