I’m planning on changing to Linux eventually, but my PC has a 4060ti. I have heard that Nvidia drivers are a pain to install, and I don’t have the means to change to a non-Nvidia GPU. Am I in trouble?
I’m constantly surprised at this point how anyone fails at it. Not to mention there are a number of distros that provide them out of the box now and somehow people still say they couldn’t install it.
If you’re using a desktop, it’s not a pain at all. Any issues are blown out of proportion by AMD fanboys.
If you’re on a laptop, installing them is a bit more of a hassle but using the dedicated GPU is an issue that needs to be addressed someday. Essentially, laptops with Nvidia GPUs need to prepend
prime-runto every application they want to use the dedicated GPU.On NixOS I just copy and pasted like 2-4 lines of recommended configuration and applied it. The driver was then automatically downloaded and installed and I haven’t had to touch it since.
In the case of NixOS, the question would then be : “How much pain in the ass is it to install NixOS, really ?”
For my desktop PC, it felt just as easy as any other distro, but for my servers and especially for my SBCs, a pain.
Not necessarily a pain to install, however I’ve had a lot of stupid issues - like not being able to open a TTY session., I can’t run Sway, and Hyprland absolutely refuses to work with my 3 monitor setup.
I use Garuda, you just install the Nvidia version and the updater handles updates automatically whenever you run it.
Easy peasy.
AMD’s been a better community member but like others said, even if Nvidia is more of a “pain” it’s generally easier than windows on most distros. They’ll detect and install it for you or it’s just a single package to install from the software library.
Some free advice, If you’re worried about it stick with a mainstream distro. They’ll have tested releases more. it may seem counter intuitive but apply updates often, updates over multiple versions are more likely to have untested combinations of packages. If the drivers stop working, you’ll just not have acceleration, just uninstall and reinstall the drivers.
It’s horrible, you have to type “<package manager> install nvidia” and not make any typos at all or it won’t work. The horror, I still get flashbacks.
Classic “it works on my machine”. When people have GPU driver issues, it’s almost always NVIDIA.
nowadays the install process on ubuntu consists of opening the driver app, selecting the nvidia driver, waiting around 3 minutes and rebooting when prompted.
sometimes things do break, but the install process itself is rarely the issue anymore, thankfully.
The NVIDIA problems are almost entirely legacy at this point. Unless you are using something that ships ancient packages (looking at you Debian Stable), you should be fine.
Depends on the distro here is a list based on my experience
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Opensuse: medium-ish
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Fedora: easy (requires a third party repo)
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Linux Mint: Pretty sure easy
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Cachyos/bazzite/nobara Very easy (comes with the distro)
The .run on nvidias website it’s harder and requires some linux experience
Agree on Mint. The Nvidia drivers installed automatically for me. They’re 4-5 months old, but they’re stable.
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Stick to Production version of Nvidia Linux driver - v550, v570. I’m using v570 on Ubuntu 25.04, no issue in either day to day work or in gaming.
Maybe for the most recent cards it’s okay but I have a GTX 970 and let me tell you something mister you can’t just upgrade without breaking some other thing and then when you roll back two more things break and it makes me sad
It’s not hard at all
It’s trivial. Use Linux Mint or Debian, enable non-free repositories if required, and that’s pretty much it.
I’ve never had issues with Nvidia drivers. Your mileage may vary.
As long as you don’t make the mistake of downloading them directly from Nvidia, it should be straight-forward.
Mistake? These drivers work much better than the ones in the non-free debian repo, at least for me
Debian stable means stable in the sense of unchanging, not stable in the sense of no-issues.
Isn’t it like Ubuntu LTSses? These versions are meant to be as stable as possible with carefully picked packages. Also, happy cake day
Good God! According to the Debian wiki, they’re still on 535, no wonder they don’t work properly! Still, if you use Debian, you know what you’re getting in to. You’ll also have more *fun* when the kernel or nvidia drivers update.
Nah… to update the driver I just re run the file and it usually just works (Even in Wayland, on Debian unstable). The only time it broke was when I upgraded to kernel 6.12 and I had to manually install the open source modules because the ones that came with the proprietary ones had an issue that they later fixed, so it’s totally fine now. The only issue I have with the drivers is that when I wake up the PC from sleep I have to restart Plasma (only on Wayland tho)
Where am I supposed to get them then?
Whatever distro you pick will have instructions for where and how to install the drivers, if it doesn’t do so for you during the install. Ubuntu is probably most likely to do so easiest. I prefer Fedora for other reasons, which is also easy to get nvidia working, but sightly less easy than Ubuntu where it’s a single checkbox during OS install.
If you happen to choose OpenSUSE, the " install recommends " will detect nVidia and load some drivers to get it working, but you can also add a specific repo nVidia hosts for Leap and Tumbleweed and download the Drivers / Cuda etc. They work great, so ignore the previous commentor. Laptops with dual GPU need you to setup a switching app to save power, when you don’t need to power the nVidia. If your BIOS has a discrete graphics mode selection, you can choose hybrid, but if your OS has trouble you can set it to discrete only so nVidia is always used. I had to do this on one machine because the OS saw the two GPUs and was trying to treat them has two displays instead of one composite display choice
Each distro has it’s own way of installing the drivers, Mint uses a driver Manager GUI, endeavour OS uses the nvidia-inst script, but ultimately, they come the repositories of the distro.
If you are on something like openSUSE, nVidia hosts a repo just for OpenSUSE Leap ams Tumbleweed, and that’s exactly where you get them from, and they work.
True, but you’re not going the Nvidia website, finding and downloading a .run file, manually installing it, and then manually maintaining it which is what I was talking about.
Fair, I mean I have done that too, and would not recommend LOL
