I want to make the move to Mint at the end of Win10 in a week or so, but I’ve heard some horror stories about how tough it can be to get Nvidia GPUs working with them. As it is I have a 4060TI and no money for an AMD GPU. If I can’t get my GPU working with Linux I’m probably gonna end up having to stick with Windows untim I can afford an AMD GPU, the thought of which doesn’t exactly excite me.
I’ve used Nvidia GPUs with Linux with not many problems. These “horror stories” typically come from people who try to install a driver exactly the same way they would on Windows (by going to the Nvidia website and downloading something) whereas on most Linux distros it’s actually much easier.
On Mint, you basically just have to open the “driver manager” and click on the recommended Nvidia driver. Then reboot. :)
There is also a guide available on It’s FOSS.
Not true. Ubuntu’s official nvidia driver installation broke twice for my husband’s PC, one other time they removed a version completely from their list (while we had installed it), and then it had orphaned packages and apt was constantly complaining, while every time we put nvidia as the main card (instead of the integrated intel), the PC does not wake up from sleep under Wayland (while it does under X11, so we know it’s not a BIOS issue).
Also, the Mint forum is full of problems with nvidia drivers, despite running under X11, which is the “easier” environment for its drivers.
Overall, it’s a nightmare, and that’s why we now use the integrated intel as the main gpu, and the nvidia for compute only (for blender and resolve).
Maybe it’s better implemented under Arch-land and Fedora-land, but under Ubuntu/Mint/Debian-land, it’s still a nightmare.
Idk, I’ve run mint for a decade or more. Until the last couple of years all of my machines have had nvidia gpus. I never had an issue with drivers.
So, yes, you are more likely to run into issues if you have an nvidia gpu but it’s still pretty unlikely
Mint runs X11 so it’s quite easier. Under wayland all hell breaks lose on our PC. And that’s with the latest version available by ubuntu too, not some old version.
I’ve run Nvidia with Wayland for years and never encountered a single issue. This sounds like it’s probably just an Ubuntu issue (go figure, there’s a reason the Linux community despises Canonical). It’s worked perfectly fine for me in Fedora and Arch in Wayland, and my distro of choice nowadays is Bazzite, which is based on Fedora.
Is it possible that the driver that was installed was at some point so old that it was removed from the repos?
I can’t speak about the exact implementation on Ubuntu, but on Fedora (which I am using) the driver usually gets updated to the latest version automatically. If that’s not the case on Ubuntu or Mint, it may be worth going to the device drivers menu every few months, checking if there’s a new one available and selecting the new one if there is one.
no, it was the 565 or 575 i can’t remember, there were older options there too. But regardless, even if removed, it shouldn’t have left apt in a state of panic.
The issues with Nvidia GPU’s has been blown up way to much in the last few years in my opinion.
The potential problems you “might” face are:
- Not backing up your system before updating
- Using too old or too new a kernel version (Older versions may break or cause issue with newer drivers and bleeding edge kernels may introduce issues that weren’t caught during QA) * Always have a LTS kernel installed as well as a newer supported kernel
- Using brand new hardware too soon (aka don’t expect a newly released card to work perfectly day one)
- Trying to use GPU’s in edge case uses or pushing the envelope without knowing what you are doing
- Not backing up your system
- Trying to use the wrong kind of card for your needs (A Quadro card isn’t going to work well as a RTX card)
- Not updating your system (Nvidia drivers get regular updates)
For most major distros now a days you either select the Nvidia option when installing (like Manjaro) or install the drivers afterwards (Ubuntu based) and be off to the races.
Set up and use Timeshift, make a backup before installing updates and you can roll back if there is an issue.
No it just works as long as you install the drivers…
I see what you did there… Or I see a blinking cursor 😄
If you want the easiest experience possible with Nvidia, I’d recommend Bazzite (and go with the KDE Plasma version). It comes with everything preinstalled and consistent across installations. Plus, it’s a tank when it comes to stability; very hard to break it due to the atomic nature. Just install everything through the built in store and you’ll be fine. Installing programs is much easier than Windows in Linux due to easy software stores. Bazzite currently uses Bazaar as its software store.
It’s not, today it works flawlessly, every distro has a simple way to install the proprietary drivers. It’s just stories from people repeating a very old song that has no anchor in today’s reality.
Nvidia historically didn’t invest in Linux drivers.
Things have gotten a bit better, but there are still plenty of issues with Wayland compatibility specifically.
Install the proprietary driver and it will work, but under Wayland you may have issues with resuming from sleep, stacked transparency, fractional resolution scaling, and HDR compatibility.
It wasn’t for me on Debian 12/13. I just had to add the repo for the drivers and run 1 or 2 lines of bash and I’ve been good ever since with my 3090.
Most distros do not require the extra repos. For Debian though, you do. The ones shipped with the distro, even Debian 13, are too old and have problems.
On Nixos haven’t had any issues. I did have issues getting the dynamic GPU thing going through. That’s a bit of a technical challenge at-least on Nixos
What’s a dynamic GPU?
Yeah it was dead simple on Nixos. I just grabbed the Nvidia section of the wiki. https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/NVIDIA
{ hardware = { # Renamed from opengl.enable graphics.enable = true; # Most Wayland compositors need this nvidia.modesetting.enable = true; nvidia.powerManagement.enable = false; nvidia.open = false; nvidia.nvidiaSettings = true; };Sorry it’s called “hybrid graphics”
Oh that’s neat, I’d never heard of it. Using the integrated graphics as well as a PCIE GPU. Cool.
Helps with battery life on laptops
Does the display not need to be plugged into the onboard port, then?
Not exactly sure what you mean by this
On a desktop I might use the integrated graphics as well if I could use its HDMI/DP port for an additional monitor. Since you mentioned a laptop battery, I am guessing that you are choosing to drive the built in display with either the integrated graphics or the Nvidia graphics card built in. Have I misunderstood?
On modern versions of common distros, it’ll probably work just fine if you install the driver from your distro’s repos. Don’t touch NVIDIA’s downloadable .run installer.
It’s getting better for Nvidia support on Linux, but there’s more edge case problems than with AMD or Intel graphics.
No, it should work out of the box through the open source driver. But, for most people the Nvidia driver (closed) works without issues, you need to install it through driver manager app.
I thought the title was “Why is it so hard to get Nvidia working with Linux” but I was mistaken. That’s the answer.
[Linus_Saying_FU_Nvidia.mkv]
No. I have a RTX 3050 Ti Laptop which I have not had many issues with. The biggest issue I have experienced was that a game completely froze at the same point every time. This was due to a regression in their drivers. They spent their sweet time fixing it to, and following the issue thread highlights one of the main issues with their drivers being non-free: extremely competent users providing logs and effort to troubleshoot, but unable to work on the fix themselves. And what seemed to be summer interns replying once in a while and nothing happening for a long while.
But that said, I find the hate overblown. You could get tge impression that running Linux on a machine with an Nvidia-GPU will instantly burn down your house or spawn a portal to hell. It will not. I will get an AMD card at the next crossroads, but I am not ditching my card now just because it is Nvidia. It works fine enough.
I have multiple linux computers, from servers to a surface tablet, i am able to use all different generations of all nvidia, both permanently installed, and eGPU. It is not without any issue, but it works and is usable.
For me issues stem from x11 vs wayland (work computer is ubuntu due to company policy), or egpu shenanigans which I feel is platform agnostic
I can also vouch for PoP_OS!, get the .iso with baked-in nVidia drivers and you will have no problems. The biggest issue I’ve had so far is that sometimes, after updating graphics drivers, FPS get stuck at like ~10 and I need to reboot. But happens rarely, and it takes ten seconds to fix
I’ve had a couple of computers with Nvidia cards and all I ever had to do was install the driver from the package manager and reboot. I always had screen tearing issues with them, but that was with cards from 2011 & 2013. I would hope that they’ve fixed that by now.
