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.
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.
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.
Idk, I’ve run mint for a decade or more. Until the last couple of years all of my machines have had nvidia gpus. I never had an issue with drivers.
So, yes, you are more likely to run into issues if you have an nvidia gpu but it’s still pretty unlikely
Mint runs X11 so it’s quite easier. Under wayland all hell breaks lose on our PC. And that’s with the latest version available by ubuntu too, not some old version.
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.
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.
No it just works as long as you install the drivers…
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 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.
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.
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.
Most distros do not require the extra repos. For Debian though, you do. The ones shipped with the distro, even Debian 13, are too old and have problems.
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]
I can also vouch for PoP_OS!, get the .iso with baked-in nVidia drivers and you will have no problems. The biggest issue I’ve had so far is that sometimes, after updating graphics drivers, FPS get stuck at like ~10 and I need to reboot. But happens rarely, and it takes ten seconds to fix
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.
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
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).
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 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 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
