nvidia just works better on linux. Well… I heard that’s changed so this may no longer be relevant
This isn’t and has never been the case. Nvidia and AMD are comparable performance-wise on Linux these days, but since the Nvidia drivers are proprietary, they’re automatically harder to deal with than the open-source AMD drivers. For that reason alone, AMD is easier to use with Linux out of the box, because the Linux kernel has AMD drivers built in. You still have to install userspace drivers in either case, but the open-source AMD userspace drivers have outperformed Nvidia’s proprietary drivers for a long time. It’s only been within the last couple years that Nvidia’s proprietary drivers have reached parity with AMD’s open-source ones.
For a long time your options were a closed source driver from nVidia that worked, an open source reverse engineered driver for nVidia cards that didn’t work, a closed source AMD driver that wasn’t very good and lagged behind the PC version by a big distance, or an open source AMD driver that lacked many features and didn’t support the newest cards.
Maybe in the last 5 years things have started to change, but for a long time, if you were willing to use the closed-source nvidia drivers, they were just the good option that worked for most cards.
I’ve had a Nvidia card for a long time (just built my new pc 2 months ago) Wayland worked mostly ok for me the last year. But I’ve used x11 until 2023, so I can’t really sayhow it was.
I’m still using my EVGA GeForce 1070. When it’s time to upgrade, I’m going with AMD.
Only reason I don’t is because:
nvidia just works better on linux. Well… I heard that’s changed so this may no longer be relevant
I don’t think AMD GPUs work well compared to nVidia with Davinci Resolve
DLSS/Ray Tracing. Even though I never use ray tracing because even the first card with it couldn’t handle it 😅
This isn’t and has never been the case. Nvidia and AMD are comparable performance-wise on Linux these days, but since the Nvidia drivers are proprietary, they’re automatically harder to deal with than the open-source AMD drivers. For that reason alone, AMD is easier to use with Linux out of the box, because the Linux kernel has AMD drivers built in. You still have to install userspace drivers in either case, but the open-source AMD userspace drivers have outperformed Nvidia’s proprietary drivers for a long time. It’s only been within the last couple years that Nvidia’s proprietary drivers have reached parity with AMD’s open-source ones.
Er, yeah, it used to be a huge problem.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1788388
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1954162-which-distro-has-better-driver-support
https://www.pcworld.com/article/427004/why-nvidia-graphics-cards-are-the-worst-for-open-source-but-the-best-for-linux-gaming.html
For a long time your options were a closed source driver from nVidia that worked, an open source reverse engineered driver for nVidia cards that didn’t work, a closed source AMD driver that wasn’t very good and lagged behind the PC version by a big distance, or an open source AMD driver that lacked many features and didn’t support the newest cards.
Maybe in the last 5 years things have started to change, but for a long time, if you were willing to use the closed-source nvidia drivers, they were just the good option that worked for most cards.
It was the case prior to 2015 or so before the amd open source drivers actually became good.
They didn’t exist prior to 2014. Amd also required proprietary drivers and were a significantly worse experience than Nvidia back then.
I switched to AMD because nvidia worked like dogshit on Linux. Especially when I needed Wayland.
I really dunno
FSR is the replacement. But RTX would be slower on AMD but still good enough for some people.
I’ve had a Nvidia card for a long time (just built my new pc 2 months ago) Wayland worked mostly ok for me the last year. But I’ve used x11 until 2023, so I can’t really sayhow it was.
Ray tracing is about to get WAY better with DLSS 3.5…damn it AMD, why can’t you guys have borderline useless, but also really cool features :C