There are many reasons to dislike Nvidia on Linux. Here is a little thing that bugs me all the time, the updates. Normally the system updates would be quick and fast, but with the proprietary drivers of Nvidia involved, it gets quiet slow process. And I am not even talking about any other problem I encounter, just about the updates.
As an Archlinux based system user (EndeavourOS to be precise), I get new Kernel updates all the time. That means every time a new Kernel version is installed, the Nvidia driver DKMS has to be installed too. And that is basically the slowest part. But that’s not too bad, even though it’s doing this twice for each Kernel I have once.
What’s more infuriating is, if you also happen to use Flatpaks for a very few applications. I really don’t have many Flatpaks at all. Yet, the Nvidia drivers are installed in 7 versions or what?! And they are full downloads, each 340 MB or more. This takes ages and is the only part that takes long to update Flatpak system. I always do flatpak remove --unused to make sure nothing useless is present. /RANT (EDIT: Just typos corrected.)
I was wondering what the fuss was about until I read flatpak. I don’t use those, no reason to on Arch since everything is in the AUR. But it was interesting to read.
@1984 Unfortunately not everything is in the AUR or I do not want to trust everyone on the AUR. And there are other reasons to use Flatpak over native packaging (including AUR):
And that’s basically it (ok there is Flatseal too… but that does not count to our discussion). Everything else is installed through native packaging. So there is not much reason to use Flatpak and I just started with it recently. But there are sometimes reasons for.
Every major Linux dist has community repository, arch isn’t special. Arch users are like people doing CrossFit, dude No one cares if you use arch.
Oh that’s where you are wrong… Arch is actually really special. No other distro comes close to being so easy to install the latest version of software. I’ve run almost all major Debian based linuxes also and they are mostly frustrating in comparison.
You just can’t find the software you need, or you have to download it manually, meaning it’s not even updated by your package manager. People resort to flatpak and the likes just to be able to have the software they need since it’s not packaged in any other way.
Arch is just better and I highly recommend it.
I’m not new to Linux, I know what arch is. And Debian isnt the only alternative to arch. Like I said every Major distribution has community repositories.
Ubuntu has packstall, Fedora rpm fusion, opensuse probably has some aswell, void has community repositories in xbps. And guess what they are all pretty up to date.
I’m not going to install a Linux distro based on the community repository, I’m not even running any of the major distro, because I don’t care what packages are available. I have a few programs that I run, and it’s not that hard to make other programs work, when you know what to do.
cough Tumbleweed
AUR is not the same as the community repository on other distros though. Community repositories on other distros contains pre-built packages supplied by community members, while AUR contains build scripts that let you download the source code directly from the vendor website, compile it into a package and install it in your system with a single command, so you’ll often get the bleeding edge version faster than most community repositories on other distros.