this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2023
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I literally cannot remember the last time I had a driver issue with Linux but go off
Try being stuck with an Nvidia card
( // out of the loop ) who wants to catch me up on the whole Nvidia thing lol
They've never released proper open-source drivers for Linux, or helped external developers make any, or made it easy to use their closed driver with Linux. They're just hostile to open source, basically. That used to be pretty common in the old days, but most companies have given up and joined in, which is why installing Linux is usually a smooth experience these days.
If you're using Linux: get an AMD card. They just work out of the box, no failures to boot to GUI or anything. It just works...like everything else. Which, having spent 20 years fighting with graphics drivers on Linux, is sheer bliss to me.
Oh, but the defacto standard for anything AI-related is NVidia. So if you ever wanna mess with LLMs, object detection, speech recognition, etc...you're likely stuck with NVidia, and the old routine: Got a problem? Of course you do. Try reinstalling the drivers three times, then uninstall some random other packages, then burn some incense, say 10 Hail Marys, and make an offering to the GPU gods before restarting the computer. Didn't work? Well, repeat all those steps in a different order. Fifth time's the charm!
If you want to mess with AIs... there are cloud servers you can rent for a few cents on the hour with some blazing fast NVidia cards, that come with all the drivers and some toolkits already preinstalled.
As long as you don't forget to shut them down when not in use, they can turn out to be cheaper than a single GPU, with none of the hassle.
Nvidia is notorious for having bad drivers and they serialized their cards so people can’t fix it
Thanks
I've been using Nvidia and Linux for 13 years. I'll repeat:
Then you are luckier than most.
Haven’t had any
Older cards work fine at this point on xorg, if you bought a newer card and are expecting anything special then you kind of need to own that you fucked up.
Multiple monitors, touch screens, tablet digitizers remain a letdown constantly. Not always fully broken, but falling just short enough that actually fixing it is a pain and just living without the feature (or Linux) is easier.
Pre Linux 2.6