Re:NVIDIA Transitions Fully Towards Open-Source Linux GPU Ke...
by adrian_b on Thursday July 18, 2024 @12:45AM
(#40992581)
I am not using Wayland and I do not have any intention to use it, therefore I do not care for any problems caused by Wayland not supporting NVIDIA and demanding that NVIDIA must support Wayland.
I am using only Linux or FreeBSD on all my laptop, desktop or server computers.
On desktop and server computers I did not ever have the slightest difficulty with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, either for OpenGL or for CUDA applications or for video decoding/encoding or for multiple monitor support, with high resolution and high color depth, on either Gentoo/Funtoo Linux or FreeBSD, during the last two decades. I also have AMD GPUs, which I use for compute applications (because they are older models, which still had FP64 support). For graphics applications they frequently had annoying bugs, unlike NVIDIA (however my AMD GPUs have been older models, preceding RDNA, which might be better supported by the open-source AMD drivers).
The only computers on which I had problems with NVIDIA on Linux were those laptops that used the NVIDIA Optimus method of coexistence with the Intel integrated GPUs. Many years ago I have needed a couple of days to properly configure the drivers and additional software so that the NVIDIA GPU was selected when desired, instead of the Intel iGPU. I do not know if any laptops with NVIDIA Optimus still exist. The laptops that I bought later had video outputs directly from the NVIDIA GPU, so there was no difference between them and desktops and the NVIDIA drivers worked flawlessly.
Both on Gentoo/Funtoo Linux and FreeBSD I never had to do anything else but to give the driver update command and everything worked fine. Moreover, NVIDIA has always provided a nice GUI application "NVIDIA X Server Settings", which provides a lot of useful information and which makes very easy any configuration tasks, like setting the desired positions of multiple monitors. A few years ago there was nothing equivalent for the AMD or Intel GPU drivers, but that might have changed meanwhile.
I am using only Linux or FreeBSD on all my laptop, desktop or server computers.
On desktop and server computers I did not ever have the slightest difficulty with the NVIDIA proprietary drivers, either for OpenGL or for CUDA applications or for video decoding/encoding or for multiple monitor support, with high resolution and high color depth, on either Gentoo/Funtoo Linux or FreeBSD, during the last two decades. I also have AMD GPUs, which I use for compute applications (because they are older models, which still had FP64 support). For graphics applications they frequently had annoying bugs, unlike NVIDIA (however my AMD GPUs have been older models, preceding RDNA, which might be better supported by the open-source AMD drivers).
The only computers on which I had problems with NVIDIA on Linux were those laptops that used the NVIDIA Optimus method of coexistence with the Intel integrated GPUs. Many years ago I have needed a couple of days to properly configure the drivers and additional software so that the NVIDIA GPU was selected when desired, instead of the Intel iGPU. I do not know if any laptops with NVIDIA Optimus still exist. The laptops that I bought later had video outputs directly from the NVIDIA GPU, so there was no difference between them and desktops and the NVIDIA drivers worked flawlessly.
Both on Gentoo/Funtoo Linux and FreeBSD I never had to do anything else but to give the driver update command and everything worked fine. Moreover, NVIDIA has always provided a nice GUI application "NVIDIA X Server Settings", which provides a lot of useful information and which makes very easy any configuration tasks, like setting the desired positions of multiple monitors. A few years ago there was nothing equivalent for the AMD or Intel GPU drivers, but that might have changed meanwhile.