Unless you are a power user who is confident in your ability to troubleshoot weird/esoteric issues and bugs, just go AMD.

If there aren’t any specific features you need from Nvidia, like CUDA for CAD/Render workloads, AMD is going to have a higher chance of #JustWorking and will give you awesome gaming performance.

I’ve got a 6700XT paired with a 5800X3D running Nobara Linux for my main gaming rig. Love it to death, runs everything butter smooth.

For instance, Deep Rock Galactic maxed settings at 1080p, I don’t ever see it dip below about 160FPS, and most of the time it’s between 180-210, which feels amazing on my 240Hz monitor.

In defense of Nvidia, things are wayyy better than they were even 2-3 years ago, and the majority of folks, especially with older Nvidia GPUs, seem to have a pretty decent experience on Linux.

That being said, I would estimate that roughly 75% of the posts I see from users who are having really odd/random issues with Linux have an Nvidia GPU.

I don’t think the new open-source modules will help bring the features to Linux. NVIDIA isn’t interested in making their monopolist features reverse engineerable.

99% depends on your budget too. I have a 7900XTX and it has been smooth on wayland

AMD unless you’re actually running AI/ML applications that need a GPU. AMD is easier than NVidia on Linux in every way except for ML and video encoding (although I’m on a Polaris card that lost ROCm support [which I’m bitter about] and I think AMD cards have added a few video codecs since). In GPU compute, Nvidia holds a near-dictatorship, one which I don’t necessarily want to engage in. I haven’t ever used an Intel card, but I’ve heard it seems okay. Annecdotally, graphics support is usable but still improving for gaming. Although its AI ecosystem is immature, I think Intel provides special Tensorflow/Torch modules or something, so with a bit of hacking (but likely less than AMD) you might be able to finagle some stuff into running. Where I’ve heard these shine, though, is in video encoding/decoding. I’ve heard of people buying even the cheapest card and having a blast in FFMPEG.

Truth be told, I don’t mess with ML a lot, but Google Colab provides free GPU-accelerated Linux instances with Nvidia cards, so you could probably just go AMD or Intel and get best usability while just doing AI in Colab.

I must say, I switched to a system with AMD and there’s no going back for me. If Linux is going to be your daily driver, it’s absolutely AMD.

The problem with this question is that most NVIDIA owners will have experience based on a very different stack than you will experience.

NVIDIA and Wayland have had very big problems that have only recently been resolved. If you are using a very up-to-date distribution then you will have a great experience ( see other comments here about EndeavourOS for example ). If you have a distribution that does not have the latest, there will probably be issues.

AMD has been the clear go-to choice for Linux for years. It is still a safe bet. The safest bet based on history. That said, AMD does have issues as well and with the NVIDIA issues now resolved it is not as clear cut. NVIDIA may actually be the better choice.

What are you using it for. Just gaming?

Single person’s data point:

I’ve had numerous gpus-I’ve been all over the map for years. Sometimes amd sucks, sometimes nvidia sucks. Right now, I’m rocking a 4090 and it’s working better in endeavoros than I’ve ever seen nvidia work in linux. (I’ve always had problems with nvidia cards screen tearing, stuttering, and general installation issues).

But honestly, those complaints have been resolved at least with my distro. I think both brands are in a good spot right now. I think you’re safe to buy whatever floats your boat.

IMO

if you need hdmi 2.1, nvidia. if not, amd.

Apparently new NVIDIA open source kernel module has the same performance as propietary so I’d fall back on the data from this and decide based on that

Some tools for fan curves etc might be still a little bit unpolished for NVIDIA, maintainers had a lot more time to fix them for AMD. But there are many NVIDIA users out there so I’d wager on the biggest issues being addressed rather sooner than later

I went with Nvidia and I never really had any issues on Linux with it (I only use Linux).

AMD might be better on Linux out of the box in the sense that you can just install whatever distro and it’s going to work and with Nvidia some distros will require to install the drivers yourself or tinker one time in the terminal but it’s really not that big of a deal

But go with whatever you think is best for you.

If NVIDIA is significantly better value over AMD in your use case, go team green. If not, I’d go team red and personally I wouldn’t buy NVIDIA just because one day it might be better.

Gpu brand shouldn’t be a factor, just buy whatever’s better value.

I’ve used nvidia on Wayland for a year and the issues are greatly exaggerated, and if you have a cpu with an igpu you can plug your monitor(s) into the motherboard to get around wayland-related ones (there’s probably some latency impact for games but I can’t tell).

Currently the problems (that I know of) with nvidia drivers are that colors get muted if you enable hdr, steam’s web interfaces appear corrupted or flicker unless you resize them, there is no memory spillover to ram, and the nvidia ‘x server’ settings app doesn’t support wayland.

And keep in mind that issues tend to get resolved over time. When I first built my PC the nvidia gpu would cause xwayland apps to flicker and didn’t support nigth light or transparent panels in kde. The amd igpu would turn the screen pure white if I changed windowing related kde settings. These don’t happen anymore.

AMD or Intel on Linux (AMD is way more performant and mature)

What are you using it for? Are we talking just casual desktop usage, heavy gaming or something in between? If you don’t need a powerhouse consider getting a used GPU.

Intel