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.
I have been dual-booting Arch and Debian with an NVidua Gforce-759 Ti since say, 2015 and had several problems, in spite of having an otherwise totally vanilla PC system:
- in Arch, automatic compile of kernel module on update not working
- updates breaking grub because of missing kernel modules
- Arch no longer booting after an Debian upgrade
- Wayland in Debian not working properly.
- Provlems with running Arch in VMs.
- Guix System not supported.
Yes, all that was solvable with some effort, and with experience from 25 years of using Linux.
So, in sum it was perhaps costing one full week, or ten days time.
But I decided that all that hassle and breakage was simply not worth my time, and swapped the card for an AMD Radeon.
No problems since.
The morale is: If you want to use Linux, make sure you use fully supported hardware, with open source drivers from the main kernel. Including laptops.
Everything else is probably not worth the time.
.
Not sure why you would have so much trouble with a DKMS module in Arch. But having to manage out-of-tree modules is an issue. Thankfully NVIDIA does not have that issue anymore as they now use in-tree modules (as of driver release 580). Arch is shipping those drivers now so others will not experience your pain.
Debian ships really old drivers. So NVDiA problems should still be expected on Debian, especially on Wayland.
problems with running Arch in VMs
I do not see what that has to do with NVIDIA. Sounds like you may have just had issues with Arch.
The horror stories often come from years ago, when Linux wasn’t as under-friendly as it is now. You shouldn’t have any problems with this.
And if Mint does give you problems (which I doubt), consider trying a plug-and-play gaming distro like bazzite. It supports nvidia GPUs right away.
Thing is, I want to use my PC for more than just gaming, so I figured a gaming-focused distro might get in the way when I want to do non-gaming stuff.
No you can pretty much do everything the same. The biggest difference is the distro it’s based on, bazzite is based on fedora, you use “sudo rpm-ostree install” to install packages. Fedora has a system where it layers packages onto an ostree so if you have an issue you can boot from an old one.
Rpm is only needed for system packages, most packages can just be installed via a flatpack in the package store, which is all free and open source software.
Bazzite is a great starting point. It is pretty much turn key, while having the best performance and proprietary drivers. It already has everything installed to get emulating windows apps working easily out of the box. Wine, proton, steam, the proprietary drivers. These are all things you are going to want probably and this will save you a headache and several days of trying to get the system setup.
Make sure you disable UEFI and choose legacy boot in your bios if it’s available and also disable the TPM in the bios if available. It will work with those enabled, but it’s buggier and the TPM causes performance issues. Linux doesn’t need these and they are artificially imposed by Microsoft and the big corporate OSes, but they suck compared to the original simple standards for bootstrapping. I’m not 100% sure how well this works on everything. It’s possible some newer cards might require UEFI boot, but you can just turn it back on before you install.
I recommend KDE as the desktop environment, especially if you are used to windows. It will feel the most natural and familiar to you. I also recommend asking chatGPT to help you with basic tasks like installing system level software. Make sure you specify that you are using bazzite. Once you learn to use Linux its so much better than Windows. The performance is much better in nearly every regard. You can do anything you want with Linux, where windows is extremely locked down nowadays. It also prolongs the life of your hardware, especially drives, since windows spyware isn’t constantly scanning your files and stuff. With proton you will likely see a 5-15% performance jump over gaming on windows natively. The downside is that many popular games won’t work in multiplayer because of the anti heat, and also some trash software like Photoshop won’t work, but the vast majority of windows apps will work just fine, even multiplayer. The developers have to go out of their way to make multiplayer games not work on Linux, so it’s pretty rare, even if many of the bigger studios do it. You can dual boot windows for this if you really want to, but windows will constantly try to screw up your boot and stuff so you have to be careful. I would say just not support those companies which go out of their way to not support Linux. They are anticompetitive and anti consumer.
The learning curve for Linux isn’t quite a cliff now, it’s still steep, but with bazzite it’s much easier then it ever has been. It mostly just works from a simple gui install, and there isn’t really anything you need outside of this base install. Perhaps you want to install, protonup-qt so you can install proton GE, which has better support for some games that rely heavily on .net code, like space engineers.
At their heart, most distros are approximately “made of the same stuff”. There’s differences in package management in the background (e.g. how the “software centre” works), but essentially the difference between a “gaming distro”, “normal distro” and “creative distro” is just what programs are installed by default, and how a few things are set up by default.
Nothing stops me playing games on Mint (and historically, Ubuntu and Ubuntu Studio) - and likewise, nothing will stop you installing office programs, audio/video/graphics programs etc on something presented as a gaming distro.
It depends on the distro. Bazzite might get in the way since it’s a more closed distro if you want to do docker stuff. I personally managed but setting up extra hard drives that docker (podman) uses, but it was tricky. You’ll not have issue browsing the Web or installing most apps though.
Nobara might be a good choice although the user base is not that big so you might have to migrate in a couple of years.
Otherwise I’d stick to regular distros since they have great support and will stick around for a long time such as Fedora or Kubuntu. I’ve also heard Endavour is really good these days.
You should consider choosing a distro based on the Wayland integration since you can get HDR fractional scaling and variable refresh rate with them.
That depends on what that other stuff is. Bazzite is a desktop OS first, gaming second. But it us atomic, so installing apps that aren’t available as a flatpak is somewhat more complicated.
Mint is a great start though, I seriously doubt that you will have problems. Just don’t be afraid to experiment.
I have a RTX 3060 and just installed the proprietary driver on Arch with pacman and that was it.
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.
It will work. Under Linux mint for example you can use the firmware installer to install the correct Nvidia driver.
Too bad nvidia drivers are proprietary, so it’s not part the default kernel drivers. That is why I like AMD so much more, it has open sourcer drivers. Fk nvidia 😁
Then playing games you will of course need wine or Proton in case of windows games.
For native Linux games it’s the best thing. Ideally have a game that supports vulkan for the best performance. Or opengl.
I recently installed Mint on my PC with my 4090, it works fine, just use the driver manager to install the latest proprietary driver for your gpu and reboot :)
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.
No it just works as long as you install the drivers…
I see what 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.
I used Linux Mint and GTX 2070 for over a half a year without any major problems. Installation was incredibly easy as there was a dialog box asking to install drivers and everything just worked. I have 4 monitor setup even.
Ultimately I switched to AMD (last week) because of the tiny problems that I experienced but mostly because I wanted to support AMD and could reason for an GPU upgrade.
Got Pop OS with Nvidia’s driver packages and it worked like a charm. And of course updating can be done through the package manager. No problems whatsoever, at least for me.
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.
I was going to say you’ll probably be fine, but if you’re considering Mint you’ll definitely be fine.
Terminology you don’t need to know: Mint is still using x11, which Nvidia works fine with. I assume mint won’t switch to Wayland until it works smoothly on Nvidia too.
My partner is using mint on a 3080. I think she had one graphical bug in one game one time after an update. Mint has a program specifically used to roll back to a past Nvidia driver. She chose the driver from before the update, rebooted, and the bug was gone. Just gotta remember to switch back to using latest later when a new driver comes out.
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?
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.
