Nvidia drivers versus AMD drivers on Wayland

[RJARRRPCGP]

Can't comment on that since I only started using linux around 2009 or so

Oh believe me, it was much better in 2009! It was a breeze, compared to 2002!

 

[BUCK NASTY]

My experience with Linux is limited to building Folding Rigs, but I just set up Ubuntu 24.04 via Wayland with a RTX 4080 Super and no issues/very smooth. Had to scrap that install for Mint Cinnamon due to needing X11 for Flatpack/GreenwithEnvy install in order to Overclock the 4080. I was amazed how simple installing/support for NV drivers was compared to Ubuntu from 2014.

 

[qxp]

Oh believe me, it was much better in 2009! It was a breeze, compared to 2002!

2002 was not too difficult either - just install Slackware and then compile KDE from scratch. Only took 1-2 days. Tulip chip worked great for 100Mbit ethernet, both desktop and PCMCIA. Audio worked fine. And if you wanted a fancy GUI "Enlightenment" was the best.

Now several years back, it was also fun, but I only had 4 MB of RAM and X was very slow, using twm for window manager and xterm. I really needed a machine with 8 MB or more..

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

2002 was not too difficult either - just install Slackware and then compile KDE from scratch. Only took 1-2 days. Tulip chip worked great for 100Mbit ethernet, both desktop and PCMCIA. Audio worked fine. And if you wanted a fancy GUI "Enlightenment" was the best.

Well, that's probably true, if not installing on new hardware of the time. My socket 462 system wasn't supported, pretty much! On my T-bird build, I had to go right back to Windows.

About 4 MB of RAM, sounds like the same ballpark as Windows 95. It will suck at less than 8 MB of RAM.

Was there even any Linux distro that would do as good as Windows 3.1? Your experience, was like running Windows 95 on a 386 with 4 MB of RAM. The distro you used, definitely required more than 3.1!

2010= In the summer, IIRC, I was able to bootstrap and compile Gentoo packages. I swore KDE took the longest, which that was on a Pentium E2180 (65nm Core 2) (dual-core with 1 MB of L2 cache, IIRC)

It took about 12 hours easily for KDE! If not longer!

At least, Gentoo's documentation, is excellent! IIRC, I saw multiple Linux distros with bad documentation!

With KDE, I had to use the "extras" use-flag, IIRC, otherwise, it would terminate with an almost totally unhelpful error message. The package management system literally demanded that I used "extras", IIRC, more like I would expect in the proprietary software world, if you ask me, with that demanding episode, which was possibly unexpected behavior.

 

[qxp]

Well, that's probably true, if not installing on new hardware of the time. My socket 462 system wasn't supported, pretty much! On my T-bird build, I had to go right back to Windows.

About 4 MB of RAM, sounds like the same ballpark as Windows 95. It will suck at less than 8 MB of RAM.

Was there even any Linux distro that would do as good as Windows 3.1? Your experience, was like running Windows 95 on a 386 with 4 MB of RAM. The distro you used, definitely required more than 3.1!

I used Slackware all the time it was great. Slackware was the first to use packages, which were just simple tarballs, so very transparent. The downside there was no update system - you got the version it was originally released with and if you wanted newer software you had to compile from scratch or wait for the next release. Switched to Ubuntu/debian much later to get newer packages for some software with too many dependencies.

Linux ran just fine on 4MB systems, as long as you used console. For X it was a bit too tight, but 8MB was fine. You are right - 8MB was minimum for Win95. Linux was much easier to write code in than Windows, so I used to write and debug the code in Linux and then port it to Windows for release.

2010= In the summer, IIRC, I was able to bootstrap and compile Gentoo packages. I swore KDE took the longest, which that was on a Pentium E2180 (65nm Core 2) (dual-core with 1 MB of L2 cache, IIRC)

It took about 12 hours easily for KDE! If not longer!

It's the C++. Still takes a while, but now we have parallel compilation and faster CPUs.

At least, Gentoo's documentation, is excellent! IIRC, I saw multiple Linux distros with bad documentation!

man is pretty good. When I started with Linux, I would lookup binaries in /usr/bin and then read their manpages until I knew what each binary does. There is also GNU "info" that I had to use occasionally, but I was never comfortable with the interface.

With KDE, I had to use the "extras" use-flag, IIRC, otherwise, it would terminate with an almost totally unhelpful error message. The package management system literally demanded that I used "extras", IIRC, more like I would expect in the proprietary software world, if you ask me, with that demanding episode, which was possibly unexpected behavior.

That's why I used Slackware - most software would compile fine there without too many tweaks.

 

[Timbaloo]

Well, in 2002 you would simply use the official (closed) nvidia driver and not have any issues (that I could remember).

Nowadays there is some movement going on on the driver side (nvidia "opening" up) and of course the transition to Wayland, both can cause some issues and confusion, but hardware support and also game support is a million times better now, and the confusion due to driver and Wayland transition is mostly covered up by the distro defaults anyways (you as a user don't really notice the transition, see @AusWolf was not even sure/knowing wether he was on Wayland or not). Another example was me getting back to Linux pretty much a year ago, installed Debian stable on a new Laptop and literally everything worked out of the box (okay, I did not check the facecam cause idgaf).

Linux overall is in a very, very good state right now. And with distros like Nixos, a real gem, it's getting even better, with possibilities you would not even dare to dream about on Windows.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I'm on Windows, because I received the bad news that some software makers literally banned Linux. I'm on Windows indefinitely for my daily-driver.

 

[qxp]

I'm on Windows, because I received the bad news that some software makers literally banned Linux. I'm on Windows indefinitely for my daily-driver.

Which ones ? Maybe there is a way..

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

Which ones ? Maybe there is a way..

I love Roblox, and heard that Linux got banned in 2024. I use Roblox Studio. I never tried to use it under any other OS, anyways, because setting up stuff in Linux can be a pain still.
I thankfully got the news before I would possibly get rid of Windows. Then again, I like Windows 11, it runs very well on my daily-driver.

 

[qxp]

I love Roblox, and heard that Linux got banned in 2024. I use Roblox Studio. I never tried to use it under any other OS, anyways, because setting up stuff in Linux can be a pain still.
I thankfully got the news before I would possibly get rid of Windows. Then again, I like Windows 11, it runs very well on my daily-driver.

No experience myself, but here is a thread with comments by people who got it to work:

The Ultimate Guide on How to Play Roblox on Linux

Hello everyone! For those of you interested in playing Roblox or developing in Roblox Studio on Linux, I’ve put together a detailed guide using Vinegar and Sober. Here’s how to get started: Before installation, ensure you have the following tools: Vinegar Sober Installation Steps...

devforum.roblox.com

Also, wine (and 64-bit version of it) work very well nowadays, to the point of having apps using USB working. But, of course, a native application is always nicer. I wonder what Roblox developers use, maybe they use Macs only ? But then I bet they use some software ported from Linux/Unix.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

The news I got, is that Roblox banned WINE. A person also posted a screenshot. Roblox only allows Windows and Mac OS. (other than Android and iOS)

 

[qxp]

The news I got, is that Roblox banned WINE. A person also posted a screenshot. Roblox only allows Windows and Mac OS. (other than Android and iOS)

Well, apparently people got a different way to do it: https://sober.vinegarhq.org/

But it might be even cooler to program a similar open source game for Linux.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

The problem is that people are suspected of using Linux to exploit. That's a serious allegation.
At least until there are more Linux users, it looks like Linux users are cooked!

BTW, I don't take kindly to exploiting! Not with all the bad people hacking lately!

 

[Easy Rhino]

well back on topic... i swapped the 6750 xt for a 4060 ti and installed the non-free drivers. The whole desktop experience felt quite laggy so I did a fresh install of Fedora 41 and Gnome and it still felt sluggish. GLXGEARS was odd in that it would hit 144 fps to match my monitors refresh rate but then dip down to 100 and then slowly go back up and back down. Not good! Fired up some games and they were probably 20% slower. It was the latency though that really bothered me. I decided to switch to KDE and well then I realized Nvidia drivers do not support VRR for Wayland yet or even 144 hz which is a big bummer. Maybe I will try again later this year. Supposedly there is going to be another big driver release to improve wayland performance and add VRR support.

 

[Wasteland]

My understanding is that VRR works on Nvidia cards running KDE Wayland and a single display. It breaks if you use multiple monitors. As for lag, I've never seen that problem. Sorry to hear.

 

[Easy Rhino]

My understanding is that VRR works on Nvidia cards running KDE Wayland and a single display. It breaks if you use multiple monitors. As for lag, I've never seen that problem. Sorry to hear.

Yea I was surprised with the lag. It probably doesn't help that I am also using the Proton layer for Windows games. I am sure AMDGPU does a better job with that than Nvidia right now.

 

[igormp]

well back on topic... i swapped the 6750 xt for a 4060 ti and installed the non-free drivers. The whole desktop experience felt quite laggy so I did a fresh install of Fedora 41 and Gnome and it still felt sluggish. GLXGEARS was odd in that it would hit 144 fps to match my monitors refresh rate but then dip down to 100 and then slowly go back up and back down. Not good! Fired up some games and they were probably 20% slower. It was the latency though that really bothered me. I decided to switch to KDE and well then I realized Nvidia drivers do not support VRR for Wayland yet or even 144 hz which is a big bummer. Maybe I will try again later this year. Supposedly there is going to be another big driver release to improve wayland performance and add VRR support.

just out of curiosity, have you tried their open source kernel modules? Not that i think it'd change anything, but who knows.

 

[Easy Rhino]

just out of curiosity, have you tried their open source kernel modules? Not that i think it'd change anything, but who knows.

I did not try that. I was tempted but figured it wouldn't matter.

 

[Chomiq]

Never run Linux on my PC but while researching last year I run into this guy's channel where he runs a lot of compatibility testing for Nvidia with different Linux distros:

A1RM4X

Gaming on Linux is the future and I am here to prove it. What you will find on this channel: live streams, reviews, tutorials and gaming highlights. Thanks for reading this little description, now grab a membership on YouTube and / or Patreon to support the channel. Patreon -...

www.youtube.com

 

[Wasteland]

My understanding is that VRR works on Nvidia cards running KDE Wayland and a single display. It breaks if you use multiple monitors. As for lag, I've never seen that problem. Sorry to hear.

Nvidia's 570 driver apparently fixes VRR on multi-monitor schemes in Wayland, btw. I can't test it personally, but that's the official line.

 

[AusWolf]

I love Roblox, and heard that Linux got banned in 2024. I use Roblox Studio. I never tried to use it under any other OS, anyways, because setting up stuff in Linux can be a pain still.
I thankfully got the news before I would possibly get rid of Windows. Then again, I like Windows 11, it runs very well on my daily-driver.

Have you considered dual booting? You don't have to abandon Linux altogether just because one program isn't working.

Personally, I haven't found Linux to be fiddly with my games at all (touch wood). The only one I had trouble with was Space Marine 2, which doesn't connect to the server on Linux, but does on the Steam Deck, and with one Steam console command, you can force it to detect your PC as if it was a Steam Deck, so problem solved.

 

[R-T-B]

Wish I could've bothered, but I can't rationalize benchmarking what isn't even viable for basic, daily use. Nvidia on wayland was always a broken mess to me. Graphical glitches, applications refusing to launch outright, crashes everywhere, can't even wake to a functional gui from suspension, etc, etc.

Same. But since I went amdgpu things in wayland now just seem to work.

Have you considered dual booting? You don't have to abandon Linux altogether just because one program isn't working.

Personally, I haven't found Linux to be fiddly with my games at all (touch wood). The only one I had trouble with was Space Marine 2, which doesn't connect to the server on Linux, but does on the Steam Deck, and with one Steam console command, you can force it to detect your PC as if it was a Steam Deck, so problem solved.

You came in at the right time. Before proton and dxvk it was pretty dang bad. Now? Actually usable and performant with 90% of windows games and software.