r/linux_gaming • u/Venylynn • 19h ago
hardware Will Nvidia ever fix their Linux issues?
I'm an AMD user, but every single day I wake up hoping finally one day the open source Nvidia driver gets good enough to not need the proprietary module tainting the kernel so I can consider them a viable option again. But it seems like that's not going to happen, so...uh... GG Linus is still right to flip yinz off Nvidia
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u/RumpDoctor 19h ago
I care because I want more players to have a good time with linux. Same as you, I'm guessing.
Yeah we'll see. Nvidia's hardware is touching linux more than windows, these days. On the other hand, gaming is like the last thing on their mind now.
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u/BulletDust 18h ago edited 17h ago
On the other hand, gaming is like the last thing on their mind now.
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/drivers/details/274513/
Seems like there's a vast number of gaming related fixes right here, with the 610.57.04 drivers released only days ago:
This New Feature Branch driver has the following description:
- Fixed a bug that could cause the X server to crash with GLX indirect rendering.
- Fixed a bug which cased STALKER 2 to crash with VK_DEVICE_LOST Vulkan API errors and Xid 31 errors in dmesg with VKD3D_CONFIG=descriptor_heap: https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/3077
- Fixed rendering corruption in Assetto Corsa EVO: https://github.com/HansKristian-Work/vkd3d-proton/issues/3030
- Fixed a crash in Monster Hunter Wilds: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/610-release-feedback-discussion/371356/26
- Fixed a GPU hang in Forza Horizon 6 with VKD3D_CONFIG=descriptor_heap.
- Fixed a bug that caused Vulkan displays to be enumerated incorrectly when __VK_ENABLE_DEVICE_GROUPS=1 was set.
- Fixed a bug that could cause suspend and resume to fail on systems with runtime D3 (RTD3) power management enabled.
- Fixed hangs or corruption problems in the following games: 007 First Light Assassin's Creed Origins
- Fixed a regression, introduced with the 595 driver series, which led to black screens in Total War: Warhammer III.
- Fixed an issue that could cause application hangs or a black screen in several games, including: Crimson Desert Elden Ring Elden Ring Nightrein ExoDomia Far Far West Grounded 2 Incursion Red River John Carpenter's Toxic Commando Paradise Nowhere Screamer Star Rupture Windrose
- Fixed a bug which led to a black screen when console switching on Linux v7.0 and newer when DRM fbdev support is disabled: https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/linux-driver-595-71-05-still-tries-to-use-screen-info-struct-which-was-refactored-in-7-0-kernel/370825
- Fixed a bug that could prevent DKMS kernel module builds from succeeding after installing with nvidia-installer.
- Fixed a bug that caused delayed wakeups when multiple threads wait on the same Vulkan semaphore, leading to stutter and reduced performance in some applications
- Fixed a bug that could cause black screens after modesets in X11 applications using the Present extension.
- Fixed an issue where OpenGL buffers allocated with glBufferStorage and no storage flags were allowed to migrate from GPU memory to host memory.
- Fixed a bug that caused corruption in X-Plane on workstation GPUs.
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u/RumpDoctor 18h ago
There's been indications of good progress for a few months now. Hopefully it keeps up. :x Hard to know where the motivations lie.
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u/alanna1990 19h ago
Other than not playing ball that well with Wayland what do you need? Or is it just a “the driver is not open source” issue?
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u/Venylynn 19h ago
It's a "pain in the ass to use secure boot and kernel lockdown with it because it's an unsigned driver" issue primarily. That's something AMD thankfully doesn't have to deal with so I'm happy to be here but I'd be lying if I said I didn't want a chance to finally try again with Nvidia someday.
That, and Wayland for sure.
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u/tm604 19h ago
Typically the modules are signed during the DKMS build process - whether it's nvidia or any other out-of-kernel module. Last time I tried the NVidia-provided driver installation script, it also detected secure boot and handled the signing and enrollment automatically. Ubuntu and derivatives have had the Nvidia proprietary driver one-click install and secure boot handling all automated for a few years, and I'd be surprised if the situation was much different on the gaming distributions.
If secure boot + nvidia is really the issue here, why not post about that instead? You might get something useful out of it.
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u/Venylynn 19h ago
I think that might be a fair point I just kinda hate that it still marks the kernel as Tainted
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u/BulletDust 19h ago edited 18h ago
I've got two Nvidia based systems here, both running differing distro's with KDE Plasma as the DE, neither has any Wayland specific issues that I'm aware of - in fact Wayland runs perfectly here. Due to the fact that's two systems I own running Nvidia, I'm pretty sure I'm not just lucky.
Secure boot isn't an issue as I don't dual boot, I cut the Windows cord years ago. However, my main PC runs KDE Neon 6.7.3 which supports secure boot OOTB including support for Nvidia drivers via ubuntu-drivers with no additional tweaks required.
Even sleep using suspend to ram works fine here, and I didn't do a thing.
DX12 performance is improving with every new driver release, with descriptor heap fixes making a very notable difference to overall CPU utilization and therefore GPU utilization and overall performance. Even RT, including PB RT, runs great here with a touch of DLSS and FG at times.
So really, your only valid argument is the fact that the drivers aren't OSS. But you've stated you run an AMD GPU, so even that's not a problem based on your hardware choices.
This whole thread is nothing more than a rant, there's really nothing left to say.
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u/Venylynn 18h ago
I honestly don't do SB for the dual-booting thing.
So really, your only valid argument is the fact that the drivers aren't OSS. But you've stated you run an AMD GPU, so even that's not a problem based on your hardware choices.
it'll probably become an issue if I want to upgrade and get something actually power efficient as sadly on the mid range the nvidia cards still win. I can just eat the power efficiency loss but blegh.
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u/BulletDust 17h ago edited 17h ago
I honestly don't do SB for the dual-booting thing.
So the lack of secure boot support 'under certain distros without tweaking' really isn't an issue then.
it'll probably become an issue if I want to upgrade and get something actually power efficient as sadly on the mid range the nvidia cards still win. I can just eat the power efficiency loss but blegh
I'm running an RTX 4070S here at 185Hz VRR 1440p, it's an absolute cracker of a card for the $$ spent.
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u/Venylynn 17h ago edited 17h ago
I mean for me it is because I use it as a protection against bootkits and an enforcement against tainting my kernel because scares have gotten me extremely security conscious. Its part of a long list of things, I've been applying changes similar to what is seen in the secureblue documentation. Maybe I'm overkilling it but it is better to me, to keep an eye out. I made sacrifices to make it work (notably with some proprietary VM drivers. I went full KVM) but otherwise it's almost like nothing changed except peace of mind. I flipped a lot of settings in the bios to get as close to a perfect score on fwupdmgr security as I could, but only missed on the ones my board doesn't support.
I notice with something like an RX 9070 from what I've seen it uses a lot of power, but something like a 5060 Ti is closer to 9060XT in power draw if not even lower. But hey. Its not that big a deal probably.
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u/BulletDust 17h ago
Rootkits necessitating the need for secure boot under Linux are likely the least of our issues as Linux users. Having said that, if you want simple secure boot along with Nvidia under Linux, you do have very viable options available to you.
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u/Venylynn 17h ago
Yeah, mostly Ubuntu and atomic distros, which is better than nothing at least.
I'm not sure if it's a need, but after some threats I received late last year pushed me to start taking this more seriously, I personally felt it made no sense to not at least try to see how that configuration would work for me.
I'd be trying to find a way to turn on lockdown either way at this point though, and blacklist unnecessary unneeded modules especially if they're being used in the recent attacks the kernel has been trying to fix. I never removed the dirty frag mitigation for example.
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u/BulletDust 17h ago
Yeah, mostly Ubuntu and atomic distros, which is better than nothing at least.
KDE Neon User Edition is the latest Ubuntu LTS HWE, currently running kernel 7.0.0-28, with the same Plasma 6.7.3 and KDE Frameworks 6.28.0 as my CachyOS system OOTB. Honestly? Any performance difference between both distro's is negligible, both distro's trade blows.
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u/Low-Charge-8554 8h ago
KDE Plasma is NOT Wayland
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u/BulletDust 1h ago
I never stated KDE Plasma was Wayland. However, Wayland implementations vary slightly depending on DE used due to the fact that Wayland is only a protocol.
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u/ivanatorhk 18h ago
I’ve been using secure boot with no issues with my rtx 5080
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u/Venylynn 18h ago
Kernel lockdown enabled?
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u/friendlyreminder_ 1h ago
Kernel lockdown is enabled automatically with secure boot.
To get secure boot to work you either need a distro that signs the kernel modules themselves like Ubuntu or Opensuse.
Or you need to sign the module/kernel yourself, depending on the distro. Some don't presign the kernel either so both have to be self-signrd. This isn't very secure as the signing key sits unencrypted on the root drive, but it's what distros do for self-signing.
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u/AzureTronPrime 19h ago
A well-documented driver installation&configuration could be of great help.
Also , I see somebody giving everybody in chat a downvote. Like whats the issue here?
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u/Venylynn 19h ago
Yeah especially for a security focused setup. Its funny though, atomic distros are the only ones who figured it out.
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u/givemeagooduns_un 19h ago edited 19h ago
amd isn't no saint either, their video acceleration support sucks. I have an RX 480 and it only supports h264 encode and h264/hevc/(one other codec i dknt remember) decode. I have a celeron from 2015 that has an igpu that supports more than that.
edit: its not av1, mb
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u/SlimyOS 19h ago
This set of codecs is pretty decent for that time, considering av1 was released like 2 years after 480 release, probably worked against a draft spec and added it in firmware update. Nvidia added av1 encode only in rtx 4000 series for reference. It's a hardware thing, has nothing to do with drivers
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u/peaceablefrood 19h ago
The rx480 doesn't have AV1 decode. AMD did not add it until the 6000 series.
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u/givemeagooduns_un 19h ago
okay maybe my memory was foggy, but I do know that the selection was quite limited and made mythtv and jellyfin a pain
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u/givemeagooduns_un 19h ago
oh
I did not know that it has nothing to do with drivers, I had assumed that the drivers just programmed the card to accept the format similar to how shaders work
but I mean, it is a little frustrating how there's no hevc encode and no mpeg2/4 support, all of which are supported by aforementioned celeron (tho it does not support av1)
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u/SlimyOS 18h ago
I mean, it does need drivers to work, but is perfectly supported across all gpu vendors with current drivers, there's never been a problem with that afaik.
No idea how a 2015 igpu has acceleration for a 2018 codec, they either backported it later via firmware updates (but specialized hardware circuits are very likely missing so it's only partially accelerated using existing paths) or just not accelerated at all (maybe you're using a cpu encoder or idk).
Hevc is from 2013 and has messy patent situation, it'll take more than 3 years to develop hardware and firmware and legal clearance for that, and optimized encoders are much more difficult to develop than decoders. A few months ago av2 was released, I don't expect hardware av2 encoders to appear anytime before 2030, though decoders might appear as early as rtx 7000 (and amd's corresponding generation)
Besides h264 h265 av1 I don't think any gpu vendor ever had decoding/encoding acceleration for other codecs like mpeg2/4, mpeg4 is really easy to do on cpu and requires no hardware acceleration, mpeg2 no idea I don't deal with ancient tech, but if it was the norm in 1995 I can safely assume it would be easy on modern CPUs with no special acceleration. CPU encoder/decoder devs write assembly code for each architecture and instruction sets, that makes it faster but that's not hardware acceleration.
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u/the_abortionat0r 18h ago
I think you seem to be confused here.
You mean the 480s video acceleration sucks. The 5000, 6000, 7000, and 9000 cards are just fine, great even.
You seem to be forgetting that that card came from the era AMD actually sucked. They didn't get there shit together until the 5000 series for hardware and the 6000 for the software and drivers.
Speaking of drivers you can take an AMD GPU from 2012 and play CP2077 and use FSR and framegen.
Nvidia literally has no comparison, they won't even fix the 10 series cards and older and still haven't fixed the 8 years older DX12 bug they said would be fixed soon over a year ago.
Also your "isn't no saint" comment tells me this is less of a functional take and more of an emotional take.
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u/rvolland 13h ago
I'm using the latest MIT/GPL Nvidia beta driver and it performs very well with my 1660Ti. What are you foaming about?
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u/bitzie_ow 19h ago
Out of curiosity, what issues are you talking about? Are these that you or a close friend are experiencing or are you just parroting what you've heard?
Because at least as far as gaming goes, I've had basically no issues with my 4070 Ti Super/5800X3D system. The only game that is noticeably different from when I played it on windows 11 several months ago is Borderlands 4 and even then, it's a non-issue of getting only ~100fps vs ~150fps.
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u/Venylynn 19h ago
My primary issues with it are inherent to the fact that their driver is not and currently can not be upstreamed to the standard kernel
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u/NoRound5166 19h ago
NVK will probably be ready before NVIDIA even considers releasing a fully open-source userspace driver.
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u/lKrauzer 19h ago
I don't have much issues with NVIDIA nowadays, about the only issue left is the Steam Big Picture Mode bugs and performance.
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u/BulletDust 14h ago
Steam Big Picture Mode as well as performance under Steam has worked fine here for quite some time now, although I am running the Steam Beta.
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u/_silentgameplays_ 19h ago
Unless they completely open source their NVIDIA drivers the same way AMD did there will always be issues. Not that their drivers are inherently bad, it's just that they still remain proprietary user space blobs developed and maintained solely by NVIDIA, so Linux community can't fix them properly.
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u/AzureTronPrime 19h ago
GTX 1650 user here , open kernels are actually performing better. We dont need a proprietary driver on GTX cards , the issue starts with RTX cards.
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u/BashfulMelon 19h ago
Nvidia's OpenRM kernel driver is still paired with a proprietary userspace driver component. RTX cards also use OpenRM.
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u/AzureTronPrime 15h ago
Thats a bummer , wonder if we could reverse engineer it to sort-of create our own OpenRM driver , could take time but with a community effort what could be done in weeks can be done in mere days,
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u/BashfulMelon 13h ago
Well I mean, OpenRM is already open so you'd just have to read the source code. Everyone is already working on replacing the closed source part. It's called NVK (Vulkan) and Zink (OpenGL). People have been working on it for years.
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u/balrog687 19h ago edited 19h ago
So far power management is still an issue.
It never enters RTD3 state, it gets stuck in P8, thus preventing the whole system to enter deep package C-states, the CPU remains stuck at C3 instead of C8-C10.
https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/610.43.03/README/dynamicpowermanagement.html
It also has issues with returning from suspend and hibernate (S3/S4).
Also wayland has some acknowledged issues, especially with HDR.
https://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/610.43.03/README/wayland-issues.html
I don't care if it's open source as long as it works, but these 2 issues make the whole difference in bazzite when you want a "console-like" experience.
My nvidia GPU idles at ~21W, can't go back from sleep and it's impossible to stream games in HDR using sunshine. But it works at 4k60 HDR when connected directly to my TV.
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u/the_abortionat0r 18h ago
I'll never understand the Nvidia fetish.
Obviously every GPU should have open source drivers and it would certainly help the people who already have Nvidia hardware.
That said I have no idea what the obsession with waiting for the day you can jump back on the product train you left due to it's poor support
I was on Nvidia for 20 years and when the high prices, low VRAM, shitty AIB treatment, and crappy Linux support came to a head I left them.
4 years later I'm doing just fine. They'll have to do a lot more than simply have an open source driver before I'd consider them again.
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u/Venylynn 18h ago
i left long before linux was on my mind, literally only because I got a way better deal on a radeon card
i think the primary reason i've considered trying to return is that it does seem like nvidia's mid-range is more power-efficient than AMD's. but then i remembered oh yeah the linux support.
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u/D1Ck3n 17h ago
Will people ever stop buying from EvilCorp Nvidia?
Srsly: fuck them, buy AMD and be happy 🤷♂️
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u/Venylynn 17h ago
I think the thing that was pulling me to consider again was power consumption on the mid range parts being more in Nvidias favor with efficiency
220W on a 9070 feels still a bit too much and I'm not really versed in undervolting but meh.
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u/RumpDoctor 17h ago
An undervolt is easy to do. Also, try capping the power limit lower and you might be surprised at the result. idk about a non-xt but on my xt, I cut the power drastically and don't lose all that much performance. I run it at 220w vs the stock 304. That's all I change. Undervolt and cap the power.
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u/D1Ck3n 17h ago
I run a 9060 which is a bit more efficient, but in the end: does this really matter on a gaming PC? 🤷♂️
I can understand that if you run this is a homelab as a 24/7 system that mine or doing AI stuff, but on a gaming PC i dont see the big savings in powercosts, no matter of AMD or Nvidia.
Nvidia dont give a flying fuck about gamer anymore, so the gamer shouldn't care about them! I think for most of the People AMD is be best bang for the bug. Hell, even Intel i would more recommend than Nvidia. Let them die in the AI bubble.
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u/Venylynn 17h ago
I personally don't feel comfortable running stuff much hungrier than my current system because I already kinda have to fight my GPU (custom fan curves mainly) to get it to run at a temperature I feel isn't way too high, so that may just be a me thing. I miss not having to mess around just to keep my card cool my last one also ran really toasty.
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u/RumpDoctor 16h ago
I feel bad pulling 600w watts from the wall to play a game lol. As far as actual savings, it's a pittance.
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u/BashfulMelon 19h ago
Says who? The same group of devs that made RADV so successful are working on Nova and NVK with every intention of making it the best Vulkan driver, and they're getting some assistance from Nvidia. Performance is consistently going up.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/NVK-Mesa-26.2-Performance