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Comment by derethanhausen | Hacker News Reader

Did the graphics you chose have quality, easy to install drivers? Been thinking of doing something similar.

If you have Intel or AMD graphics work perfectly under Linux. You don't even need to install drivers because they are shipped in the Kernel.

That's less than perfect there... I bought an RX 5700 XT in October when I built my desktop. I had lots of issues over the months until around February where it finally seemed stable (on updated Kernel releases, and having to sometimes download the binary driver modules).

Even then, I had trouble with even trying VMs as nothing supported the ahead of mainline kernel I needed for my video card. Now, 20.04 may be miles better and much more stable overall, still well behind the kernel I'd been running. Just saying it isn't a panacea at all.

NOTE: Since early march, I've been mostly on Windows in support of a couple legacy projects.

I moved my 5700xt into a purely for fun gaming pc and replaced it with a 1050 in my dev machine.

I had the exact same experience, but in December gave up on having linux play nicely with Navi for the time being. I will readily admit to being an AMD fanboy, but Nvidia is really besting them at the software game.

My 3700x CPU has been dreamy from day one.

This has more to do with market dominance and standards compliance of nvidia than anything else. Nvidia does its own thing game devs compensate, amd gets a shafted experience and looks like its their fault.

Could you elaborate? I would have thought that AMD would be invested in offering comparably good drivers. I'm not taking issue with a game not performing optimally. I'm taking issue with a reasonably common desktop environment (Ubuntu 18.04) proving unstable.

They create better drivers.

Nvidia dont adhere to specs. Amd does.

Developers develop for nvidia.

Problems ensue for amd users.

Do you recall which kernel you were using?

I was forced to grab a 5700xt because of stock problems but it would have been around the same time.

I had one big deal breaker problem but i only had to run a mainline kernel build to tie me over.

In anycase, this sort of thing is standard for new hardware, always takes a couple months for linux to catch up.

I ran ubuntu lts for a while with the amd drivers, then an update broke that (black screen)... by then popos 20.10 was out, and that mostly just worked... I had a couple issues and went up through kernel versions (MB also had Intel AX 201 wireless), so between the two, I paid for Ukuu and just stuck to the latest... around late January, no more issues.

Of course then I needed to do some work in windows, and couldn't get any VM software working with the ahead of mainline kernel I'd been using.

I understand the why, just was frustrating and less than ideal.

Out of curiosity, do people have issues with Nvidia in Linux? I've seen similar sentiment in the past but I've never really noticed any issues with the nouveau (open source) driver. Due to CUDA work, I primarily use the proprietary drivers which work well too (other than an annoying suspend bug introduced in 18.04 and seemingly unfixed in 20.04)

Nvidia is supposed the be the big advantage of PopOS: you can download the Nvidia version of PopOS and it takes care of everything for you.

I think it depends on the card model but overall the Nvidia drivers and CUDA software work great.

Nvidia even provide Linux support for the latest RTX cards.

The biggest problem I had was installing the latest proprietary drivers because the ones Ubuntu provide are lagging behind. Sometimes you need to do this via the console.

Yes, because Nvidia drivers are not part of the kernel they need to be updated manually and Nvidia does not distribute the source code, so you need to wait on Nvidia.

Nvidia also doesn't support some of the APIs that AMD and Intel do, which causes fragmentation in Linux desktop environments.

Nvidia runs very well under Arch and Manjaro. Install the proprietary drivers and let Conda handle CUDA. It's as close to anything Just Working with Nvidia drivers for neural nets that I've found.

I've been using 1080ti (desktop) for gaming on Ubuntu 18.04 with no problems for a year or so using the closed source drivers from the Ubuntu Drivers PPA.

There are kernel components of drivers as well as userspace components. But they are all available via package managers, so no need to install them.

AMD, only if one has a recent card. APU owners aren't so lucky.

what do you mean? AMD integrated graphics are supported by the same open source driver... IIRC, anything that's GCN 1.2 or newer is supported (APU or dedicated)

Supported doesn't mean they are at the same feature level as fxgl used to be.

I am still waiting for OpenGL 4.1, the extensions listed here, and hardware video decoding, because from where I sitting glxinfo still reports OpenGL 3.0

https://www.geeks3d.com/20110609/asus-eee-pc-1215b-netbook-r...

So yeah, thanks very much for 2D and less than optimal 3D support.

You are correct - older hardware has suboptimal support. However - that laptop is at least eight years old. All the AMD graphics cards since Polaris have good support.

Nah, I rather bet on NVidia nowadays, it was a mistake to try to support AMD FOSS efforts and get this reward.

I recently switched to POP!_OS and the base install recognized my nvidia RTX 2070 which is very refreshing. no figuring out which drivers to install.

I have an nvidia graphics card, and the pop_os installer walked me through the driver installation and made everything pretty painless.

I do not game so I saved money by just going with a Radeon 570. It works great. I have multiple monitors, including my Apple Thunderbolt display. I was able to find an AIC for the desktop that added Thunderbolt and it "just worked" in PopOS .. at least for the video and audio. I never tried to get the webcam to work.

He said AMD Ryzen which works great with open source drivers that are part of the kernel. I've got a Ryzen 2 laptop and everything works perfectly under Ubuntu out of the box.

Not all Ryzen CPUs come with integrated graphics.

PopOS supports nvidia, intel and amd graphics pretty well out of the box (nvidia was a separate download, unsure if it still is).

I had trouble with the 5700 XT for the first few months though... Other than running out and buying a new graphics card series when it comes out, most people should be fine.

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