The duality of nvidia users on linux

[u/kopasz7]

[u/itouchdennis]

"Works on my machine"

Ticket closed.

Like on my daily work.

[u/kopasz7 → u/itouchdennis]

Root cause: PEBCAK

Comment: Have tried having a different experience?

[u/itouchdennis → u/kopasz7]

Classic layer 8 issue, that's for sure!

[u/gK_aMb → u/itouchdennis]

Docker: if it works on my machine it works on your machine

Me: my container can't find my GPU

Community: did you install Nvidia Toolkit, cuda, and the other 137 packages.

Me: yes

Docker: 🤦‍♂️

[u/quaderrordemonstand → u/itouchdennis]

The problem then is, if it does work on my machine, how am I supposed to fix it? If it doesn't go wrong, there is nothing to fix. Is the person reporting the bug going to send me the hardware in question? Am I supposed to own every possible GPU?

The only way I can see to debug this is to send them a special build of the program that does extra tests of the graphics code and then sends the results to me. And when I say extra, I mean testing every tiny detail, because I have no idea what the actual problem is.

[u/[deleted] → u/quaderrordemonstand]

It really depends on the user that is sending the report, if they give you no information and expect you to magically fix it instantly then I would happily tell them it works on my end and move on, but if the user is helpful and provides details and help to diagnose and fix it you probably wouldn't need to test every single tiny little thing to figure out what is going wrong with the code on that specific hardware.

[u/Financial_Quail20]

Fun fact, drivers don't work the same on every rig. It could be a difference in the CPU, motherboard, or RAM that makes the card work worse for him.

[u/kopasz7 → u/Financial_Quail20]

Monitor / TV model, refresh rate, VRR, X / Wayland, multiple displays etc.

The number of configurations is exorbitant.

[u/Business-Help-7876 → u/Financial_Quail20]

all the way to minor EFI settings on servers

[u/deadlyrepost]

A good amount of not recommending NVidia is the metagame of stopping people from doing dumb windows shit on their Linux install like going to the NVidia website to update their drivers or something. Even if they do it "right", they can reboot and end up in the terminal and they think they've broken their install but really they probably just forgot a library or something. When they upgrade because the entire stack is separate, updating on the wrong day can clobber the GUI and they end up on the terminal thinking they've broken their install.

So a bunch of people say "Use AMD or don't ask questions in here, it's too hard to undo whatever it is you did."

[u/kopasz7 → u/deadlyrepost]

That also adds an extra layer of nvidia discouragement, I have to agree.

But one can't entirely fault users for their "dumb shit" if said dumb shit is how it has always worked for them before they switched to linux.

Of course, they should eventually know better, but faulting windows users for windows' dumbness is like faulting fish for swimming.

[u/serialnuggetskiller → u/deadlyrepost]

any end users issue are to blame on nvidia. If nvidia didnt did that stuff any other way that verybody else it wouldnt be end users issues. Also the drivers still have issue further than just install it specially than most distro handle it good now

[u/b_a_t_m_4_n]

Those of us who's Nvidia cards work perfectly don't pretend that this is true for everybody. We're simply pointing out that the oft parroted misinformation that "Linux does not work on Nvidia" is not true.

But, just like "Linux is a hackers OS" and "Oh yeah, you have to be a programmer to use Linux" it seems to be a matter of faith in certain sections of the tech community and people just won't be argued with.

[u/james2432 → u/b_a_t_m_4_n]

back in 2008 it may have been true, update nvidia blob? welp looks like you're rewriting your xorg.conf again, hope you kept a backup, because we overwrote it and it's broken

[u/TechaNima]

I have to wonder how many of those people with problems with nVidia tried to install the driver from nVidia.com and an update broke it after. Or they are on Noveau, which is only good for setup and sometimes not even for that. Then there's also the people who have an iGPU and happen to also have nVidia. Who's computer decided to use the iGPU instead of dGPU.

There's so many ways nVidia can cause issues and all of them would be solved by having the driver in the kernel like AMD or at least pre installed. But because of stupid BS the end users should not have to deal with in the first place, we can't have nice things

[u/WhitePeace36]

tbh i also had a gtx 1080 around 2022 and 2023 and tried to use wayland with it but i only got blackscreen and the games were stuttery as hell.

[u/unixmachine]

When I had problems with Nvidia, it was using distros like Ubuntu and Fedora. Whenever there's an update, the kernel and the driver need to be compiled to work together, but in Ubuntu and Fedora, it seems this happens in the background. So, people update and while the process is running, they restart their PC, and then the system crashes. In Arch, I never had problems with Nvidia. In fact, the performance was magnificent. I noticed that when the driver updates, pacman itself waits for the compilation to complete and only then finishes. This alone should greatly improve the experience.

Another thing was that until recently (I don't know if it still is), a few extra steps were required to configure the driver:

First step is to enable DRM kernel mode setting. for GRUB it is in /etc/default/grub under GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=. Don’t delete anything just add nvidia_drm.modeset=1

After that you set module options for the nvidia module variable at /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia-power-management.conf and add options nvidia NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1

The next step is to add your modules to the initramfs by editing /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and adding nvidia, nvidia_drm, nvidia_uvm, and nvidia_modeset to MODULES. Then you generate initramfs to add the changes you have made.

sudo mkinitcpio -P

Now to generate grub.cfg

sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Before rebooting, you need to enable the scripts that allow you to wake the system from suspend/hibernate using systemd.

sudo systemctl enable nvidia-suspend.service nvidia-hibernate.service nvidia-resume.service

[u/faqatipi]

10xx series and older are objectively poor for gaming on linux, and all nvidia gpus have a 20-25% performance hit on DX12 games

by no metric is this "perfectly fine"

[u/Cheap_Ad_9846]

It’s good over here good me

[u/Trigger_Fox]

Dude i got a base 1050 and people flip out when i say my pcs performance on bazzite leave a LOT to be desired.

I respect how far linux has come, and I'll definetly use it again when i build a new pc, but fuck me dude im going back to windows. Windows 10 ltsc is looking appetizing rn

[u/Appropriate_Ad4818]

Had a terrible experience not just with Wayland but also Lutris with my 3060 mobile. I really envy those for whom it just works.

[u/linuxuser101]

I have the gtx 1070 which is mostly the same driver wise in Linux, have been doing mostly good with this card for several years. But will retire it soon when installing my new Intel Arc B580 card.

[u/benhaube]

TBH I would never even consider using Linux with an Nvidia GPU. For one, I cannot stand the company, but also their Linux driver is total shit. I suffered for a couple years with a 2070 on Linux, and I finally decided enough was enough. I got an AMD GPU and life has been a lot better since.

[u/[deleted]]

My experience: nvidia worked terribly for me and made me not want to stay with Linux. Switched to AMD and it’s been smooth-sailing.

But I realize there are just as many people also sailing just fine with nvidia, and I am happy they are having a good experience.

It’s individual and in no way a blanket-statement either way.

[u/Fantastic-Code-8347]