I've had so many problems with Nvidia GPUs on Linux over the years that I now refuse to buy anything Nvidia. AMD cards work flawlessly and get very long-term support.
this post was submitted on 26 Dec 2025
108 points (100.0% liked)
Linux
10779 readers
765 users here now
A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)
Also, check out:
Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
I'm with you, I know we've had a lot of recent Linux converts, but I don't get why so many who've used Linux for years still buy Nvidia.
Like yeah, there's going to be some cool stuff, but it's going to be clunky and temporary.
When people switch to Linux they don’t do a lot of research beforehand. I, for one, didn’t know that Nvidia doesn’t work well with it until I had been using it for years.
It's a good way for people to learn about fully hostile companies to the linux ecosystem.
Similar for me. All the talk about what software Linux couldn't handle, I didn't learn that Linux hates Nvidia until AFTER I updated my GPU. I don't want to buy another GPU after less than a year, but Windows makes me want to do a sodoku in protest, but also my work and design software wont run properly on Linux and all anybody can talk about is browsers and games.
I'm damned whether I switch or not.
Linux hates Nvidia
got that backwards
People buy Nvidia for different reasons, but not everyone faces any issues with it in Linux, and so they see no reason to change what they're already familiar with.
Yeah, I stopped using Nvidia like 20 years ago. I think my last Nvidia card may have been a GeForce MX, then I switched to a Matrox card for a time before landing on ATI/AMD.
Back then AMD was only just starting their open source driver efforts so the “good” driver was still proprietary, but I stuck with them to support their efforts with my wallet. I’m glad I did because it’s been well over a decade since I had any GPU issues, and I no longer stress about whether the hardware I buy is going to work or not (so long as the Kernel is up to date).
I had an old NVidia gtx 970 on my previous machine when I switched to Linux and it was the source of 95% of my problems.
It died earlier this year so I finally upgraded to a new machine and put an Intel Arc B580 in it as a stop gap in hopes that video cards prices would regain some sanity eventually in a year or two. No problems whatsoever with it since then.
Now that AI is about to ruin the GPU market again I decided to bite the bullet and get myself an AMD RX 9070 XT before the prices go through the roof. I ain't touching NVidia's cards with a 10 foot pole. I might be able to sell my B580 for the same price I originally bought it for in a few months.
That’s fine and dandy until you need to do ML, there is no other option
I just replaced my old 1060 with a Radeon 6600 rx myself.
Those are the GPUs they were selling — and a whole lot of people were buying — until about five years ago. Not something you'd expect to suddenly be unsupported. I guess Nvidia must be going broke or something, they can't even afford to maintain their driver software any more.
I don’t get what needs support, exactly. Maybe I’m not yet fully awake, which tends to make me stupid. But the graphics card doesn’t change. The driver translates OS commands to GPU commands, so if the target is not moving, changes can only be forced by changes to the OS, which puts the responsibility on the Kernel devs. What am I missing?
The driver needs to interface with the OS kernel which does change, so the driver needs updates. The old Nvidia driver is not open source or free software, so nobody other than Nvidia themselves can practically or legally do it. Nvidia could of course change that if they don't want to do even the bare minimum of maintenance.
The driver needs to interface with the OS kernel which does change, so the driver needs updates.
That’s a false implication. The OS just needs to keep the interface to the kernel stable, just like it has to with every other piece of hardware or software. You don’t just double the current you send over USB and expect cable manufacturers to adapt. As the consumer of the API (which the driver is from the kernel’s point of view) you deal with what you get and don’t make demands to the API provider.
Device drivers are not like other software in at least one important way: They have access to and depend on kernel internals which are not visible to applications, and they need to be rebuilt when those change. Something as huge and complicated as a GPU driver depends on quite a lot of them. The kernel does not provide a stable binary interface for drivers so they will frequently need to be recompiled to work with new versions of linux, and then less frequently the source code also needs modification as things are changed, added to, and improved.
This is not unique to Linux, it's pretty normal. But it is a deliberate choice that its developers made, and people generally seem to think it was a good one.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Using 10 year old hardware with 10 year old drivers on 10 year old OS require no further work.
The hardware doesn't change, but the OS do.
load more comments
(8 replies)
Here is old man me trying to fogure out what PASCAL code there is in the linux codebase, and how NVIDIA gets to drop it.
Same- Pascal was the first coding language I learned in high school. I was confused here.
My son was going to switch to Linux this week. He has a GTX 1060.
Nouveau might be good enough by now for most games that will run on a 1060, maybe worth a try.
Am I the only one that can't manage to make their Nvidia GTX 1060 run correctly on Linux? It has way worse performance than on Windows, even with the proprietary drivers.
I've tried both Kubuntu and Linux Mint.
I guess he can't say he uses arch btw
He wants to use Mint. This is what is called planned obsolescence. I say what Linus Torvalds says.
Might be able to use Mint Debian Edition.
It's not that bad as I understand it. If you are using arch with a Pascal GPU you can switch to the legacy proprietary branch. https://archlinux.org/news/nvidia-590-driver-drops-pascal-support-main-packages-switch-to-open-kernel-modules/
"Brodie" mentioned. To be fair on the Arch side, they are clear the system could break with an update and you should always read the Arch news in case of manual intervention. You can't fault Archlinux for users not following the instructions. This is pretty much what Arch stands for.
And IMO if anything this is Nvidia's doing, arch is just being arch, like it sucks but I also don't see a problem with arch in this instance.
fuck. I just realised I have a pascal NVIDIA card on my laptop.
I'm running debian 13, wtf do I do?
EDIT : seems ok?
It was expected that the Linux Driver support will end with the GPU driver branch 580 as well, but NVIDIA extended this to branch 590 (it jumped straight from branch 580 to 590 and a single v580 Linux GPU driver exists). So, if you are boasting any of these GPUs, you won't be getting Game Ready drivers that offer day-one game support and optimizations for the upcoming titles. However, there should be no issue in using them for how long you wish. Still, users should keep an eye on the quarterly updates as these are essential.
Nothing. You run Debian. It'll keep working at least until Debian 14. Possibly even after.
😎🤓
Take that, bleeding edge. 🤪
580 is LTS tho, you'll get security patches for a few years at least
edit: where are my manners? here's the source
https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/tesla/drivers/supported-drivers-and-cuda-toolkit-versions.html
Pascal… Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time… A long time
We never keep to the present. We anticipate the future as if we found it too slow in coming and were trying to hurry it up, or we recall the past as if to stay its too rapid flight. We are so unwise that we wander about in times that do not belong to us, and do not think of the only one that does.
Delphi
Jeeez, lol
I really dodged a bullet upgrading from my 1070Ti to the last AMD (9070XT or I misremembered?) for the black Friday. Lowest price of the generation just before RAM's price skyrocketed.
My SO is not so lucky…
Maybe we should use this card for under TV computers with Windows… sadly?
I can't believe they would do this to poor Borland. I guess I'll just need to use an AMD GPU for my Turbo Pascal fun.
I'm running PopOS and Debian with Nvidia cards that should be affected by this, if I'm understanding this right. Ugh.
What a pain.
Nah, you're in pop and Debian, you'll be fine for a while.
I haven’t noticed as I have zero NVidia GPUs among my computers and servers.
Yes indeed, this happened to my coworker yesterday and it took them an hour to get everything fixed. This is not OK.
Nah, the distro that openly says updates may cause breakages and to check if you need manual intervention before updating following their long established normal procedure is fine.
view more: next ›