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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.
(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
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 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
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.
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.
No, it’s not hard. By default open source drivers will run, but you can install the nvidia ones through driver manager and everything should just work.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
i use nobara linux and it was literally working out of the box
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.
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.
will it work? probably. will you have to downgrade more often than any other GPU vendor? also probably
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 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]
Yes if you want to do anything non-trivial. I switched to AMD because of how much of a pain it is to use nvidia in Linux. IIRC Wayland literally has a hidden option that says --my-next-gpu-wont-be-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?'
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).
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.
Its pretty straightforward. You just need to have secureboot disabled in bios so a third party driver can load.
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.
Don't use the open Nvidia drivers they are not as good. Most people's problems with Nvidia probably come from this. I recommend bazzite for a Linux newbie, because it installs the best driver automatically and is very easy to use. Just get the distro that's made for Nvidia with KDE.
That'd work too but booting into game mode first would be a bit of a curve ball for many newbs.
On Nvidia it doesn't support game mode, so it just boots into the desktop, and also you can download a version that boots directly into the desktop or just tweak the files to make it the default.
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!