Nvidia is the worst on Linux, so that's a very bad recommendation. And no, don't use "popular distros" like Ubuntu or Mint. I don't recommend them in general. Let alone LTS ones, which are server oriented. Basically, if you are making bad choices distro wise, don't blame AMD or anyone else for poor user experience.

Last edited by Shmerl on 16 February 2020 at 10:21 am UTC

Why? It was worked for me for years without ANY hiccup (I am applying the same rationale you do). You know that Ubuntu is the distro recommeneded by game developers. You know that Feral officially only supported NVidia for years.
Now if
- NVidia is "the worst"
- and AMD (generally) is not good on Ubuntu
- and Ubuntu is supposedly the distro to go for
how should the normal (not even a newcomer) user who wants to play a game every now and then make any sense of that? And who would you blame for this fucked up situation?

I'm not sure what developers are recommending them, but I've seen some like Feral criticizing Ubuntu for poor gaming support. And you don't need Feral to really understand that.

Last edited by Shmerl on 16 February 2020 at 10:35 am UTC

I can help with that.
That's what Steam lists under System Recommendations (despite what Feral might have criticized):

• ROTR: "Ubuntu 17.10", "Nvidia GTX 980Ti"


• SOTR: "Ubuntu 18.04 64-bit
". "8GB AMD Radeon RX 480, 8GB Nvidia GTX 1080
"


• War Thunder: "Ubuntu 14.04 64bit, SteamOS", "NVIDIA 960 with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months) / similar AMD with latest proprietary drivers (not older than 6 months)"


• Dirt 4: "Ubuntu 18.04", "Nvidia 1070 or better"


• Bard's Tale IV: "Ubuntu 18.04 or equivalent", "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 or Radeon HD 7970"


• BATTLETECH: "64-bit Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and higher or SteamOS", "Nvidia® GeForce™ GTX 670 or AMD® Radeon™ R9 285 (2 GB VRAM)"


• Everspace: "Ubuntu 16.04", "Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 / AMD Radeon R9 280X"


• Dota 2: "Ubuntu 12.04 or newer", "nVidia Geforce 8600/9600GT (Driver v331), AMD HD 2xxx-4xxx (Driver mesa 10.5.9), AMD HD 5xxx+ (Driver mesa 10.5.9 or Catalyst 15.7), Intel HD 3000 (Driver mesa 10.6)"


• Dota Underlords: "Ubuntu 16.04 or newer", "Vulkan-capable GPU from NVIDIA, AMD, or Intel"

...

Sticking to what Steam says (yes, I know you don't like Steam) one would hardly pick anything else but Ubuntu as distribution. Sticking further to the recommendations one can't go wrong with NVidia.
And I suppose
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/users/statistics
proves that.

Steam was using Ubuntu 12 for Steam runtime until very recently. I'm not joking. So I wouldn't use such approach to "recommended distros" seriously.

Use your own head to figure out which distros work better.

Last edited by Shmerl on 16 February 2020 at 10:59 am UTC

I know. However, whoever is confronted with the question "how to game on Linux" will inevitably have to decide which distro to use. This will boil down to something like "Arch, if you are willing to invest some time" or "Ubuntu and expect smooth sailing for the most part". Returning to the actual topic this has now to be amended with an "unless you have a recent (i.e. less than two-years old) AMD graphics card".

Does using Nvidia on Ubuntu still require the user to switch to the proprietary driver manually? Not exactly a great OOTB experience either if that's the case, especially for someone who doesn't know about these things.

Personally I would recommend an AMD GPU over Nvidia to friends and family on Linux, for several reasons I won't go into here. I would help them get started though. (And yeah, I'd probably recommend Mint as their first distro over something Arch based.) As for strangers on the Internet trying out Linux, surely they're not buying new hardware for that purpose alone. Either they've already got Nvidia or AMD and that's what they'll be running until they're familiar enough with the system to add a PPA or whatever.

This is a bit off topic, but I still don't get why I never experienced a single powerplay problem with my 5700 XT on Mint 19, even when I ran the stock 5.3 kernel, if they're so common for others. I had already enabled the Kisak PPA for Mesa when I upgraded from my old RX580, but that shouldn't have anything to do with it. I since switched to Ubuntu's mainline 5.4 and now 5.5, and it's been smooth running on both.

Quoting: tuubiDoes using Nvidia on Ubuntu still require the user to switch to the proprietary driver manually? Not exactly a great OOTB experience either if that's the case, especially for someone who doesn't know about these things.

IIRC it was checking a "use proprietary driver" in the "Applications and Updates" (whatever that is called in English). Maybe you get already asked for that during install. However, I assume you always have to or should ask when installing proprietary drivers.

QuotePersonally I would recommend an AMD GPU over Nvidia to friends and family on Linux, for several reasons I won't go into here. I would help them get started though. (And yeah, I'd probably recommend Mint as their first distro over something Arch based.) As for strangers on the Internet trying out Linux, surely they're not buying new hardware for that purpose alone. Either they've already got Nvidia or AMD and that's what they'll be running until they're familiar enough with the system to add a PPA or whatever.

That's exactly my point. Apart from checking the aforementioned option your NVidia experience on Ubuntu will be smooth. I've used GTX660, 950, 960, 1060 on several machines for the last 7+ years. Swapping the cards gave me never any problems, driver updates worked without any problems.

QuoteThis is a bit off topic, but I still don't get why I never experienced a single powerplay problem with my 5700 XT on Mint 19, even when I ran the stock 5.3 kernel, if they're so common for others. I had already enabled the Kisak PPA for Mesa when I upgraded from my old RX580, but that shouldn't have anything to do with it. I since switched to Ubuntu's mainline 5.4 and now 5.5, and it's been smooth running on both.

As already stated: The 5.3 kernel with Kisak's PPA on Ubuntu 18.04 works. No problems to speak of. (Well, as long as you don't need OpenGL. And that it took quite some time to figure out the proper kernel/Mesa PPA combination.) However, with 5.4 I get the above mentioned problems (I already had them on 19.10). And just searching the web for RX 5700 issues on Linux gave me the impression that I am neither the sole exception nor that it is restricted to Ubuntu as distribution.
Interesting, how many seem eager to let AMD off the hook, by suggesting that everything works oh so smooth with Kernel 5.5. Kernel 5.5 was released more than 6 months after the hardware could be bought, which was released pretty much the same day Kernel 5.2 turned stable. We don't want to force one of the two main GPU vendors showing something like "commitment" and provide day one support, right? But with 5.3 the driver should be there, ok? It sort of made it into 5.3, but then I have to read here that 5.4 is completely borked when it comes to Navi10. Who needs this with an LTS kernel anyway. So 5.5 fixes everything. Obviously not with my setup, because 5.5 also gave me powerplay issues on startup (I'll give it another try, just to be sure). Shall I wait for 5.6? Or should I file it under "lesson learned" and turn to the green side again? After all, I switched from ATI/AMD to NVidia 7 years ago because the drivers were just atrocious.

Quoting: TuxeeI know. However, whoever is confronted with the question "how to game on Linux" will inevitably have to decide which distro to use.

My recommendation for gamers would be a rolling distro, or any periodic release based one which keeps kernel and Mesa up to date out of the box. So not Ubuntu.

Last edited by Shmerl on 16 February 2020 at 5:55 pm UTC

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: TuxeeI know. However, whoever is confronted with the question "how to game on Linux" will inevitably have to decide which distro to use.

My recommendation for gamers would be a rolling distro, or any periodic release based one which keeps kernel and Mesa up to date out of the box. So not Ubuntu.

Ubuntu keeps kernel and Mesa "periodical" up to date. An 18.04 is now at kernel 5.3 (as was 19.10) and on Mesa 19.2 (which again is the same as 19.10). Yes, it's not bleeding edge and Ubuntu 20.04 will stick to kernel 5.4 - otherwise they'd get blasted for NOT using an LTS kernel. Apart from that you can alwaays install a mainline kernel.
Anyway, I do have several options at hand:

• Use a rolling release distro - not good. I work as a web developer and I prefer my local setup to somehow resemble my server setup (and according to the stats two thirds of the patrons here use a non-rolling distro)


• Use a rolling release distro beside my "distro for work" - what for? In this case I could just use Windows as my "gaming distro"


• Keep the current setup as long as possible - feasible for the time being


• Throw out the AMD card and get an NVidia again - why not? Considering how much time I've already spent on this topic these extra 350 Euros are a steal. Plus: I get properly working CUDA. And in the case something doesn't work as expected, I have the gratification to know who is to blame.

As noted above: It seems again, that not AMD is to blame but "the distribution" or "the user" (who can't pick the proper distro).