It's so weird to hear people who have problems with NVIDIA GPUs on Linux, because for me it's always been the opposite. I have had problems with AMD but never with NVIDIA.
AMD cards are plug and play for 99% of cases with Linux now. Everything just works out of the box.
The only issues you may run into if you distro doesn't include the firmware. e.g. This was the case with Debian 11 and you had to enable the non-free repo.
The only other problem you can conceivably have is card isn't supported by the kernel because it is too new. This can be fixed by upgrading the kernel. In Debian you can use a backports kernel, I am sure there are similar options in other distros.
When I was using my old 1080Ti, I had constant issues with the NVIDIA drivers. Acceleration didn't work on the second screen sometimes. There was some magic setting that would unset itself.
Things have changed a lot since Steam deck. Especially in the last 3 or 4 years.
Mobile users suffer more problems then people with dedicated desktop GPUs, but it still gotten a lot better.
The one thing to be careful about AMD GPUs is that for most GPU OEMs AMD is just a after thought. So they get sub-par QA and heatsinks compared to their more popular Nvidia models.
It is best to go with card makers that only sell AMD GPUs, like Sapphire, PowerColor, and XFX. I am partial to Sapphire.
I have a 5070 ti running Kubuntu 25.04 and it's a mess. Animations repeating, half the desktop disappears when waking from sleep, HDMI audio cuts out... I swapped to a 7900xt and it is absolutely flawless.
Maybe things have improved, or support was just never that good for older NVIDIA GPU's (for reference, last time I used Nvidia on Linux I was running Fedora on a Thinkpad P50, which I think has a Quadro M1000M gpu), but it'd be a costly experiment to find
The problem is not NVIDIA GPU, it is laptops that have iGPU (amd or intel) and Nvidia dgpu. In such a configuration the experience is really really bad in both X11 and wayland.
aidenn0|6 months ago
TomLisankie|6 months ago
extraisland|6 months ago
The only issues you may run into if you distro doesn't include the firmware. e.g. This was the case with Debian 11 and you had to enable the non-free repo.
The only other problem you can conceivably have is card isn't supported by the kernel because it is too new. This can be fixed by upgrading the kernel. In Debian you can use a backports kernel, I am sure there are similar options in other distros.
When I was using my old 1080Ti, I had constant issues with the NVIDIA drivers. Acceleration didn't work on the second screen sometimes. There was some magic setting that would unset itself.
lotharcable|6 months ago
Mobile users suffer more problems then people with dedicated desktop GPUs, but it still gotten a lot better.
The one thing to be careful about AMD GPUs is that for most GPU OEMs AMD is just a after thought. So they get sub-par QA and heatsinks compared to their more popular Nvidia models.
It is best to go with card makers that only sell AMD GPUs, like Sapphire, PowerColor, and XFX. I am partial to Sapphire.
seanw444|6 months ago
kcb|6 months ago
bodge5000|6 months ago
Kudos|6 months ago
ankurdhama|6 months ago
account42|6 months ago