13h ago

Open-Source NVIDIA Linux Driver Usage About To Become Much More Reliable

www.phoronix.com

25 comments

This is about Nouveau, the reverse engineered drivers, not Nvidia's official open source drivers... Pretty confusing from just the title.
So there is hope for my old GTX 1070? I don't want to use the proprietary driver on my old (secondary) computer.
- Nope, 900 and 1000 series have little hope of being properly supported. They require signed firmware which seems to be problem and are not new enough for the "open-source" solution from Nvidia for new cards.
  
  But this is about the community Nouveau, not the Open Source driver from Nvidia. Nouveau works with the older cards too, but it is known to be not that performant and has some stability issues. I never used it, so this is not my personal experience at all, since I switched to AMD.
- What do you mean? I'm running Linux on a 1070 with minimal issues
  
  I'm sick of the proprietary driver. Especially if using Flatpak and even worse, if you have multiple Kernels installed, especially updating Kernels often on Archlinux. In Flatpak multiple driver versions need to be downloaded (each above 300 MB) and they are always fully downloaded, not partially. With an internet speed that was not too fast it took a lot of time just for Nvidia. And then each Kernel module had to be compiled and build with Kernel updates, which took time with each Kernel update.
  Otherwise, running the gpu worked pretty good, that is not my issue with it. There were here and there stuff that was annoying, in example Wayland was not good supported back then.
FYI this is the nouveau driver no one uses. There is absolutely no reason to use an nvidia card and this driver.
- My older previous computer has a GTX 1070 and I don't use it because I avoid the proprietary driver. If the nouveau driver becomes good, I can use my older secondary computer for something else. Hell, it can even game, but that wouldn't be my main usage anyway.
  So yes, there are people caring about nouveau driver.
- Nouveau seems to work pretty well on Debian 13 for me, at least for standard web browser / streaming / video playback with 2160p HDR tonemapping. Back when I was using Debian 12 Nouveau would lag badly during 2160p playback so I was force to use the Nvidia driver binary at the time. But so far it's been alright, granted I've not tested any gaming and perhaps that's where Nouveau won't do as well.
- I really feel bad for the nouveau developers, it seems like such a thankless job.
  Nonetheless Nvidia:
- If you have an Nvidia card then you are going use it. That is a reason.
  
  Not exactly. There are two alternatives, depending on which card you have: a) the proprietary driver, b) the new Open Source driver that supports RTX 20xx series and upwards.
- Maybe best to avoid NVDA if using Linux, entirely.
  My next build is going to be AMD GPU and CPU with nixOS. I heard GPU support for Linux is better with AMD cards, but honestly haven’t delved into it whether it holds any truth or not.
  
  I also switched to AMD+AMD. The GPU support being better on AMD comes from the Open Source driver that is integrated into Linux. But there are caveats. In example if you need OpenCL or other features, it can be problematic with AMD. Plus, if you have a Nvidia card 20xx series or newer, then you can use the new Open Source driver too. And Nvidia support for Wayland and other stuff got better nowadays (just reading about it, no personal experience with current, my last Nvidia card is 1070).
  While I prefer AMD gpu now, the "better support" is not really black and white.
  
  It’s generally easier because the drivers are built in. Nvidia is perfectly usable, but it’s more susceptible to breaking during kernel updates. It’s not as bad as everyone makes it sound though. That said, AMD is usually the way to go on Linux unless your use case requires Nvidia.
Gonna hold my breath, pls hurry

25 comments