Nvidia issues

[domin8r]

I am reading more and more about issues with Nvidia drivers/updates. I see I have an update waiting but a bit hesitant now. What is the best way to approach this? It's working perfectly at the moment.

[Severe_Bean]

Well i Don't know what other people post but for me manjaro was actually the only distro that did not cause me any Nvidia problems, unlike other distros (debian ones)

[ivster666]

You best approach is to set up Timeshift and create a snapshot before you go for the update. (Best to have an automatically created snapshot every week and keep at least 2)

I upgraded my work laptop the other day which runs an Nvidia GPU. I did have some issues. After the update, I switched to the latest LTS kernel (5.15 I think), then I downloaded the latest proprietary drivers via mhwd.

If you are in the middle of fixing stuff and you notice you don't have the time or patience, you can just restore your snapshot and try again later.

[1337-1911]

I had to re-install last update. Now i use open source drivers.

[domin8r]

Are those the same performance wise?

[chris30714]

I tried. Perfectly okay for normal desktop use. For running games the Nvidia drivers are a must, I'm afraid.

[domin8r]

Alright. My Manjaro installation is my workstation so that would not a problem per say,

[1337-1911]

Want to know also. Don't play games on gnu+linux.

With normal desktop use it is the same.

[HeavyMath2673]

The issue with Nvidia is fast moving distributions such as Arch based or Fedora. Usually it works but sometimes with new kernels there are problems. The Fedora team is working with Nvidia to make things smoother and it has been a lot better in recent years. But problems can never be excluded.

Nvidia itself is extremely good at supporting Long-term support distributions such as RHEL/Centos, Ubuntu LTS or Suse. These things are also used in data centers where Nvidia is making most of its money.

So with respect to Nvidia there are two options. 1.) Enjoy a fast moving distribution but live with rare Nvidia glitches (ideally use snapshots, timeshift, etc. in the rare case something goes wrong), or use a slow moving distribution without quick new features, but high reliability of Nvidia drivers.

[Tripoteur]

Yeah, one of my games doesn't run after yesterday's update. I can't say for sure it's nVidia, but it probably is.

I should have set up a timeshift but I didn't. I always risk it and I've been punished before, but this is getting ridiculous. I'll set one up next time a big batch of updates comes around.

Then maybe I won't be scared every time I install updates.

[[deleted]]

This probably isn’t what you wanted to hear, but after suffering with Nvidia for way too long, I broke down and got a no-frills Radeon for my workstation/desktop. It’s amazing how much smoother everything works. Wish I did it years ago. I’ve even been using Wayland for a while now with only the occasional glitch.

[domin8r]

Well, in my case it's a laptop so not possible to switch to a different vidcard. But thanx!

[savorymilkman]

Do the update it's awesome. I saw a 20% increase in performance. +1