Nvidia drivers work fine, they always have (I’m using a 4090 on my fedora workstation). This is a common misconception.
Nvidia’s drivers are a problem because they are not open source. This creates headaches for developers and the community at large. But for end users, they work just fine. Nvidia doesn’t just dump untested code on the internet and call it a day, they have full time staff dedicated to building and testing linux drivers.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
Since it isn’t open source, our only option is to wait for Nvidia to release a new version. If it was open source, the community could fix the issue immediately without having to wait.
If you’re doing a new build and aren’t scared of following (very) complicated tutorials, you should look for a motherboard/CPU combo that supports something called “IOMMU”. Not all hardware supports it, and it isn’t really advertised.
Basically, that lets you run Windows in a VM with full GPU passthrough. Combined something like WinApps, and you have the ultimate PC that can run basically anything.
Depends on how you installed it, but most tutorials have you use the system package manager, so yes doing the typical pacman/apt/dnf/whatever update should do it.
You can check your current driver version by running ‘nvidia-smi’ in a terminal.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
DX12 and Vulkan were supposed to fix all that, but apparently not.
Well it depends on your DE. If you run Gnome, you will probably be fine. If you run Plasma you can run into problems but supposedly Plasma 6.0 is going to release with full Wayland support at the end of this year (or beginning of next one) so lets hold our thumbs for that.
I’ve been using wayland via Plasma for at least a year now and it’s been rock-solid. Granted, I have an AMD card and KDE is NixOS’ primary DE.
If you run Gnome you’ll run into compatibility issues as Gnome devs have a “our way or the highway” kind of attitude. Like steadfastly refusing to implement server-side decorations. They want to use CSD for their stuff, that’s not an issue, but it’s another issue to not allow random programs to say “hey, server, I don’t care about my decorations, paint something suitable”. Especially for programs like mpv which don’t have a toolkit that could do such a thing for them, and mpv is not going to start linking to qt or gtk just to draw a title bar.
I’m actually using Plasma, and while there are very intermittent issues, it works great for the overwhelming majority of the time. I’m looking forward to 6.0, but the current 5.x iterations are already a huge step up.
Which distro and video card(s) are you using? I’m on arch and my system uses one of those setups where there’s an Intel video chip in charge of the UI which offloads intensive graphics work to an Nvidia card.
These days, they’re working fairly well (at least for me). I play some reasonably graphics-intensive games and they perform well. Not the really high-end stuff, but games like The Entropy Center, for example.
For most things I fully agree, unless it’s for windows specific applications that don’t exist in other platforms.
What about Nvidia drivers for games?
Nvidia drivers work fine, they always have (I’m using a 4090 on my fedora workstation). This is a common misconception.
Nvidia’s drivers are a problem because they are not open source. This creates headaches for developers and the community at large. But for end users, they work just fine. Nvidia doesn’t just dump untested code on the internet and call it a day, they have full time staff dedicated to building and testing linux drivers.
One recent problem is that the current latest driver is not compatible with Starfield. This is a common occurrence even on windows, and is why Nvidia and AMD regularly release “game ready” drivers before a major game launch. On Windows, Starfield crashed with the latest AMD driver for the same reason.
Since it isn’t open source, our only option is to wait for Nvidia to release a new version. If it was open source, the community could fix the issue immediately without having to wait.
I see thanks for the info.
Next computer I would consider to go full Linux instead of getting windows 11 dual booting
If you’re doing a new build and aren’t scared of following (very) complicated tutorials, you should look for a motherboard/CPU combo that supports something called “IOMMU”. Not all hardware supports it, and it isn’t really advertised.
Basically, that lets you run Windows in a VM with full GPU passthrough. Combined something like WinApps, and you have the ultimate PC that can run basically anything.
Nvidia drivers also don’t support a lot of features that other drivers do
got a citation there bud? running a 4080 on endeavour OS and have same issue :(
I think you misinterpreted my comment. Starfield is currently broken, and we need to wait for a fix from Nvidia.
Ah yeah sorry, when nvidia does when / how would I update driver, would it be a normal os update like yay -Syu I’m new and don’t understand it all yet
Depends on how you installed it, but most tutorials have you use the system package manager, so yes doing the typical pacman/apt/dnf/whatever update should do it.
You can check your current driver version by running ‘nvidia-smi’ in a terminal.
DX12 and Vulkan were supposed to fix all that, but apparently not.
Use X11 and you are fine
Actually, these days you can use Wayland and be fine, too. It’s my daily driver now.
Well it depends on your DE. If you run Gnome, you will probably be fine. If you run Plasma you can run into problems but supposedly Plasma 6.0 is going to release with full Wayland support at the end of this year (or beginning of next one) so lets hold our thumbs for that.
I’ve been using wayland via Plasma for at least a year now and it’s been rock-solid. Granted, I have an AMD card and KDE is NixOS’ primary DE.
If you run Gnome you’ll run into compatibility issues as Gnome devs have a “our way or the highway” kind of attitude. Like steadfastly refusing to implement server-side decorations. They want to use CSD for their stuff, that’s not an issue, but it’s another issue to not allow random programs to say “hey, server, I don’t care about my decorations, paint something suitable”. Especially for programs like mpv which don’t have a toolkit that could do such a thing for them, and mpv is not going to start linking to qt or gtk just to draw a title bar.
I’m actually using Plasma, and while there are very intermittent issues, it works great for the overwhelming majority of the time. I’m looking forward to 6.0, but the current 5.x iterations are already a huge step up.
Personally it hasn’t worked well for me. Currently I can’t even use it since it crashes my system.
Which distro and video card(s) are you using? I’m on arch and my system uses one of those setups where there’s an Intel video chip in charge of the UI which offloads intensive graphics work to an Nvidia card.
These days, they’re working fairly well (at least for me). I play some reasonably graphics-intensive games and they perform well. Not the really high-end stuff, but games like The Entropy Center, for example.