I want to make the move to Mint at the end of Win10 in a week or so, but I’ve heard some horror stories about how tough it can be to get Nvidia GPUs working with them. As it is I have a 4060TI and no money for an AMD GPU. If I can’t get my GPU working with Linux I’m probably gonna end up having to stick with Windows untim I can afford an AMD GPU, the thought of which doesn’t exactly excite me.
RTX5070 works almost straight out from the box on Kubuntu stable. Had to try few of the drivers from the built-in utility to find which worked, but the latest version and open one did the trick. So no, it wasn’t hard to get it working properly :)
I’ve used Nvidia GPUs with Linux with not many problems. These “horror stories” typically come from people who try to install a driver exactly the same way they would on Windows (by going to the Nvidia website and downloading something) whereas on most Linux distros it’s actually much easier.
On Mint, you basically just have to open the “driver manager” and click on the recommended Nvidia driver. Then reboot. :)
There is also a guide available on It’s FOSS.
I have been dual-booting Arch and Debian with an NVidua Gforce-759 Ti since say, 2015 and had several problems, in spite of having an otherwise totally vanilla PC system:
- in Arch, automatic compile of kernel module on update not working
- updates breaking grub because of missing kernel modules
- Arch no longer booting after an Debian upgrade
- Wayland in Debian not working properly.
- Provlems with running Arch in VMs.
- Guix System not supported.
Yes, all that was solvable with some effort, and with experience from 25 years of using Linux.
So, in sum it was perhaps costing one full week, or ten days time.
But I decided that all that hassle and breakage was simply not worth my time, and swapped the card for an AMD Radeon.
No problems since.
The morale is: If you want to use Linux, make sure you use fully supported hardware, with open source drivers from the main kernel. Including laptops.
Everything else is probably not worth the time.
.
Not true. Ubuntu’s official nvidia driver installation broke twice for my husband’s PC, one other time they removed a version completely from their list (while we had installed it), and then it had orphaned packages and apt was constantly complaining, while every time we put nvidia as the main card (instead of the integrated intel), the PC does not wake up from sleep under Wayland (while it does under X11, so we know it’s not a BIOS issue).
Also, the Mint forum is full of problems with nvidia drivers, despite running under X11, which is the “easier” environment for its drivers.
Overall, it’s a nightmare, and that’s why we now use the integrated intel as the main gpu, and the nvidia for compute only (for blender and resolve).
Maybe it’s better implemented under Arch-land and Fedora-land, but under Ubuntu/Mint/Debian-land, it’s still a nightmare.
Is it possible that the driver that was installed was at some point so old that it was removed from the repos?
I can’t speak about the exact implementation on Ubuntu, but on Fedora (which I am using) the driver usually gets updated to the latest version automatically. If that’s not the case on Ubuntu or Mint, it may be worth going to the device drivers menu every few months, checking if there’s a new one available and selecting the new one if there is one.
no, it was the 565 or 575 i can’t remember, there were older options there too. But regardless, even if removed, it shouldn’t have left apt in a state of panic.
mint, pop os works with my rtx 2080, I’ve played through half life alyx on mint
but just dual boot, have a fallback windows installIts pretty straightforward. You just need to have secureboot disabled in bios so a third party driver can load.
No it just works as long as you install the drivers…
The issues with Nvidia GPU’s has been blown up way to much in the last few years in my opinion.
The potential problems you “might” face are:
- Not backing up your system before updating
- Using too old or too new a kernel version (Older versions may break or cause issue with newer drivers and bleeding edge kernels may introduce issues that weren’t caught during QA) * Always have a LTS kernel installed as well as a newer supported kernel
- Using brand new hardware too soon (aka don’t expect a newly released card to work perfectly day one)
- Trying to use GPU’s in edge case uses or pushing the envelope without knowing what you are doing
- Not backing up your system
- Trying to use the wrong kind of card for your needs (A Quadro card isn’t going to work well as a RTX card)
- Not updating your system (Nvidia drivers get regular updates)
For most major distros now a days you either select the Nvidia option when installing (like Manjaro) or install the drivers afterwards (Ubuntu based) and be off to the races.
Set up and use Timeshift, make a backup before installing updates and you can roll back if there is an issue.
With some certain distros, it is easy.
Any distro in the last decade even worth the time to use it’s easy.
The only expectation is if it’s a distro purely built to only use Foss software with out expections.
It wasn’t for me on Debian 12/13. I just had to add the repo for the drivers and run 1 or 2 lines of bash and I’ve been good ever since with my 3090.
I recently installed Mint on my PC with my 4090, it works fine, just use the driver manager to install the latest proprietary driver for your gpu and reboot :)
It’s not, today it works flawlessly, every distro has a simple way to install the proprietary drivers. It’s just stories from people repeating a very old song that has no anchor in today’s reality.
Nvidia historically didn’t invest in Linux drivers.
Things have gotten a bit better, but there are still plenty of issues with Wayland compatibility specifically.
Install the proprietary driver and it will work, but under Wayland you may have issues with resuming from sleep, stacked transparency, fractional resolution scaling, and HDR compatibility.
On Nixos haven’t had any issues. I did have issues getting the dynamic GPU thing going through. That’s a bit of a technical challenge at-least on Nixos
What’s a dynamic GPU?
Yeah it was dead simple on Nixos. I just grabbed the Nvidia section of the wiki. https://wiki.nixos.org/wiki/NVIDIA
{ hardware = { # Renamed from opengl.enable graphics.enable = true; # Most Wayland compositors need this nvidia.modesetting.enable = true; nvidia.powerManagement.enable = false; nvidia.open = false; nvidia.nvidiaSettings = true; };Sorry it’s called “hybrid graphics”
Oh that’s neat, I’d never heard of it. Using the integrated graphics as well as a PCIE GPU. Cool.
Helps with battery life on laptops
Does the display not need to be plugged into the onboard port, then?
Not exactly sure what you mean by this
On a desktop I might use the integrated graphics as well if I could use its HDMI/DP port for an additional monitor. Since you mentioned a laptop battery, I am guessing that you are choosing to drive the built in display with either the integrated graphics or the Nvidia graphics card built in. Have I misunderstood?
No, it should work out of the box through the open source driver. But, for most people the Nvidia driver (closed) works without issues, you need to install it through driver manager app.
usually not, it can be kind of a pain when it has issues, but that’s uncommon nowadays.
i’ve never had any problems with em.