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 (4 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!

[–] 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

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[–] uis 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Thank you for not blaming maintainers who have no controlover nvidia idiocy.

Also why not mesa?

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

@uis I didn't blame anyone particularly. I am just upset about the current situation as a Nvidia user. And it's a warning to anyone who thinks about getting a Nvidia card on Linux.

Not sure why Mesa. It does not have the proprietary driver in it, does it?

[–] uis 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It does not, that's why I am suggesting it.

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

@uis Performance is the problem. I play games and there is no alternative to proprietary drivers.

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

@uis GTX 1070. The new open source driver from Nvidia does not support the 10x series, if your question should lead to that. But does not matter, because yesterday all PC parts of my new build has arrived and I will set it up this weekend. AMD+AMD now. Finally done with these Nvidia frustration.

[–] uis 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/FeatureMatrix.html says 1070 works fine, but without reclocking(on minimal speed). All thanks to nvidia DRM. And here DRM is not Direct Rendering Manager.

I will set it up this weekend. AMD+AMD now. Finally done with these Nvidia frustration.

Congrats!

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

@uis I know about nouveau which is community developed. This is what I meant with the performance. It's not near on the same level as the proprietary. For gaming, this is not an option. But I thank you for the suggestions you made.

The best benchmarks I found is for the 20xx series, but look at the results to understand how big the difference is: https://www.phoronix.com/review/opensource-turing-3d/2

Dota 2:

  • Noveau gets 7 fps
  • Proprietary gets over 100 fps

That's the level of difference we speak about.

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

I switched from a 3070 to an Rx 7900XT on Sunday. Uninstalling all of nvidia shit was great. I used linux-zen so that meant using nvidia-dkms. So happy I don't have to deal with that anymore. And yeah, I use a lot of flatpaks, so removing all of those nvidia drivers was also a great feeling. And now I can use Wayland!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

@skulbuny I do not use zen and get the dkms. But honestly, the twice-dkms installation (one for each Kernel) isn't too bad. The real issue for me is with Flatpak. I'm currently in the process of choosing and building new PC. Wish I could afford 7900XT, but together with an entire PC building it gets too expensive for me. Looking forward to AMD!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You can manually remove all of the previous drivers and their GL32 counterparts, your flatpaks will still run as long as you have the newest drivers.

I'm not sure why they don't get caught by the --unused flag, but they are definitely not needed from the flatpaks I've tested with.

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

That's what you get when you build unstable kernel APIs. Meanwhile in sane land: https://docs.kernel.org/gpu/drm-uapi.html

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