I have a RTX 3060 and just installed the proprietary driver on Arch with pacman and that was it.

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.

It will work. Under Linux mint for example you can use the firmware installer to install the correct Nvidia driver.

Too bad nvidia drivers are proprietary, so it's not part the default kernel drivers. That is why I like AMD so much more, it has open sourcer drivers. Fk nvidia 😁

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.

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.

The horror stories often come from years ago, when Linux wasn't as under-friendly as it is now. You shouldn't have any problems with this.

And if Mint does give you problems (which I doubt), consider trying a plug-and-play gaming distro like bazzite. It supports nvidia GPUs right away.

https://bazzite.gg/

If you want the easiest experience possible with Nvidia, I'd recommend Bazzite (and go with the KDE Plasma version). It comes with everything preinstalled and consistent across installations. Plus, it's a tank when it comes to stability; very hard to break it due to the atomic nature. Just install everything through the built in store and you'll be fine. Installing programs is much easier than Windows in Linux due to easy software stores. Bazzite currently uses Bazaar as its software store.

No it just works as long as you install the drivers...

Got Pop OS with Nvidia's driver packages and it worked like a charm. And of course updating can be done through the package manager. No problems whatsoever, at least for me.

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

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.

No. I have a RTX 3050 Ti Laptop which I have not had many issues with. The biggest issue I have experienced was that a game completely froze at the same point every time. This was due to a regression in their drivers. They spent their sweet time fixing it to, and following the issue thread highlights one of the main issues with their drivers being non-free: extremely competent users providing logs and effort to troubleshoot, but unable to work on the fix themselves. And what seemed to be summer interns replying once in a while and nothing happening for a long while.

But that said, I find the hate overblown. You could get tge impression that running Linux on a machine with an Nvidia-GPU will instantly burn down your house or spawn a portal to hell. It will not. I will get an AMD card at the next crossroads, but I am not ditching my card now just because it is Nvidia. It works fine enough.

My Rtx3060 works perfectly, one small error with waking from sleep, which was easily resolved, performance is better than windows, had no trouble getting games running

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.

i've never had any problems with em.

I thought the title was "Why is it so hard to get Nvidia working with Linux" but I was mistaken. That's the answer.

[Linus_Saying_FU_Nvidia.mkv]

On modern versions of common distros, it'll probably work just fine if you install the driver from your distro's repos. Don't touch NVIDIA's downloadable .run installer.

It's getting better for Nvidia support on Linux, but there's more edge case problems than with AMD or Intel graphics.

Older graphics cards (like mine in a laptop bought in 2014) were not supported by Nvidia except through the open source one. So the performance would be sub par.

I used Linux Mint and GTX 2070 for over a half a year without any major problems. Installation was incredibly easy as there was a dialog box asking to install drivers and everything just worked. I have 4 monitor setup even.

Ultimately I switched to AMD (last week) because of the tiny problems that I experienced but mostly because I wanted to support AMD and could reason for an GPU upgrade.

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.

I was going to say you'll probably be fine, but if you're considering Mint you'll definitely be fine.

Terminology you don't need to know: Mint is still using x11, which Nvidia works fine with. I assume mint won't switch to Wayland until it works smoothly on Nvidia too.

My partner is using mint on a 3080. I think she had one graphical bug in one game one time after an update. Mint has a program specifically used to roll back to a past Nvidia driver. She chose the driver from before the update, rebooted, and the bug was gone. Just gotta remember to switch back to using latest later when a new driver comes out.

There should be no trouble getting it to work, there may however be a slight chance of it breaking on an update, at least with some rolling distros, if you use the proprietary drivers, which you'll want to use it you care about performance.

The drivers need to be compatible with the kernel. In rare cases a kernel update will not be compatible with the nvidia driver and could get installed before the nvidia update has dropped. This is possible for openSUSE Tumbleweed for example because the nvidia drivers come from an nvidia managed repo that can get behind the official repos. Just being conservative about waiting a few days before applying kernel updates, especially for a significant version change, and checking the forums for people having problem is enough to avoid this problem.

mint, pop os works with my rtx 2060, I've played through half life alyx on mint
but just dual boot, have a fallback windows install

Best you can so is test it for yourself.

I switched to Linux Mint in February and my 4070 has given me no issues.

I just had to set some configs in steam so that it defaults to using my 4070 and not my iGPU, and the rest just worked

Honestly it isn't much of a problem anymore, whether you choose a gaming specific OS or not.
Here's how to get good Nvidia support on Fedora 43:

For the driver:
sudo dnf update
sudo dnf install akmod-nvidia
For CUDA support:
sudo dnf install xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-cuda
Then reboot and you're done.

• https://github.com/devangshekhawat/Fedora-43-Post-Install-Guide?tab=readme-ov-file#nvidia-drivers

It sorta depends. I've personally had some issues with certain software (mainly Firefox) running in Wayland on my Nvidia card. There are environment variables and flags to remedy some issues, but I'd still get the occasional application crash.

What worked well for me was setting up prime offloading so basically all of the system runs on the integrated GPU and only games run on Nvidia.

I've been trying different flavors on my machines with Nvidia cards. It usually just works well enough for me. Did Garuda for a microsecond, mint for a moment, Ubuntu for a few, and am now trying Debian and Endeavour. I've honestly had more issues coming from arch peculiarities than from nvidia. Just give it a go if you have the drive space. It seems like there's more of a question of how well your chosen flavor meshes with your chosen hardware than one of 'can I even get this working?'

Im using a 3080, nobara and bazzite have worked flawlessly for me so far though im semi active in the bazzite community and a few people have varying issues with nvidia from what ive seen. Usually the issues are a little more edge case like game streaming but with a particular set up

I have multiple linux computers, from servers to a surface tablet, i am able to use all different generations of all nvidia, both permanently installed, and eGPU. It is not without any issue, but it works and is usable.

For me issues stem from x11 vs wayland (work computer is ubuntu due to company policy), or egpu shenanigans which I feel is platform agnostic

On EndeavourOS, you just have to run nvidia-inst. Mint has the driver manager, and other distros have ways of handling it. For your card, you'll want the Nvidia Open driver if it doesn't do it automatically.

TLDR: These days it's easy.

(Not mint)* On arch i used the arch install script, selected the nvidia drivers, and it just worked. I did have to spend some time making sure sure my nvidia gpu was my primary gpu and not my integrated graphics (cpu), but that was the biggest hurdle

The complaints are more about lack of support for OS drivers. If using proprietary drivers is not a worry. Then they are fine. Often the OS stuff works if your set up is simple.

My advice. Do not upgrade to quickly. They tend to have errors in their new proprietary drivers. Watch and see how others have done. Before upgrading essential machines.

The other issue. For non rendering. Their latest models performance to £$ etc is getting very bad. But blender still has major speed advantages on Nvidia. But that is looking more and more short term as blender grows.

A 4060ti has been out long enough that you're fine with basically any main stream distro.

I think even the 50 series is fine now with most mainstream distros as well.

I still prefer arch based distros now for Nvidia cards and honestly, Fedora is great!

Lofs of distros such as Bazzite, Nobara, CachyOS all have premade nvidia ISOs avaliable making it easy to jump ship.

Nobara has a fantastic driver manager and system updater

I've had a couple of computers with Nvidia cards and all I ever had to do was install the driver from the package manager and reboot. I always had screen tearing issues with them, but that was with cards from 2011 & 2013. I would hope that they've fixed that by now.

A few years ago when I went to actually use the GPU in my laptop I realized I never installed the drivers. I think it was a 3050 or something pretty low end.

It took maybe 20 minutes, most of that time was waiting for things to install. I've heard the horror stories so I wasn't excepting it to work and was ready to give up at the first sign on resistance but there really wasn't any. That was on Fedora, a bit later I switched to Debian and I remember running into an issue getting it to work but it was small enough that I don't remember what the issue was.

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 :)

Check my history but basically no. It's not so hard.

I'm on Debian stable yet place the latest games, from VR to flat ones, from AAA to indies, and it just works.

Maybe I spent 30min https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers months ago (years now? time flies) when I did my install and since then smooth sailing. I have minor issues, e.g. suspend sometimes hang. Sometimes coming back from sustain some visual glitches in the browser via WebGL, but that's it.

Edit: I sometimes also use the GPU for CUDA for local AI/LLM (mostly to make sure it's bullshit, and it is but at least I can say I tried) and that also went well, just followed instructions.

My Nvidia works flawlessly. It’s only a 1060gtx but I’m running 570 drivers and the only real issue is it’s not open source.

i use nobara linux and it was literally working out of the box

You can try a distro that includes the driver on installation to avoid a some of the headache. I have a 4060ti and I'm using Cachyos with zero issues.

The main difference is your mileage may vary with Nvidia, whereas it's pretty much always just going to work with AMD. But give it a shot and see how it goes. Make sure to choose a distro that specifically supports Nvidia.

I imagine a 4060TI is a relatively valuable card that you could trade for AMD if you really wanted to.

the ONLY issues I've ever had with my Nvidia GPU were with A. Sway and B. Mint.

and when I say "issues" with Sway it was simply not being able to use a DM to login to it and having to login via TTY with "sway --unsupported-gpu" since the Sway devs aren't fans of proprietary stuff at all.

for Mint...just didn't work well for gaming. Crashing, slow downs, etc. That could either be a Distro issue or a Me issue as Mint was my first linux distro and I only stuck with it for a couple weeks before moving on to CachyOS.

On every distro since then? zero issues. it just works. Best experience with it was probably via CachyOS or NixOS. Runs smooth as silk on NixOS.

I had a 1060 for a good few years that I used primarily with Arch and never really had an issue. At the time it didn't play nicely with Wayland, so I was still using Xorg instead, but I think that's a solved issue by now. Nvidia just doesn't support newer features as readily as AMD does it seems. It really should have no bearing on your ability to play games.

Currently have 2 machines on MX with nvidia cards. One was flawless from the get go the other took some trail and error by installing some extra packages but I got there.

(Through the package manager I might add, no files edited or anything)

Mint has a somewhat similar user experience. Chances are you’ll be just fine. Try out a live usb.

I just had to install the NVIDIA proprietor drivers from Software on Fedora and reboot and it worked no problem. NVIDIA also has better software support for ML, so you're fortunate to have an NVIDIA card.

My main workstation runs Debian and has a 3090. No issues that I'm aware of. When I used to use Mint, I think I remember Mint having a GUI to easily select the Nvidia driver you want to use, so it was very easy. In Debian, you just have to run ~10 commands in shell to install the proprietary Nvidia driver. I have an older laptop with an Nvidia GPU too; that one is more annoying because I don't think any distro supports integrated/dedicated GPU auto-switching (I just have it set to use the Nvidia GPU all the time).

Its pretty straightforward. You just need to have secureboot disabled in bios so a third party driver can load.

will it work? probably. will you have to downgrade more often than any other GPU vendor? also probably

With some certain distros, it is easy.

It's easy to install nVidia drivers nowadays. The real issues will be using them. Maybe I just got a bad card, but maybe nVidia is actual garbage. I don't know.

This is the biggest hurdle nowadays with Nvidia:

NVIDIA GPUs generally experience a performance penalty when running DirectX 12 games on Linux, with reports indicating a drop of 15-30% compared to Windows. This is largely attributed to driver optimizations and the overhead from using translation layers like Proton and Wine.

If you just want to do pedestrian activities like gaming and desktop stuff, you're fine with the average nvidia driver install tutorial, and it's pretty trivial.

If you want more niche or advanced features like HDR tuning in Wayland or using cuda applications, you may want to consider that amd drivers are actually open and allow you to get into those kinds of tunables.

That said, there are still features and performance kept away from the user with nvidia, despite their never-ending promises of making drivers open, and nvidia has been rewarded for being not open on Linux, which a lot of us don't like. I personally am one of those and my stance with nvidia is partly one of principle.

If the recommendations for Mint do not work, I'd try a different distribution with an easier path to install nvidia drivers, namely one that has the open nvidia drivers included in the ISO.

PopOS and Ubuntu do this.

I'd avoid CachyOS for Linux newbs as it is bleeding edge and can be difficult to manage.

Nvidia GPU can be troublesome on Linux indeed. Mint might not be the best option in that case. If you are flexible, distro-wise, I cannot recommend Bazzite enough.

You can get an image with all the needed Nvidia drivers and configs, that should bring you the smoothest possible experience with your hardware, especially for gaming!

Good luck!