Great post, thanks for sharing your experience with Nvidia in all those distros!

Just wanted to add: if you are stuck with Nvidia but want to get started gaming in Linux, install Pop!_OS . They have carefully tweaked Ubuntu to make even Nvidia "just work". It works for me so far, on 2560x1440 @75Hz.

I would rather have some distro freedom with an AMD GPU but unfortunately my main (Windows) game (DCS World) does not work well in VR specifically with the RX7000 series drivers yet.

AMD on linux is just really, really good.

Some annoyances exist though, like trying to use hardware en(!)coding while retaining the mesa drivers for gaming. HW Enc. is only available with the proprietary amdgpu-pro drivers, which are no good for gaming. You can work around that by using distrobox to setup an arch container on any distro and then using the AUR to install the proprietary drivers and obs in that container. That way, the rest of the system still runs on mesa, but obs loads with hardware encoding support. You can then export obs using distrobox-export -app obs-studio to make it available on the rest of your system like any other app. On nvidia, you install the proprietary drivers anyway, so obs will let you encode on hardware right away.

I'm using a GTX 1080 still and looking to upgrade to an AMD card. What's a solid card I can get under $600?

edit: thanks dudes, picked up a 6700xt for $350

As someone who hasn't tried to game on Linux but just use it as a server with my old pc hardware, dealing with nvidia shit is just a massive pain in the ass.

I was only using one monitor and yet it'd never pick up edid properly and other random quirks.

I chucked an Intel arc in there for av1 encoding on jellyfin and after getting to kernel 6.2 it also "just worked".

It's amazing how much of a difference it can make when the manufacturer gives even one quarter of a shit about Linux.

I literally can't wait to replace the GT 710 my computer currently has with something that has proper support from AMD

I don't know how you all manage to have so much trouble. The only issue of note I've had with nVidia is the machine not hibernating by itself. Apart from that, it's always worked without much fuss for the last fifteen years (not sure what I used before that).

I had a 5700xt prior to my current 3060 and I’m very tempted to switch back so I can get rid of nvidia’s drivers, getting Wayland functional has been a disaster for me.

I just switched them like a couple weeks ago to give macOS another go, so I’m just being lazy 😅

I'm so mad at myself for impulse buying the rtx 3080... can't wait to switch to team red completely in a couple of years. Or do you think someone is willing to swap their AMD for my nVidia card? 😂

Same experience here. I recently made the switch and love how so many regular annoyances disappeared.

I had a similar experience switching from my GTX 1070 to a 6700XT last year. Things had improved significantly over the years I used the 1070 but the experience has been overall much more seamless after switching

Does AMD have something that rivals DLSS? Some games are sadly very dependant on it nowadays.

Wish I bought my computer with AMD graphics, nvidia works for me now but it's still a struggle to get it how I like.

I’m thinking about building a steam box and this is how I feel too

Same here, experience got worse after upgrading the monitor.

I went from a somewhat matched pair of 1080p 75Hz monitors, one of which was ultrawide (2560 width) to upgrading my ultrawide to a 3440x1440 160hz panel.

That upgraded panel suffered every step of the way in Linux.

I absolutely cannot get 160Hz consistently if I have both monitors running. On KDE X11, compositor drops the rate to 75FPS to even things out (except the mouse lol). On KDE Wayland it works properly in this regard, but we all know how Wayland is on NVIDIA right now.

GNOME is a similar story as KDE Wayland, with an added bonus of stuttering.

I'm not losing hope, though. It's gonna catch up to AMD but man does it stink to use lol

The only other reason I really have to use X11 is because the hardware video decoding in the browser doesn't work in Wayland with NVIDIA. Most of the apps are actually becoming more and more stable.

And to think that if you want to use fully free software in your stack a la FSF, the answer is more like "my friendship ended with external GPUs, now the iGPU of a Librebooted Intel from ten years ago is my only friend left"

I just bought a Samsung G9 Neo (5120x1440), and Ubuntu just worked resolution-wise. Had to switch the monitor to 120hz instead of 240 because otherwise Ubuntu would only allow 60. For the rest all is well. GTX1660Ti. I'm actively looking to upgrade that card now though, with an RTX4060Ti being the prime candidate. I wondered whether i should choose AMD instead, but the doubt was too much. 😅

Baha i have the particular experience of an AMD card that is a weird age, apparently. I still have an old R9 390 which defaults to using the older-compatibility "radeon" drivers instead of the "amdgpu" drivers. Turns out this card doesn't work terribly well with those old drivers, and can't even play videos.

Took me a while to figure out what was wrong, testing out a fresh linux mint install to try and dip my toes in ;p

That said, i still would prefer this over the proprietary drivers and difficulty with that~