Comment by eartheaterrr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eartheaterrr | Hacker News Reader

In my early stages of learning to program, I had numerous issues with running Linux desktop on my Nvidia chipped laptop. I remember the frustration very clearly - I hardly slept for ~3 days trying to fix my broken Ubuntu installation and I was unable to continue with my programming exercises. I couldn't afford a new laptop, much less a MacBook, and Windows didn't support bash, nor did Windows have the community support that I needed. My feeling of failure in getting my machine to run was demoralizing, so much so that I considered quitting my pursuit of an IT career.

As painful as it was, I managed to get my machine working. But it led me to never trust an Nvidia chip for my Linux desktop ever again. I wish I had documented the insane finagling I had to perform just to get my machine in a workable state. Maybe a year later, I encountered another Nvidia issue on my Ubuntu laptop, and I posted my notes on a blog: http://www.lukeswart.net/2014/05/nvidia-optimus-with-bumbleb... I wonder how many aspiring computer professionals have quit because of the barrier in getting a Linux desktop to run smoothly.

I am indebted to the community members who devote their time and expertise online to help Linux desktop users. Even if they can be a little snarky :-) If someone is learning to program and only has a hand-me-down laptop with an Nvidia gpu, then a Linux desktop may be the only reasonable option. I just hope this can be more accessible. But as the author points out, Nvidia is only making this problem worse.

I worked at a company that exclusively used Linux desktops (we were effectively a team of remote Linux tech support/sysadmins).

Every week or two I'd reboot my machine for whatever reason, and it would boot load a minor point release kernel update,and X would fail, and I'd have to go manually recompile the nvidia drivers for my kernel and then I could start X again and then I could get back to work. It was one of those things that would add twenty minutes to your workday for no really good reason other than Dell had shipped nvidia chips.

This was made doubly frustrating for a coworker who had a habit of bumping into her computer and hitting the power button with her foot (a giant, easy-to-hit target right in the centre of it). It would reboot and, surprise, go rebuild your kernel module so you can use X, while you're in the middle of helping a hospital get the x-rays of a patient so they can get him into emergency surgery.

Personally, I got used to it. I'd reboot intentionally every however often so that I could deal with it on my own terms, but it was such a hassle that I always wished for an AMD or Matrox card so I wouldn't have to deal with their BS.

If you installed the driver with DMKS it should rebuild it for you automatically whenever you update the kernel.

DKMS is a relevantly relevantly development in the decades of pain nvidia has inflicted on linux users.

> relevantly relevantly

"relatively recent"?

...yes. lost a battle with autocorrect after a few beers.

Well that is weird. I built a desktop back in 2008 and fitted it with a Nvidia 9800GT. Installed Debian, then installed the nvidia-driver[0] package. That comes with the DKMS package[1] which builds the source and auto installs the module (and does this also for any new kernel update). Literally never had a problem. Don't think suspend ever worked, but this is a desktop so I didn't care. Also built a machine for my grandma back in 2008, went with the Debian and nvidia combo again. She's still using it, no problem.

I think the current issue with nvidia is they are refusing to support the new wayland stuff and ditch X server. In that case, I've got my eye on an ATI RX460.

[0] https://packages.debian.org/stretch/nvidia-driver [1] https://packages.debian.org/stretch/nvidia-kernel-dkms

I've been using Nvidia cards since the Geforce 4, and I've never had any noteworthy issues, aside from a buggy version here and there (easily fixed with a rollback to the previous version.)

However, for laptops and any other machine where graphics power is not a high priority, I just stick with basic integrated graphics, they do seem to behave better in regards to suspend and other power management.

Nvidia Optimus was (and perhaps still is, i never updated on that) the only issue i had with Nvidia and Linux the last 15 years that i have Nvidia GPUs. I've used Nvidia on all my machines and always boughts Nvidia GPUs because of their excellent OpenGL support and drivers.

So you probably was just unlucky and ended up in the only fully unsupported case that has happened with Nvidia and Linux in the last decade (at least as far as consumer GPUs are concerned anyway). I did the same and i was annoyed by Nvidia, but after searching a bit i learned that they did try to support Optimus on Linux initially, but some developer refused to allow them use some symbols (or something, i'm not 100% into kernel development) in his code under a license that was compatible with their driver. So they dropped it.

I think they did something with Bumblebee some time later, but last time i used Bumblebee was incredible slow compared to Windows (whereas in my other machines Linux and Windows have the same performance in OpenGL) so i never tried that myself. That laptop remained a Windows-only machine.

But yeah, beyond that for me Nvidia was always pretty much the only choice exactly because of their Linux support. Although i might consider AMD at some point if Mesa implements GL_ARB_compatibility and compatibility profilers properly (i used to think this wont happen, but AFAIK there was recently some work towards the former, so who knows).

I ran into issues with Nvidia graphic cards. Whereas, When I put in the AMD card and installed the firmware package (firmware-linux-nonfree in Debian), everything worked and no issues on upgrades.

Now, for GL compatibility profiles, if they cause problems, are obsolete and intentionally not supported, better we are off.

Well, it depends on how long ago it was.

When I went to engineering school I used Nvidia with linux and worked flawlessly. It was the best vendor by far, because they needed to support Linux for Pixar and other guys.

Now it is the other way around, basically because of Nvidia success. They have a monopoly on practice and could do whatever they want.

They only care about Windows. We have Vulkan, Metal, OpenGL and DirectX backends for our software. We only debug in DirectX with Nvidia because it is the only thing they support well.

If we could get rid of Nvidia for most of what we do, like Apple did, we will without a doubt.

ha.

Had all those same problems with an ATI-chipped laptop.

Your problems were not nvidia-specific.

Also: Windows has supported bash for a very long time - under Cygwin. (also Cygwin used to have pretty decent community support, back in the 1990's).

I'll say this also: Ubuntu is probably the EASIEST distro to get into a working state; with either Nvidia or ATI. (the proprietary drivers have their warts - but the worst are in their installers) ... (as long as you aren't itching to get special features working, like power management, or switching, etc - those things DO work, and CAN be made to work, with given chipsets, and kernels, and driver revs - if you're smart, and lucky... for the rest of us, there's the open source drivers, which are generally pretty good, and have gotten MUCH better over the past 10 years).

There's also Msys/GnuWin which is of similar age to Cygwin and avoids some of the interoperability issues Cygwin apps have.

I have been using ubuntu daily for the past 7 years with very few issues.

If you can buy a laptop that is known to work that is best. If you have existing hardware then it is sort of a crapshoot.

Desktop is easier. Just stick to intel (CPU, iGPU, ethernet, and wireless) and you will have no problems at all, and even with some realtek and broadcom stuff thrown in it usually works.

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