What’s the Deal with Nvidia GPUs on Linux?

Interestingly, Nvidia is reportedly hiring Linux-devoted developers to enhance performance and features. Their Linux drivers have shown considerable improvement over the past few years. It would be great to see their applications on Linux expand as well!

Nvidia is known for keeping their "intellectual property" pretty close to their chest. They don’t provide a fully open-source driver, and they don’t share the necessary information for anyone else to create one either. The two types of drivers you read about include an older, legacy version, which has more closed-source components, and a newer version that's labeled as 'open.' However, the newer version isn’t fully open-source but at least parts of the kernel driver are. This can lead to a lot of headaches for users trying to get their Nvidia GPUs working properly on Linux. Certain combinations of GPUs and distros handle it better than others, thankfully!

As someone who's new to Linux, I’ve just been disabling secure boot to avoid issues while installing or updating my drivers. Although, I think the recommended approach is to manually sign the drivers instead.

Nvidia tends to provide proprietary drivers that sometimes don’t mesh well with the kernel version you're using, especially for newer cards which often prioritize Windows support. At least they’re transitioning to open kernel modules that enhance integration. However, the bulk of their driver remains closed off. The reason behind their reluctance is their primary customer base being Windows users. Intel and AMD have better Linux support simply because they contribute to Mesa drivers.

Nvidia's drivers are closed source, unfortunately. There’s an open-source alternative called Nouveau, but it's not as performant. You kind of wonder why they don’t just fully open up their drivers like AMD and Intel. I mean, wouldn’t that attract more customers? They’re definitely risking losing potential clients by not stepping up their Linux support.