I’m planning on changing to Linux eventually, but my PC has a 4060ti. I have heard that Nvidia drivers are a pain to install, and I don’t have the means to change to a non-Nvidia GPU. Am I in trouble?
As long as you don’t make the mistake of downloading them directly from Nvidia, it should be straight-forward.
If you are on something like openSUSE, nVidia hosts a repo just for OpenSUSE Leap ams Tumbleweed, and that’s exactly where you get them from, and they work.
True, but you’re not going the Nvidia website, finding and downloading a .run file, manually installing it, and then manually maintaining it which is what I was talking about.
Fair, I mean I have done that too, and would not recommend LOL
Where am I supposed to get them then?
depends on your Distro, for Linux Mint it’s just the Driver Manager.
To access the Driver Manager in Linux Mint, follow these steps:
- Click on the Menu (Taskbar) in the lower-left corner of your screen.
- Navigate to Administration.
- Click on Driver Manager.
Once you have opened the Driver Manager, follow these steps to install the Nvidia drivers:
- The Driver Manager will prompt you for your password. Enter your password and click on Authenticate.
- The Driver Manager will scan your system for available drivers. Once the scanning is complete, you will see a list of available drivers for your graphics card.
- Select the recommended Nvidia driver from the list.
- Click on Apply Changes to start the installation process.
Then reboot.
For most problems you can really just google stuff like “Linux Mint Nvidia Drivers”
Some of them have dedicated Nvidia images and you don’t have to do anything (theoretically, this has failed for me before). I had problems with the Nobara image but Bazzite worked flawlessly out of the box.
Whatever distro you pick will have instructions for where and how to install the drivers, if it doesn’t do so for you during the install. Ubuntu is probably most likely to do so easiest. I prefer Fedora for other reasons, which is also easy to get nvidia working, but sightly less easy than Ubuntu where it’s a single checkbox during OS install.
Each distro has it’s own way of installing the drivers, Mint uses a driver Manager GUI, endeavour OS uses the nvidia-inst script, but ultimately, they come the repositories of the distro.
If you happen to choose OpenSUSE, the " install recommends " will detect nVidia and load some drivers to get it working, but you can also add a specific repo nVidia hosts for Leap and Tumbleweed and download the Drivers / Cuda etc. They work great, so ignore the previous commentor. Laptops with dual GPU need you to setup a switching app to save power, when you don’t need to power the nVidia. If your BIOS has a discrete graphics mode selection, you can choose hybrid, but if your OS has trouble you can set it to discrete only so nVidia is always used. I had to do this on one machine because the OS saw the two GPUs and was trying to treat them has two displays instead of one composite display choice
From you distros package manager
Mistake? These drivers work much better than the ones in the non-free debian repo, at least for me
Debian stable means stable in the sense of unchanging, not stable in the sense of no-issues.
Isn’t it like Ubuntu LTSses? These versions are meant to be as stable as possible with carefully picked packages. Also, happy cake day
Good God! According to the Debian wiki, they’re still on 535, no wonder they don’t work properly! Still, if you use Debian, you know what you’re getting in to. You’ll also have more *fun* when the kernel or nvidia drivers update.
Nah… to update the driver I just re run the file and it usually just works (Even in Wayland, on Debian unstable). The only time it broke was when I upgraded to kernel 6.12 and I had to manually install the open source modules because the ones that came with the proprietary ones had an issue that they later fixed, so it’s totally fine now. The only issue I have with the drivers is that when I wake up the PC from sleep I have to restart Plasma (only on Wayland tho)
It’s not hard at all
With CachyOS and Mint, it is very easy.
Remark: I disabled secure boot.
No, you’ll be fine. And some distros trivialize it. In my case I don’t get as good of framerates as I would on Windows, so there are some issues due to Nvidia not providing open source drivers, but it still works with Linux.
Ya, I must have started using Linux well after Ubuntu made it really easy to install drivers.
Granted you do need to know where to find the option to install drivers, at least you used to maybe its even easier now, but I havent used Ubuntu in a few years.
Once you found where the option to install was it was a click of a button
Trivial on Debian, see https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
Source : been gaming nearly daily on Debian with 2080ti for years now. Sometimes also tinkering with local AI via containers.
On your next pc go with an amd gpu. Just saying.
Currently linux mint offers an easy way to install Nvidia drivers. Avoid compiling the drivers from source.
This is just outrageously poor advice.
lol? This is the best advice I can give people… What is wrong with you?
I guess I just offer better advice, not sure what to tell you. There’s no reason to prioritize a single GPU over another, especially so on Linux. Driver support has come leaps and bounds this year alone, and it’s only May.
Users should and need to make the decision for themselves which GPU is best for them and you shouldn’t try to scare them away from a particular GPU because you had a bad experience with it.
Look. I use both nvidia and amd video cards for 20 plus years.
The experience under Linux using amd in factually better than Nvidia. Mainly because AMD open source their drivers and are part of the kernel.
You can’t deny this fact. The only down side of open source in this particular case is the stupid HDMI Forum people, who do not allow us to have the latest hdmi implementation for 4k 120hz in an open source driver. Which is part of the license, where consumers are paying for. So that is ridiculous from the hdmi forum.
Anyhow, the user is free to choose whatever video card they wish to use. Hack try even the latest Intel Gpus. But also with Intel the firmware update are horrible outdated and they do not maintain they sht
Look. I use both nvidia and amd video cards for 20 plus years.
And I’ve been using linux since 1992; so I’m going on 33 years with using both NVIDIA and AMD. I genuinely don’t see the relevance here.
The experience under Linux using amd in factually better than Nvidia.
Again, his highly depends on the distro. With the vast majority of modern distros this is just a plain objectively incorrect statement. Using NVIDIA is as simple as installing a single package and restarting to load the drivers.
You can’t deny this fact.
I quite literally just did. Because it’s not a fact. Five years ago? Sure. I’d give it to you. But not today. It’s objectively incorrect.
The only down side of open source in this particular case is the stupid HDMI Forum people, who do not allow us to have the latest hdmi implementation for 4k 120hz in an open source driver.
Because it doesn’t adhere to the open HDMI standard. If you want it so badly, integrate the changes yourself and offer the stub to the community.
Anyhow, the user is free to choose whatever video card they wish to use.
Which is why I posted in the very first place because you saying “don’t buy NVIDIA, it doesn’t work with linux!” is fucking stupid… End users are free to choose whatever video card they wish, especially without interference from someone operating with opinions deeply held in the past.
AMD’s been a better community member but like others said, even if Nvidia is more of a “pain” it’s generally easier than windows on most distros. They’ll detect and install it for you or it’s just a single package to install from the software library.
Some free advice, If you’re worried about it stick with a mainstream distro. They’ll have tested releases more. it may seem counter intuitive but apply updates often, updates over multiple versions are more likely to have untested combinations of packages. If the drivers stop working, you’ll just not have acceleration, just uninstall and reinstall the drivers.
I use mint, and it’s easier than on windows… You open driver manager, tap on the newest driver, click apply. Then restart.
I’m constantly surprised at this point how anyone fails at it. Not to mention there are a number of distros that provide them out of the box now and somehow people still say they couldn’t install it.
Depends on the distro. For most of the popular ones, it’s as difficult as clicking a shortcut.
I mean I use zorin which is an ubuntu spin just made to be as usable as possible out of the box so its super easy. Barely an inconvenience. I see someone mentions bricking but I have not encountered it but I tend to use old hardware soooooo… oh and i should say old nough that a 4060ti would seem pretty new.
Stick to Production version of Nvidia Linux driver - v550, v570. I’m using v570 on Ubuntu 25.04, no issue in either day to day work or in gaming.
Not necessarily a pain to install, however I’ve had a lot of stupid issues - like not being able to open a TTY session., I can’t run Sway, and Hyprland absolutely refuses to work with my 3 monitor setup.
That’s strange. What distro are you on? What drivers? Hyprland runs just fine on my machine (arch, nvidia-dkms, rtx a6000)
Arch, gtx980, nouveau.
Maybe I should check out dkms
Please do. The fact that you cannot open a tty is very concerning…
Yeah, no idea. Turns out I already had dkms installed. Ah well, it’s not a huge deal because I can still ssh or live-usb boot if I really cook something
I agree. I’m a long-time Linux user and I’ve never seen this before. TTY works fine on bootup, but I’m guessing as soon as the Nvidia drivers kick in, that’s when it shits the bed. I’ll make some btrfs snapshots and try the dickums (lol) driver later today. Here’s hoping!
Maybe for the most recent cards it’s okay but I have a GTX 970 and let me tell you something mister you can’t just upgrade without breaking some other thing and then when you roll back two more things break and it makes me sad
Porque no nouveau?
yay -S nvidia-openAre the open source drivers good now?
According to the Arch Wiki, it’s the driver recommended by NVIDIA and, anecdotally, I was having issues in Wayland and with gamescope/HDR until I switched to the nvidia-open drivers.
How is the performance in games?
Roughly on par with windows except in DX12 games where there is a 20ish% performance hit. Nvidia finally officially acknowledged the issue recently, so there should be a fix in the future.
Vulkan, OpenGL, and DX11 (or older DX) games all work without issue.
