So I’ve been a little wary of installing Linux on my desktop since I have a 1660 ti as a graphics card and read that there are some problems with drivers and such. Are my fears unfounded/outdated? Anyone experienced any problems and what Linux distro should I look to use for gaming?
Running KDE Neon here, my Nvidia experience has been faultless, adding the PPA and installing the drivers is reliable and straightforward. Wayland works acceptably, but running a single 4k 27" monitor X11 works perfectly, so at this point in time I see no reason to swap to Wayland - I’m sure in time I’ll adopt Wayland, I’m simply not quite ready to drop my ability to create custom fan profiles using GWE just yet.
Nvidia X Server settings are nice, as is nvidia-smi.
I have 3060 Ti and have had no trouble. I even used it with Arch and Gentoo, and all I needed was installing the drivers (the package manager did it) and it worked out of the box.
I’ve been gaming on Nvidia cards since I switched over 3 years ago and only had a few issues.
On initial install, the opensource nvidia drivers wouldn’t work - I had to go into the terminal and select the proprietary ones. That’s pretty much it, really. Other than that, I’ve had about the same amount of issues with AMD(integrated graphics) and Nvidia.
On the plus side, Nvidia has a nice little control panel. It’s basic, doesn’t have all that GeForce Experience stuff, plus there are command line utilities like nvidia-smi(basic info) and nvtop(temp, clock, usage, memory stats). AMD doesn’t have a control panel, that I’m aware of.
As far as distro, I’d say just chose the one you’re most comfortable with. I don’t think there are any huge differences between them concerning gaming performance.
As long as you can get the driver installed, you’re fine. The only time that might be a problem is if your distro updates something that breaks compatibility with the existing driver, and X refuses to start. You’ll need to know how to install the latest driver from the command line, but then you should be good.
I’ve been running a 3080 with proprietary drivers on manjaro for a couple of years (I would not recommend manjaro, I now recommend endeavorOS if you want something Arch based) and it’s fine. I don’t think I’ve ever hit an nvidia specific bug.
I’ve been gaming on Linux with nvidia gpus for over a decade, it is fine… There is a lot of negativity about nvidia because the drivers are not open. But they work, and I have not personally had any issues.
Fears are relatively unfounded. 1660 Ti is still a relatively new card, so you don’t even have to worry about having to use legacy drivers. Just install the nvidia driver package from your distro and you should be good to go.
I’ve been running my 3090 and it’s been working well for most games.
The biggest pain you’ll face is identifying which driver version you’ll need, and whether you should be on Wayland or Xorg.
Once you figure that out, in my experience (GTX 1060 on Fedora), you’re golden. Installation itself isn’t hard then.
I use GTX 1660 Ti and I had some problems, but nothing of impossible to solve. I use Arch with zen kernel and nvidia-dkms with XFCE as DE.
List of games that I play:
Apex Legends, Hogwarts Legacy, Grime, Ironsight, Albion Online, Nostale with Steam.
League of Legends with Lutris.
Vampyr, Bioshock Remastered 1 and 2 with Heroic Game Launcher.
Ye , I think the list could be more large if I buy other games. Oh, I forgot Cyberpunk and Battlefield 4 and EA App through Lutris. The only issue I found is the compile of shader cache of Apex Legends and Hogwarts Legacy. It’s a lot of time to compile.
You definitely don’t have to worry about Dota because it runs natively on Linux.
I have a 3060 and it functions about as well as it did on Windows.
For specific games, check ProtonDB or ask here
Dota 2 is definitely going to work. The only Games that havent worked for me personally are valorant and trackmania 2020, though the latter might have been due to the fact that my 1650 wasnt up to the job.
There are issues with both AMD and nvidia. I’ve tried both. If you have nvidia then may as well just give it a go. I’d suggest something like Nobara, or EndeavourOS to get started. Use nvidia proprietary drivers for a better experience.
I’ve stuck with KDE Plasma for the desktop environment over the years.
I’ve been gaming on NixOS for a while and it works relatively painlessly though I wouldn’t recommend NixOS to linux noobs. I think you should look at stuff like Fedora or distros that automatically install Nvidia drivers like Nobara Linux or Garuda Linux. The ones that automatically install them have no setup or pain to get actual working drivers while I’ve found in my experience that Arch Linux is the most pain and time to get working drivers.
Running KDE Neon here, my Nvidia experience has been faultless, adding the PPA and installing the drivers is reliable and straightforward. Wayland works acceptably, but running a single 4k 27" monitor X11 works perfectly, so at this point in time I see no reason to swap to Wayland - I’m sure in time I’ll adopt Wayland, I’m simply not quite ready to drop my ability to create custom fan profiles using GWE just yet.
Nvidia X Server settings are nice, as is nvidia-smi.
I have 3060 Ti and have had no trouble. I even used it with Arch and Gentoo, and all I needed was installing the drivers (the package manager did it) and it worked out of the box.
@pleasemakesense > Are my fears unfounded/outdated?
They are mostly outdated. Nvidia works just as fine as amd does
I’ve been gaming on Nvidia cards since I switched over 3 years ago and only had a few issues.
On initial install, the opensource nvidia drivers wouldn’t work - I had to go into the terminal and select the proprietary ones. That’s pretty much it, really. Other than that, I’ve had about the same amount of issues with AMD(integrated graphics) and Nvidia.
On the plus side, Nvidia has a nice little control panel. It’s basic, doesn’t have all that GeForce Experience stuff, plus there are command line utilities like nvidia-smi(basic info) and nvtop(temp, clock, usage, memory stats). AMD doesn’t have a control panel, that I’m aware of.
As far as distro, I’d say just chose the one you’re most comfortable with. I don’t think there are any huge differences between them concerning gaming performance.
As long as you can get the driver installed, you’re fine. The only time that might be a problem is if your distro updates something that breaks compatibility with the existing driver, and X refuses to start. You’ll need to know how to install the latest driver from the command line, but then you should be good.
I’ve been running a 3080 with proprietary drivers on manjaro for a couple of years (I would not recommend manjaro, I now recommend endeavorOS if you want something Arch based) and it’s fine. I don’t think I’ve ever hit an nvidia specific bug.
I’ve been gaming on Linux with nvidia gpus for over a decade, it is fine… There is a lot of negativity about nvidia because the drivers are not open. But they work, and I have not personally had any issues.
if you use the proprietary drivers you’ll be fine, probably not even noticable
if you go with a Radeon card or try using open source drivers then go with god
Gaming is where you will have the least problems with nvidia.
Been using Frogging Family Nvidia All drivers since forever :-)
Always worked great with my Lenovo Legion + 3070Ti
https://github.com/Frogging-Family/nvidia-all
My laptop has 1650 and it works fine.
Fears are relatively unfounded. 1660 Ti is still a relatively new card, so you don’t even have to worry about having to use legacy drivers. Just install the nvidia driver package from your distro and you should be good to go.
I’ve been running my 3090 and it’s been working well for most games.
The biggest pain you’ll face is identifying which driver version you’ll need, and whether you should be on Wayland or Xorg.
Once you figure that out, in my experience (GTX 1060 on Fedora), you’re golden. Installation itself isn’t hard then.
I use GTX 1660 Ti and I had some problems, but nothing of impossible to solve. I use Arch with zen kernel and nvidia-dkms with XFCE as DE. List of games that I play: Apex Legends, Hogwarts Legacy, Grime, Ironsight, Albion Online, Nostale with Steam. League of Legends with Lutris. Vampyr, Bioshock Remastered 1 and 2 with Heroic Game Launcher.
That’s a good list of games. I almost exclusively play dota 2 and with valve’s support of Linux maybe the risk is negiable, thanks for the reply :)
Ye , I think the list could be more large if I buy other games. Oh, I forgot Cyberpunk and Battlefield 4 and EA App through Lutris. The only issue I found is the compile of shader cache of Apex Legends and Hogwarts Legacy. It’s a lot of time to compile.
You definitely don’t have to worry about Dota because it runs natively on Linux. I have a 3060 and it functions about as well as it did on Windows. For specific games, check ProtonDB or ask here
Dota 2 is definitely going to work. The only Games that havent worked for me personally are valorant and trackmania 2020, though the latter might have been due to the fact that my 1650 wasnt up to the job.
There are issues with both AMD and nvidia. I’ve tried both. If you have nvidia then may as well just give it a go. I’d suggest something like Nobara, or EndeavourOS to get started. Use nvidia proprietary drivers for a better experience.
I’ve stuck with KDE Plasma for the desktop environment over the years.
https://nobaraproject.org/download-nobara/
https://endeavouros.com/latest-release/
I’ve been gaming on NixOS for a while and it works relatively painlessly though I wouldn’t recommend NixOS to linux noobs. I think you should look at stuff like Fedora or distros that automatically install Nvidia drivers like Nobara Linux or Garuda Linux. The ones that automatically install them have no setup or pain to get actual working drivers while I’ve found in my experience that Arch Linux is the most pain and time to get working drivers.