I’m planning on changing to Linux eventually, but my PC has a 4060ti. I have heard that Nvidia drivers are a pain to install, and I don’t have the means to change to a non-Nvidia GPU. Am I in trouble?
It’s trivial. Use Linux Mint or Debian, enable non-free repositories if required, and that’s pretty much it.
I’ve never had issues with Nvidia drivers. Your mileage may vary.
It’s usually just one command to run.
Sometimes it’s plug-n-play and everything works great. Sometimes you press the update Nvidia drivers button on your Ubuntu work computer and then need to tell IT you bricked your OS. YMMV
What distro are you using? It’s getting pretty simple at this point. I’m running Arch and it maybe took 5 minutes to fully set it up.
I’m thinking Mint.
Aren’t they installed by default on Mint? Definitely are on some distros, I think EndeavourOS and Garuda Linux for example
They are not. You have to install the proprietary driver from the GUI driver installer app with 2 clicks.
No, you’ll be fine. And some distros trivialize it. In my case I don’t get as good of framerates as I would on Windows, so there are some issues due to Nvidia not providing open source drivers, but it still works with Linux.
Ya, I must have started using Linux well after Ubuntu made it really easy to install drivers.
Granted you do need to know where to find the option to install drivers, at least you used to maybe its even easier now, but I havent used Ubuntu in a few years.
Once you found where the option to install was it was a click of a button
Depends on the distro. For most of the popular ones, it’s as difficult as clicking a shortcut.
It used to be a pain. Multiple versions that didn’t all work. Today it’s pretty painless. A lot of installers will actually do it for you now.
In arch (at least the last time I did it), it was just a matter of picking the right package and installing it with pacman
EndeavorOS’s installer will do it for you
I use Fedora these days. It didn’t do it automatically the last time I loaded from scratch (not an upgrade), but the rpm fusion team/repository made it simple. I just followed the crystal clear instructions on their website.
I think mint does it automatically with the installer…
Honestly I really don’t even think about nvidia drivers anymore.
The first trick is knowing that there’s a right package. The second trick is knowing what the right package is.
With CachyOS and Mint, it is very easy.
Remark: I disabled secure boot.
As long as you don’t make the mistake of downloading them directly from Nvidia, it should be straight-forward.
Mistake? These drivers work much better than the ones in the non-free debian repo, at least for me
Good God! According to the Debian wiki, they’re still on 535, no wonder they don’t work properly! Still, if you use Debian, you know what you’re getting in to. You’ll also have more *fun* when the kernel or nvidia drivers update.
Nah… to update the driver I just re run the file and it usually just works (Even in Wayland, on Debian unstable). The only time it broke was when I upgraded to kernel 6.12 and I had to manually install the open source modules because the ones that came with the proprietary ones had an issue that they later fixed, so it’s totally fine now. The only issue I have with the drivers is that when I wake up the PC from sleep I have to restart Plasma (only on Wayland tho)
Debian stable means stable in the sense of unchanging, not stable in the sense of no-issues.
Where am I supposed to get them then?
If you happen to choose OpenSUSE, the " install recommends " will detect nVidia and load some drivers to get it working, but you can also add a specific repo nVidia hosts for Leap and Tumbleweed and download the Drivers / Cuda etc. They work great, so ignore the previous commentor. Laptops with dual GPU need you to setup a switching app to save power, when you don’t need to power the nVidia. If your BIOS has a discrete graphics mode selection, you can choose hybrid, but if your OS has trouble you can set it to discrete only so nVidia is always used. I had to do this on one machine because the OS saw the two GPUs and was trying to treat them has two displays instead of one composite display choice
Whatever distro you pick will have instructions for where and how to install the drivers, if it doesn’t do so for you during the install. Ubuntu is probably most likely to do so easiest. I prefer Fedora for other reasons, which is also easy to get nvidia working, but sightly less easy than Ubuntu where it’s a single checkbox during OS install.
Each distro has it’s own way of installing the drivers, Mint uses a driver Manager GUI, endeavour OS uses the nvidia-inst script, but ultimately, they come the repositories of the distro.
From you distros package manager
depends on your Distro, for Linux Mint it’s just the Driver Manager.
To access the Driver Manager in Linux Mint, follow these steps:
- Click on the Menu (Taskbar) in the lower-left corner of your screen.
- Navigate to Administration.
- Click on Driver Manager.
Load Device Manager for Nvidia Drivers on Linux Mint
Once you have opened the Driver Manager, follow these steps to install the Nvidia drivers:
- The Driver Manager will prompt you for your password. Enter your password and click on Authenticate.
- The Driver Manager will scan your system for available drivers. Once the scanning is complete, you will see a list of available drivers for your graphics card.
- Select the recommended Nvidia driver from the list.
- Click on Apply Changes to start the installation process.
Then reboot.
For most problems you can really just google stuff like “Linux Mint Nvidia Drivers”
If you are on something like openSUSE, nVidia hosts a repo just for OpenSUSE Leap ams Tumbleweed, and that’s exactly where you get them from, and they work.
True, but you’re not going the Nvidia website, finding and downloading a .run file, manually installing it, and then manually maintaining it which is what I was talking about.
Fair, I mean I have done that too, and would not recommend LOL
It ranges from “automatic” to “infuriating”.
If you have Secure Boot enabled, there are some hoops to jump through. Read the docs and follow the steps for DKMS.
Depending on your distro and your requirements, you might want to install the drivers manually from Nvidia rather than using older drivers from your distro.
If you need CUDA, god help you. Choose a distro that makes this easy and use containers to avoid dependency hell. Note that this is not any easier on Windows (at least not last I checked, which was a few years ago).
Do not follow this advice OP. Never install the drivers manually from Nvidia unless you’re an expert and have a very specific reason to go this route.
With Mint, just use the driver manager app and you’ll be good.
I mean I use zorin which is an ubuntu spin just made to be as usable as possible out of the box so its super easy. Barely an inconvenience. I see someone mentions bricking but I have not encountered it but I tend to use old hardware soooooo… oh and i should say old nough that a 4060ti would seem pretty new.
I use mint, and it’s easier than on windows… You open driver manager, tap on the newest driver, click apply. Then restart.
its not terrible, it just sucks that its not automatic. i am not on windows and dont want to be treated like i am.
yay -S nvidia-open
Are the open source drivers good now?
According to the Arch Wiki, it’s the driver recommended by NVIDIA and, anecdotally, I was having issues in Wayland and with gamescope/HDR until I switched to the nvidia-open drivers.
How is the performance in games?
Trivial on Debian, see https://wiki.debian.org/NvidiaGraphicsDrivers
Source : been gaming nearly daily on Debian with 2080ti for years now. Sometimes also tinkering with local AI via containers.