I installed Linux Mint three days ago. Nvidia drivers got installed automatically and I was able to load up steam and play right away. No idea what this meme is talking about
I remember it being like that already in 2014. The only thing especially annoying I remember was having to use optimus to manually switch between the "internal" Intel GPU and the dedicated Nvidia GPU to not run out of battery within an hour. But the whole set up thing was never an issue for me on Mint and Ubuntu even 10 years ago.
Once I had an issue on Arch (btw): updated somehow during a repo update and did not get the same version for all Nvidia packages (the 32 bit lib was missing). Took me a while to figure that out back then. I eventually downgraded and skipped that driver version until the next update.
I had a hard time getting drivers for an RTX 4070 setup on Fedora a couple months ago. Not that I'm everyone, but I'm relatively competent so I could see how it would be an experience many people have shared.
I have that same card and just today tried installing the drivers for a fresh install of fedora atomic 40 (KDE). It went worse than I expected.
(before I rant, note that I have a 21:9 monitor which maybe adds extra weirdness/uncommonness.)
installer was a black screen. No signal to monitor at all. Had to use “basic video mode” from GRUB.
after install, I updated the system. A reboot caused the resolution to drop extremely low with wrong aspect ratio and refresh rate. Almost unusable for navigating system menus. None of that could not be changed. It wasn’t an issue before the update.
you have to do a weird workaround to get rpm fusion repos on atomic. Fair enough and fedora docs got you covered. Doing this involves rebooting twice. That’s when I learned that every other reboot consistently would boot into a black screen. So 4-5 reboots later (and a few more to test my theory), I have the repo with nvidia drivers.
installed the driver only to realize that it will break the install if secure boot is enabled (atomic only issue, I think). System crashed and couldn’t be booted anymore. Results in a freeze that needs a hard reboot. Back to my old OS for now because I’m exhausted.
I can’t believe GPU drivers can break secure boot in 2024. I’m sure there is a logical reason behind it, but I’m shocked that installing anything at all on top of an OS that already supports secure boot would break it. Maybe I’ll try Bazzite because I’m lazy and heard good things. At a glance it appears to be fedora atomic with nvidia drivers installed (amongst many other gaming related things I probably would install anyway eventually).
I set up my 4070 TS (the brand new one) on Ubuntu 22.04 about two months ago and my god was it a pain in the ass. Took like two days to do and even after that it would still hit a screen freeze issue every thirty minutes that took another week to find a half-assed solution for…
"Do you want to know where I got these scars?! I found a handy guide to installing the Wi-Fi drivers I needed, but I couldn't use it could I? Because it required that I already be online..."
I always use my usb to phone cable in these situations. Basically any distro has a driver ready to see the phone‘s hotspot network. Saved me a lot of times, lol
I do the same. In case someone wants to know how it works with an Android phone, you connect your phone to your PC over USB and then you get a notification on your phone that says something like "Charging over USB". If you tap on that, you can change the connection mode and one of the modes is "USB tethering". If you select that, your PC will have an internet connection over the USB connection to your phone. It's kinda like hotspot over USB.
I'm starting to think I'm some kind of Linux Genius because I've installed Nobara, clicked on "yes" when it asked me if I wanna install the driver and voilà. Never had an issue except steam flickering but I really don't care.
I just installed fedora 40. Was absolutely amazed when my three monitors just worked. Installed some games and realized I had forgotten to install the Nvidia drivers. Installed them... Laptop locked up wouldn't boot. Unplugged the third monitor and it started working. Screw Nvidia. Not buying another system with their trash. Fix your driver's you selfish POS
The last time, something hosed my whole install. I stopped using linux for a while after that. I'm stuck on a mac for work, much to my protestation, and I can't justify replacing the graphics card on my personal PC at this moment, so I'm mostly just hanging out in Windows (mostly because I do video editing as well and I have issues with Davinci in Linux that may or may not be related to nvidia).
Funny enough I've had more issues with AMD drivers on my Windows machines than I ever have with nVidia on my Linux installs
Literally just changed to a different version by menu with nVidia a week ago when a text bug came up. Only issue on 2 different Linux installs with nVidia over the years.
Compared to ~8 years ago when I had to HUNT DOWN a veeeery specific driver version or my AMD GPU was like "lol idk how to be a GPU" on Win8 (or we're we using 20 by then I can't be assed to Google it), and even then it whined constantly and did weird shit
Of course AMD is fine now, wife's GPU installed no issue and it's from the same manufacturer, but still funny to me
While most stuff works just fine (I have an Nvidia card and no problems as long as I don't attempt to move to Wayland), picking hardware with better Linux support guarantees a smooth transition.
LOL, this is a joke, on most popular distro it is quite easy, on ubuntu and mint, it is just clicking a check box and set a password for secureboot.
On fedora is clicking a button, and run a single line of command.
Many distro has nvidia images that don't need any configuration, like popOS, ublue derivates, and vanilla OS etc.
I have been using my old GTX1060 on ublue for couple years now.
I think the complains are most about distro developers needs to do extra work, just because nvidia refuse to play nicely with open source, like everyone else did.
I was broken long before nVidia drivers and Wayland.
I was crushed long ago while trying to compile the driver for a Sound Blaster Gold sound card for Fedora 6 and Mandrake 6. Two weeks and 20 pages of printed out instructions. Two weeks of hell in kernels. It should have worked. The terminal showed no errors and nor did the logs. But no sound came forth. I had to buy a boxed set for Mandrke 7 to get sound.
So here I sit with a fresh install of Fedora 40 on my trusty old Nitro 5 wondering if I should install the nVidia drivers and I hear the silent foot steps of that Sound Blaster........
Unless you have a really old graphics card anyway and then you have to use the .run installer from Nvidia. Pain in the a-- sure, but still not Joker level hurt-the-world madness.
This is the most Arch Linux comment I've read in a while. This is easy in most mainstream distros now, but there are exceptions like NixOS or Gentoo, which aren't shitty but are just harder for specific reasons.