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Intel Arc Finally Works on SteamOS (And It's Amazing) – ETA Prime YouTube video (youtu.be)
submitted 2 weeks ago by to c/linux_gaming@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

Nvidia fans kept insisting that "Nvidia works perfectly for me" even when Wayland was entirely unsupported and using highly insecure X11 was really not a bad thing at all.

More recently game mode didn't work on Nvidia because their drivers again lacked features.

Just because you don't use a feature not supported by your drivers, doesn't mean that it's not true. By the very nature how Nvidia develop their drivers, they will lag behind Mesa "standards".

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago* (2 children)

    There's a reason you are talking in past tense. It works with new games and Wayland nowadays. Unless the game is inherently broken on windows and AMD cards too (hey, MHWilds, fuck you). In any case I wouldn't buy a new NVIDIA card, but gatekeeping and fear mongering windows users with NVIDIA cards isn't the play either. It works fine, not the best, but fine.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    It is not gatekeeping or fear mongering if we are giving real expectation. I saw countless people going back to Windows because they tried running Linux and either faced challenges or worse performance. I prefer to alert them instead of sugar coat.

    Talking present tense, "it works fine", still off:

    • "It works with new games" sure but if you are playing DX12 titles prepare to experience a 15% to 30% performance tax compared to play on Windows or even compared to Amd

    • If you plan to use secure boot, it is not all distro that will give you an easy path. Be prepared for rough edges. This is primarily caused because their stack isn't in the upstream kernel.

    • If you are security conscious, and harden your system, be aware that if you are using AppArmor or SELinux to lock down your system, you almost always have to carve out manual exceptions specifically to get Nvidia drivers to play nice.

    • The 'Goldilocks' Setup: You are constantly forced to chase the perfect environment, the right distro, the bleeding-edge updates, the exact driver version, just to get basic desktop features like Wayland running without artifacting or flickering

    • Auditing not only for fixing and improving things but for the peace of mind as well, right now we have to trust on Nvidia closed source code. We are to a certain degree privacy exposed.

    Having said all of the things above, there are real reasons yet to pick Nvidia over other GPUs, even on Linux. If we are not talking about gaming, CUDA and AI are still considerably better on Nvidia.

    Nevertheless, currently, Nvidia on Linux generally feels like you have to maintain a second, highly temperamental operating system along side your installation.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    No one is advocating people getting a new NVIDIA card, did you misread my post? I'm claiming that already having NVIDIA isn't a deterrent for a Linux swap. It really isn't.

    Let's be honest, 15% of a performance cost IS working fine. It's not flawless, but it's still fine.

    Secure boot, apparmor and all that stuff isn't something to consider because anyone that invested in computers already has enough information that these discussions are moot. Let me repeat, I already made clear that I wouldn't consider NVIDIA for a new Linux card.

    About the artifacts and stuff, again, old stuff. For context, I've been playing Path of Exile 1&2, Grim Dawn, Spiderman 2 recently, MHRise, MHWilds (which was bullshit on both cards, on windows too), cyberpunk on the dlc release, and a bunch of pixel art games that aren't worth mentioning since they could run on a toaster.

    I've been playing games without caring for either and it again works fine. I run endeavourOS (arch) and update once a month-ish, some days before a game release. Just as I did with drivers in windows, it's not such a big deal ffs. That perfect environment and right distro stuff is such an overblown thing, just get whatever and install the latest stuff, it will work fine unless the game dev is intentionally stupid nowadays.

    Finally, the drivers being closed source is again moot because for a Windows->Linux transition, they aren't really getting anything worse in terms of audits.

    Maybe you missed the "I'd never buy a new NVIDIA card" thing and missed that the implication of my point was a windows to Linux transition? Idk, your response is very technically oriented.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    There’s a reason you are talking in past tense.

    Yes, the reason being that I no longer use Nvidia hardware under Linux myself, so I'm not actively looking for the very latest news. Nvidia and SteamOS game mode is a very recent development, literally within the last two weeks.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Then... If you are not up to date with the stuff you shouldn't be commenting on all of that as if it were current news. You did use past tense, but someone might miss that and just read all the stuff at face value. In any case I agree, and is better than NVIDIA currently even though most pain points are fixed. As I already wrote, I wouldn't pick NVIDIA for a new Linux card, it's just that having NVIDIA shouldn't be a deterrent for windows people in the fence.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 week ago (1 child)

    It's not like AMD cards are flawless anyway, they're plagued with weird bugs that are damn annoying as well. There's no ideal solution.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    AMD GPUs have completely different drivers under Linux than Windows. What's a card bug anyway?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago

    The display randomly freezing, fixed by cycling the monitor. Why, I'm not sure if anyone knows.

    There have been boot crashes or oddities, mostly mitigated with passing parameters to the driver at boot. Only mostly though.

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