
Nvidia drivers on Linux are trash - ddtaylor
https://nvidialinuxdriversaretrash.github.io/
======
drewg123
Honestly, I've had _fewer_ problems with the proprietary Nvidia drivers than
with nouveau, even on fairly old hardware.

Both of my wife's desktops (home and office) started locking up randomly with
a kernel oops due to the nouveau driver after upgrading to Ubuntu 18.04. I
realized that she had this bug, but in Ubuntu 18.04:
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1559178](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1559178).
No problems since switching to the proprietary drivers.

I use FreeBSD, and also run the proprietary Nvidia drivers.

~~~
sevensor
I'll match you anecdote for anecdote -- one of the machines at work only works
with Nouveau and locks up hard if you try the proprietary driver. Another
works only with the proprietary driver and locks up hard if you try nouveau. A
third one is flaky either way, unless you're running KDE. In which case it
locks up hard. We've had no trouble at all with Intel or AMD.

Even under Windows, we've had trouble with NVidia drivers randomly crashing
and taking the system down with them.

~~~
drewg123
The problems I always had with the Intel drivers in the past is that you often
needed to be running a bleeding edge kernel to get support for them. This is
less of a problem on Ubuntu now with the hw enablement kernels.

I honestly stopped using AMD for graphics a decade ago when I had a card that
was too old for the proprietary flglrx driver, but not old enough for the (at
the time) feeble, community supported open source drivers. Maybe I should take
another look at them.

Amusingly, I'm typing this from an AMD Threadripper2 running with Nvidia
graphics.

~~~
lasagnaphil
2 years ago I’ve started using Arch Linux for my laptop because of slow nvidia
graphics driver updates from Ubuntu... Don’t know how things are nowadays

Arch, being a rolling-release distribution, can always get you the latest
driver updates with the package manager (but with the cost of being a little
bit more work to maintain)

~~~
sevensor
I also use Arch, so I can't speak to the Ubuntu situation. I'd certainly hate
to have to stay abreast of drivers on any other distribution. For all that
Ubuntu promises that it Just Works, it seems like way too much trouble
compared to Arch.

------
sidlls
I sometimes think Nvidia goes out of its way to screw with Linux users. Then I
remember that are a tiny, tiny fraction of the market so why bother. They just
have crap support for a market that realistically they don't even need to
support.

Except for their GPU drivers for machine learning: that's a fairly hot market
right now.

~~~
notatcomputer68
> Then I remember that are a tiny, tiny fraction of the market so why bother.

CUDA

~~~
shaklee3
I'm curious to know what the bifurcation is between the pieces of the driver
used for Cuda, and the pieces used for gaming. I think most people running
Cuda are running it on Linux, and I've never had a problem with it. So I'm
wondering if all these issues are really targeted at gamers only?

------
eggsome
Just purchased a ThinkPad E585 with Ryzen 2700U because the nVidia card in my
ancient laptop is no longer supported.

Worked fine with Ubuntu 16.04 and then one day I do an "apt-get update" and
hit this bug:

[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
dr...](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nvidia-graphics-
drivers-304/+bug/1737750)

Yes, I should not expect indefinite support for old hardware, but this would
not have been a problem if the drivers were open source (hence my move to
AMD).

------
starsinspace
Given all the frequent complaints, would Linux users prefer if nvidia just
pulled the plug and stopped offering their driver altogether?

Maybe some other long-term Linux users will remember how the situation was
with accelerated graphics on Linux before the binary nvidia driver existed...
(and personally, it never gave me trouble, but maybe that's just me.)

Here's a different idea: if Linux had stable ABIs for drivers, across kernel
versions and distributions, creating a good driver would certainly be easier
for third parties.

~~~
ddtaylor
Intel is able to make it work really well. AMD went through a bad time but is
now in the Kernel and getting much better. Nvidia seems to be the odd-man-out
here.

------
TheChaplain
I will go against the grain and say that I never had any issues with nVidia
drivers ever since I got my first GeForce card more than 10 years ago.

For the first years I manually installed it on Fedora Core, until finally the
ak-version were stable enough. Once I switched to Ubuntu, the proprietary
drivers always worked without a flaw.

I don't think they read HN but a shout-out to Zander and AaronP, I've spent
many hours OpenGL programming and playing games on Linux throughout the years
thanks to their work.

------
huntie
I was hoping this would have a big picture of Linus giving Nvidia the finger.

An issue I had that isn't on the list is installing Nvidia drivers on an
encrypted install of Ubuntu 16.04. After installing the drivers it would no
longer boot, so I could only encrypt my home folder.

~~~
newnewpdro
> An issue I had that isn't on the list is installing Nvidia drivers on an
> encrypted install of Ubuntu 16.04. After installing the drivers it would no
> longer boot, so I could only encrypt my home folder.

This makes no sense, do you understand the actual cause enough to explain it?

~~~
nAwYz
I had the same problem, it has something to do with Plymouth, if you use the
classic console boot it works

~~~
newnewpdro
Oh, so you can still boot, they just don't support (or have broken support
for) DRM_IOCTL_MODE_CREATE_DUMB.

But what does that have to do with encrypted root? Just plymouth not being
available for the LUKS passphrase entry?

I'd expect you to be able to get around that fairly trivially by disabling
plymouth, LUKS works without it in any initrd I've encountered.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
That effectively is breaking the boot process. Of course, you may be able to
tinker with it in order to make things work again, but you have to _do_ that.

~~~
newnewpdro
It's not a breakage specific to whole-fs encryption, which is what didn't make
sense.

------
anontechworker
I’m not justifying their lack of efforts for Linux users but I can understand
why they limit their resources towards creating better drivers. According to
Wikipedia(1), the amount of Linux usage worldwide is barely even a blip
compared to windows + macOS. From a business standpoint, it’s hard to see the
benefits of correcting these issues.

1\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems)

~~~
Keyframe
What I don't understand is how come driver for their cards works just fine on
Windows AND MacOS then? Maybe it isn't Nvidia at fault alone here?

TBH, I only had problems installing their drivers on Linux, but once they were
up and running all was/is good... Except Wayland. But, wayland's gonna way no
matter what, so no Wayland for me.

~~~
setr
Doesn't apple handle the creation of most of the MacOS drivers itself? I'd
assume its the case for graphics cards as well.

Windows ofc is windows, it justifies itself

~~~
Keyframe
Nvidia provides their own drivers on their site for MacOS - you need those for
newer cards.

------
kjullien
From experience, everything works fine until you have two GPUs on Linux. If
your processor has an integrated graphics chip, as do about 95% of any laptop
that came out less than say 5 years ago, then you are basically stuck to
either using one or the other. You have many ways of switching and configuring
this, that are tediously hard to configure obviously or this wouldn't be Linux
UX... And even then you often get stupid problems for seemingly no reason, say
you have one of the two GPUs disabled on boot, then your computer won't boot.
You need to do it after the kernel booting... Add to that the fact that any
Linux machine will run about 5 to 10 degrees hotter than the same machine on
Windows or MacOs and you got yourself the current state of affairs regarding
Linux and GPUs.

My stance is that Linux cannot be used as a daily driver for personal or work
on a consumer-grade machine (unless built specifically for it like the XPS
Developer Edition or some ThinkPads). I've tried so hard to make it happen for
more than 10 years and always end up switching back after about half a year.
It's perfect for servers though.

------
danaos
Curious to know how does that compare to AMD drivers?

~~~
aurelian15
AMD actively contributes driver code to the mainline kernel. So with recent
Linux kernels, AMD graphics cards and APUs based on the GCN architecture
(launched about 2011/2012 if I recall correctly) work out of the box with full
3D acceleration, just like integrated Intel graphics.

There was a time a few years ago when the mainline kernel driver was
significantly worse performance-wise (mainly due to missing power management),
but this should no longer be the case.

There still exists a proprietary AMD driver, but this driver is going to be
phased out and only required for "Pro" features.

See this AMD slide deck for more information:
[https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/amd_graphics/...](https://archive.fosdem.org/2018/schedule/event/amd_graphics/attachments/slides/2251/export/events/attachments/amd_graphics/slides/2251/fosdem2018_amdstack.pdf)

~~~
pjmlp
And the unlucky owners of pre GCN cards, like the Brazos APUs just get a
driver that kind of works, with less features than the fxglr one.

------
bscphil
The Nvidia drivers are infamous, to be sure, and Linus and others have spent a
good bit of time ranting about how terrible Nvidia is.

But I don't think the existence of a bunch of support requests are much
evidence of anything either way. It's pretty easy to find similar problems
with AMD drivers, for example.

[https://askubuntu.com/search?tab=newest&q=amd%20gpu](https://askubuntu.com/search?tab=newest&q=amd%20gpu)

~~~
ddtaylor
I am pretty active on the Ask Ubuntu stack exchange and to be frank I see many
more Nvidia related posts. Also consider that sometimes the request isn't even
about Nvidia at all, but then we determine that the Nvidia drivers are causing
the problem. A good example would be strange compositing glitches and bugs
with KDE or other compositors.

------
htfy96
The same crappy driver applies to AMD on Linux too.
[https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107261](https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=107261)
is open for nearly three months and nothing has been done.

------
trulyrandom
Nouveau, on the other hand, works just fine! Don't expect to run any games on
it, but if you're like me and you're stuck with an Nvidia card on the desktop,
nouveau will suffice. Even modern stuff like wayland works well with this
driver.

------
hamandcheese
From someone quite removed from low level development:

How much effort is it to develop these drivers? I.e what’s the breakdown for
resources allocated toward hardware vs people allocated for driver dev.

~~~
ddtaylor
For some time their Unified Driver Architecture (UDA) was touted as the
solution:

[https://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_uda.html](https://www.nvidia.com/object/feature_uda.html)

Its been around since at 1999.

------
sdinsn
Are AMD's any better?

~~~
majewsky
The new amdgpu driver (which has been in mainline Linux for a few years now)
works really well for me, on X11 and on Wayland, for all applications that I
tried with it (for games, that includes Cities Skylines, Civ 5, various other
games based on Source and Unity). AFAIK it works with all GCN models, so
basically all graphics cards manufactured by AMD after ca. 2012/2013.

------
alexandernst
Try AMD just for the lulz

