I mean yeah, but that’s a little like saying “computers all have WiFi capabilities these days, as long as you only buy motherboards with built in WiFi.” It’s a pretty large limitation to place on the user’s choice. Especially when Linux users like to meme about certain distros being better or worse.
It used to be that there was no option at all, on any distro. You’d have the broken proprietary drivers, or the open source reverse engineered one with half the performance and unreliability in specialty features.
Since then Nvidia has shifted focus to get their drivers working properly, and there were also changes making them more open source, tho I’m not sure that’d mean the “proprietary driver” will go full foss at some point.
If op is to be believed, the proprietsry driver is already a lot more stable, so it’s now a software licensing issue not an unfixable technical issue.
Are there distros where you can’t do that? I mean, maybe Debian?
I have had only a few issues with nVidia on Linux for a few years. But, I am using an old card. I’d like to live in the nice sunny castle, not the scary one with bad weather. But, at least I have mostly working shelter while I play my games.
This is the main reason I switched. I got about 30% less performance on a 3060 Ti in Linux than on Windows. And then Counter Strike 2 came out and I was fucked. Now I get about 30% more performance on Linux than on Windows with my 7900 XT (got it on super sale, so worth it). That is ultimately why I switched. And I can use sway and hyprland now, instead of i3. For me, the switch to AMD brought huge improvements.
15 years ago this was true lol
3 years ago this was true. Not sure if nvidia works properly with wayland even now, though at least the trend is different now
It has no issues, NVIDIA just works these days (if you use a distro where you can choose to use proprietary drivers for it during installation)
I mean yeah, but that’s a little like saying “computers all have WiFi capabilities these days, as long as you only buy motherboards with built in WiFi.” It’s a pretty large limitation to place on the user’s choice. Especially when Linux users like to meme about certain distros being better or worse.
It used to be that there was no option at all, on any distro. You’d have the broken proprietary drivers, or the open source reverse engineered one with half the performance and unreliability in specialty features.
Since then Nvidia has shifted focus to get their drivers working properly, and there were also changes making them more open source, tho I’m not sure that’d mean the “proprietary driver” will go full foss at some point.
If op is to be believed, the proprietsry driver is already a lot more stable, so it’s now a software licensing issue not an unfixable technical issue.
Exactly!
Well, no, not at all. Nvida works on wayland on any distro, but it just works on some distros.
It just works means no user config required.
Are there distros where you can’t do that? I mean, maybe Debian?
I have had only a few issues with nVidia on Linux for a few years. But, I am using an old card. I’d like to live in the nice sunny castle, not the scary one with bad weather. But, at least I have mostly working shelter while I play my games.
I think there are some that only install FOSS during initial installation
Like which ones?
OpenSuse, I think
You might not remember ATI atrocity.
i’d argue it was the opposite back then. i have PTSD from fglrx
That’s fair. Mint did not care much with my old AMD Phenom 2. It had so much screen tear
Eh. I had issues with Nvidia drivers like 5 years ago. Still, a lot more stable today
The fps gap in games is still quite high with nvidia compared to windows, amd is almost on par now
This is the main reason I switched. I got about 30% less performance on a 3060 Ti in Linux than on Windows. And then Counter Strike 2 came out and I was fucked. Now I get about 30% more performance on Linux than on Windows with my 7900 XT (got it on super sale, so worth it). That is ultimately why I switched. And I can use sway and hyprland now, instead of i3. For me, the switch to AMD brought huge improvements.