this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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There are many reasons to dislike Nvidia on Linux. Here is a little thing that bugs me all the time, the updates. Normally the system updates would be quick and fast, but with the proprietary drivers of Nvidia involved, it gets quiet slow process. And I am not even talking about any other problem I encounter, just about the updates.

As an Archlinux based system user (EndeavourOS to be precise), I get new Kernel updates all the time. That means every time a new Kernel version is installed, the Nvidia driver DKMS has to be installed too. And that is basically the slowest part. But that's not too bad, even though it's doing this twice for each Kernel I have once.

What's more infuriating is, if you also happen to use Flatpaks for a very few applications. I really don't have many Flatpaks at all. Yet, the Nvidia drivers are installed in 7 versions or what?! And they are full downloads, each 340 MB or more. This takes ages and is the only part that takes long to update Flatpak system. I always do flatpak remove --unused to make sure nothing useless is present. /RANT (EDIT: Just typos corrected.)

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Im not a PhD on Arch, but, why are you using Flatpak to install a driver that is available at AUR??? When it comes to drivers, try to stick to your distro ones, unless you really know what you are doing!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

@hellvolution I do not install the driver in Flatpak, it does it automatically. Each application can depend on specific driver versions I guess and that is how it ends up installing multiple versions. That makes it quite robust to be honest, because if a new driver version sucks the application can just request to use an older version in example.

Before accusing people not knowing what they are doing, maybe you should learn about the technology you talk about. There are reasons why to use Flatpak over native Arch packages. One reason is in example I have installed kdenlive, but do not want the entire KDE suite, services and applications installed and running on my system as well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, so you're telling me you don't want the entire idea suite installed (which can be reduced by installing only the plasma version), but you are ok having 500 different Nvidia drivers, which are at least 350MB each... grats! Continue to use flatpak!!! 😂🤣😂🤣😂😂

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

@hellvolution I don't know what you are hallucinating, but my post was ranting about the Nvidia drivers. I did not choose to install all of them, they are installed and maintained automatically in Flatpak. But I chose not to install the KDE suite on my native system, because that always causes pain with other suites and installations. That's the good part of Flatpak. There are a few reasons to use Flatpak.

But the Nvidia driver situation in Flatpak is ridiculous! But you know what, that does not matter anymore, because today my new PC parts will arrive and I can build from scratch. AMD through and through!

[–] ozymandias117 2 points 1 year ago

That’s how Flatpak works…

Flatpak applications will use the graphics library installed from Flatpak

If you have an nVidia card, you’ll need the nVidia Flatpaks to run applications

If you have Intel/AMD, you’ll get a Mesa Flatpak