Having an Nvidia card on Linux is almost exactly like not having it.
No hardware acceleration in the browser, not used in video editing except a little bit - extremely little bit. Or video conversion. I might as well use my GPU as a cup holder haha. And to try and make it work is either impossible or very difficult. That entirely defeats the Linux's awesome "works out of the box" approach. Not with Nvidia, not with my Nvidia. I got to accept over the years that my computer basically has no graphics card. 4GB of GPU RAM are just sitting there. God bless. If I ever have enough money to buy a new laptop I'll never ever ever buy one with Nvidia.
This is not the fault of Linux but Nvidia not providing proper drivers for Linux and keeping theirs proprietary.
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Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •What model of laptop do you have? I prefer to avoid Nvidia, but I usually don't get to choose because I get free cast-off stuff that would have otherwise been thrown away at work.
So I have a lot of Nvidia stuff, and have learned a few tricks to get them to work over the years.
With my laptops, the big trick is turning off the switching mode in the BIOS. I don't remember what the "switching" mode is called, but it's something that lets (Windows) switch between the high performance Nvidia GPU and the less power hungry Intel GPU on the fly. Basically, it's on by default and it makes GPU acceleration not work with Linux. But turning it off lets the appropriate Nvidia driver work fine.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •In my case, the big "fun" comes from the fact that these junky laptops are often being junked at work simply because the screen is bad. But the computer still works fine with an external monitor. HOWEVER ... the BIOS settings only display on the built in display. So I have to see if I can figure out how to alter the required settings blind. I boot up two laptops of similar model ... one with a working display and one without ... press the same keys to get to the same menu setting in the BIOS ...
Yeah, fun!
Isaac Kuo
in reply to Tio • • •My laptops are more than several years old. The option isn't going to be called something like disabling a GPU.
The option might be called "Hybrid Graphics" or something like that. That's the option you'll want to disable.
Tio
in reply to Isaac Kuo • •Rokosun
in reply to Tio • • •TILvids
in reply to Tio • • •Tio likes this.