Fortunately, this fucking windows partition I only keep for VR with my shitty Oculus Rift CV1 reminds me how fucked up the alternative is. I can't fucking wait to get a Steam Frame and ditch it.
this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2025
420 points (81.1% liked)
Linux Gaming
22796 readers
1343 users here now
Discussions and news about gaming on the GNU/Linux family of operating systems (including the Steam Deck). Potentially a $HOME away from home for disgruntled /r/linux_gaming denizens of the redditarian demesne.
This page can be subscribed to via RSS.
Original /r/linux_gaming pengwing by uoou.
No memes/shitposts/low-effort posts, please.
Resources
WWW:
- Linux Gaming wiki
- Gaming on Linux
- ProtonDB
- Lutris
- PCGamingWiki
- LibreGameWiki
- Boiling Steam
- Phoronix
- Linux VR Adventures
Discord:
IRC:
Matrix:
Telegram:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is upgrading your AMD GPU on Linux. If it were nvidia then it'd be just as long as the Windows part, from what my friends have said
Nah, literally just swapped nvidia gpus last week.
Pull one out, pop one in, resume gaming.
If you don't already have the nvidia driver or nouveau, you have to install that and make sure it isn't blacklisted. Reboot and done.
Lol every few months I get an update that causes something to fail in the nvidia driver. What? I have no idea, I've not bothered to diagnose, I just restore the last snapshot and wait until another driver or kernel update is out.
Can confirm, in fact there is a reasonable probability that you won't be able to setup the ~~shitty~~ official NVIDIA drivers and the new card will run slower than the old one :(
The blame really goes on Nvidia more than Linux. There's only so much you can do when the manufacturer won't support the card properly
And also the HDMI people since they don't allow drivers that use their official specs to be open source. So to use HDMI 2.1 you have to install a proprietary closed source driver.
They could do it by having a post install blob add-on though so we can blame Nvidia for not putting in the effort.
I would say by my experience, in order from easiest to most difficult, it's AMD on Linux, then Nvidia on windows, Nvidia on Linux. I haven't had a recent enough experience with amd on windows, but from what I hear its like you either install drivers then it works or you gotta do some crazy shit like op did to unbork something.
I'd still rather deal with Nvidia on Linux than anything to do with modern windows if I have the choice, especially with the insane amount of anti-features+spyware they seem to be shipping it with these days.
Linux doesn’t know when to switch graphics rendering from CPU to GPU for me. When you launch a game it should switch. I have had to fix this repeatedly. Whenever I install a new NVIDIA driver, I have to fix it again.
I just set up optimus for the first time the other day, what are you using for GPU switching thats making you reconfigure each update?
Did you use DKMS modules so they'd update/reinstall with your kernel?
And that's why Linux will never be mainstream lol
DKMS is actually to speed things up, to cut out the middle man of waiting for devs to update their own stuff to work with the newest kernels, it speeds up release cycle quite a bit... theoretically.
In reality, whether it is a pain point or huge boon depends on your configuration and use case. On a gaming rig, you'd ideally have a bleeding edge system, where using all dkms would be a big boon for you, but would slow down updates. On an editing rig, you probably want something more stable, so you'd likely use a distro which holds back updates for longer like Debian. In this case, DKMS won't help because you're not updating your kernel often and it will end up just taking more space (but you might wanna use it anyway for convenience reasons down the line)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support
I personally thing DKMS should be the default, with users who want the less compatible option able to do so by installing from source.
I have no issue with DKMS, but the fact that it's something to even think about would be too much for the average person IMO
That might be changing in the near future. Hybrid GPU work is currently being worked on a bunch.
Only if you need a different kind of driver. But if you upgrade from RTX 20 to RTX 50 for instance, you don't change any software. On some dumb distros like Bazzite the drivers are built in and you can't change it without a fresh install. That's on you for choosing a distro without understanding its flaws. On linux anything is always just a skill issue.
Idk, my upgrade to 4060 went pretty smoothly, though I was upgrading from another Nvidia card, so I had the official driver already installed...
Perhaps now that nvidia's new driver excludes gtx-1000 series and older you would have to enter some commands to switch over gracefully.
For my 2070 to 5070 upgrade nothing was needed.