Any fellow Linux users on here?

[Judge]

I think I am going to "take the plunge" and attempt to see if I can successfully install Linux Mint 22.0 on my 12+ years old computer. It still runs great on Mint 21.3, no reason to keep it in the closet provided it can run with the latest kernel and Nvidia driver.

I have to admit, it does appear that Nvidia has slowly gotten better with their proprietary drivers working on my hardware platforms. So who knows? It might run rather well..even with a GTX 650Ti that Nvidia itself considers "worthless" a few years back.

 

[Outdated]

It might run rather well..even with a GTX 650Ti that Nvidia itself considers "worthless" a few years back.

I've still got one of them tucked away in the top of my wardrobe as an emergency backup.

 

[Judge]

I've still got one of them tucked away in the top of my wardrobe as an emergency backup.

Yep. Stands to reason a good idea to have one in reserve given how serious having a working Internet connection is in this day and age.

Oddly enough though, I'm in a slow process of dismantling and discarding my prized legacy computer that ran Windows XP. Like all the others of my past, I no longer use it and get easily frustrated by how slow it is by today's standards. The power supply ceased to work, and trying to find a quality one with such older molex connectors is getting difficult.

I just see no advantage in keeping something that has outlasted its usefulness, other than to play games that frankly aren't much fun any more as they once were. And of course for security reasons that system was cut off from the Internet in 2012 never to happen again.

 

[Outdated]

Yep. Stands to reason a good idea to have one in reserve given how serious having a working Internet connection is in this day and age.

I also have two running computers. One hasn't been turned on in nearly 12 months but if necessary I can jump back to whatever I was doing barely missing a beat.

 

[Judge]

I also have two running computers. One hasn't been turned on in nearly 12 months but if necessary I can jump back to whatever I was doing barely missing a beat.

Pays to have computers with the best components that can remain so reliable over the years. Not mention keeping them cleaned and serviced, not much differently from a car.

Although losing a power supply that was over 20 years old on my legacy system....lol...well....I suppose that's par for the course.

 

[Princess Viola]

I think I am going to "take the plunge" and attempt to see if I can successfully install Linux Mint 22.0 on my 12+ years old computer. It still runs great on Mint 21.3, no reason to keep it in the closet provided it can run with the latest kernel and Nvidia driver.

I have to admit, it does appear that Nvidia has slowly gotten better with their proprietary drivers working on my hardware platforms. So who knows? It might run rather well..even with a GTX 650Ti that Nvidia itself considers "worthless" a few years back.

Yeah IDK how much this applies in your case, but from what I know the latest Nvidia Linux drivers have basically made the whole thing you'd see online where people would suggest that if you were building your own PC or searching for a prebuilt or a laptop and you were absolutely certain you were going to use it for Linux (and you were going to have a dedicated GPU), get one with an AMD GPU because it just worked better than Nvidia did completely irrelevant.

Of course there were also lots of people, like myself, who've been using Linux with an Nvidia GPU without noticing any issues.

I think the worst I've experienced was entirely my own doing because it was like I just decided to switch from the the recommended drivers (I believe it was Nvidia's 535 drivers) to the 545 drivers and I didn't notice any issues so I just kept them as that...until a little bit later when I got the urge to do some retrogaming and well no matter what I was trying to emulate in Retroarch, it was running like complete butt and I had no idea why because everything had been running totally fine before and then I switched back to the recommended drivers and it fixed the issue for me lol.

 

[Outdated]

but from what I know the latest Nvidia Linux drivers have basically made the whole thing you'd see online where people would suggest that if you were building......

I always completely ignore all the hype I see on the net because for the most part that's all it is. Posts by fanatacists that want you to pick a side and stick to it regardless of any real issues.

I use both AMD and nVidia and I have no issues with either. I did learn early on that there can be issues with nVidia drivers that have been compiled by Linux distro development teams, so instead I download the source package direct from nVidia themselves and compile it myself. Never had any issues with that.

I used to be a big fan of nVidia but they priced themselves out of my market. My Radeon 6700 with 12 gig of ram cost me Au$500, you won't get an nVidia card with similar specs for anywhere near that price.

I play a lot of older games, mostly late 90s or early 2000s, under wine and have very few issues with most of them.

 

[Judge]

Well, now I suppose it will just be a "waiting game" to make absolutely sure the 550 drivers work as they should. If not, my next video card just might be an AMD....and take my chances as to whether or not Photoshop 5.5 will run with it.

Hopefully Nvidia and whomever actually makes and distributes those drivers for Linux finally got it right. Maybe just in time to see Linus Torvald and his middle finger retire...if the rumor factory is correct about that!

It all reminds me of how many years ago I did have an ATI video card which ran great, before the advent of Nvidia's "GeForce" series cards.

 

[Outdated]

Well, now I suppose it will just be a "waiting game" to make absolutely sure the 550 drivers work as they should.

If it gives you any trouble try getting your driver here instead of using the one that has been recompiled by the team at Mint.

Unix Drivers | NVIDIA

 

[Judge]

If it gives you any trouble try getting your driver here instead of using the one that has been recompiled by the team at Mint.

Unix Drivers | NVIDIA

Yes, I recall you suggesting that before. A truly proprietary driver in comparison. Definitely an option now in the event my system continues to randomly freeze/lock up. I still have that link saved in my bookmarks. Thanks!

Though this time around according to the Linux Mint Forum that my System Report's "crash error" logged specifically stated this problem can be fixed by upgrading to the highest level Nvidia driver. Something up until recently I had never done given my past attempts to do so with a lesser kernel and an older Nvidia card.

(On my older system with a GTX 650Ti card I think I'm still using the 390 driver with no issues in Mint 21.3.)

So hopefully (crossing my fingers) this fix IS the "fix".

 

[Outdated]

Yes, I recall you suggesting that before.

I started doing that many years ago when I had lots of similar issues to you when using Fedora. It frustrated me at the time because on the machine I had running Ubuntu there was no problems. For a while, then there was a while where Fedora's driver worked fine and Ubuntu's played up.

Never had any issues with the one from nVidia themselves. Radeon is new to me and I just let Ubuntu install it's own driver, no issues so far but if there was I would have headed straight to AMD for their own version of the driver.

 

[Judge]

Never had any issues with the one from nVidia themselves. Radeon is new to me and I just let Ubuntu install it's own driver, no issues so far but if there was I would have headed straight to AMD for their own version of the driver.

Is that actually a driver specific to a Radeon video card, or just the open source xserver-xorg-nouveau driver?

Keep in mind one critical difference with Ubuntu. That it's my understanding that it always uses a more advanced kernel than does Mint. That was always one of the few criticisms of Mint was that they kept everything within the "5" series kernel....allegedly holding back video performance with newer hardware.

With Mint 22.0 they're now using the same 6 series kernel as Ubuntu. But performance may still depend on what series Nvidia card a user has....I'm not sure.

 

[Outdated]

I use the proper Radeon driver, but the Ubuntu distributed version. Not the xorg equivalent.
(nouveau is specifically nVidia)

 

[vergil96]

Of course there were also lots of people, like myself, who've been using Linux with an Nvidia GPU without noticing any issues.

Perhaps there is a difference in gaming? Not so much in everyday use in my experience too. I've used Linux on pretty much every type of device.

 

[Outdated]

Perhaps there is a difference in gaming?

Gaming under Wine, yes. If you're only using basic connectivity and office functions then the standard xorg drivers are probably all you need.

 

[saturnv]

My kids have my older computers with Nvidia Geforce GPUs. My computer has an AMD GPU. At this point they seem to work pretty much equivalently.

In the recent past the Nvidia GPU drivers didn't support wayland at all. When wayland support was added it was buggy. It seems to have stabilized by now. My kids switched their sessions from xorg to wayland some months ago, and it has been working fine. They play plenty of games using Proton.

 

[Judge]

Gaming under Wine, yes. If you're only using basic connectivity and office functions then the standard xorg drivers are probably all you need.

In the beginning of using Wine version 6.0 I still recall so many problems with using an Nvidia driver. However using the Xorg driver while it worked, meant much less performance relative to video acceleration.

Xorg certainly worked smoothly, but offered me far less performance with my Nvidia hardware.

 

[Judge]

In the recent past the Nvidia GPU drivers didn't support wayland at all. When wayland support was added it was buggy. It seems to have stabilized by now. They switched their sessions from xorg to wayland some months ago, and it has been working fine. They play plenty of games using Proton.

My one major concern about using the next version of Pop!OS Cosmic when it finally comes out. Whether or not they stick to Gnome or Wayland. Seems wherever Wayland exists, so do "buggy" results.

So far I like what I see regarding the Alpha versions, but of course they are too experimental to dwell on. Though I'm still wondering how the final release might work relative to earlier Gnome applications well before Gnome 46.0. Would be a shame to have the latest version of Pop!OS that cannot be customized with so much in the way of Gnome modifications as in the case of my existing Pop!OS22.04 which looks like a Mac.

I still use Mint as my default Linux Distro, but I still like Pop!OS as well. My bad...lol.

 

[saturnv]

My one major concern about using the next version of Pop!OS Cosmic when it finally comes out. Whether or not they stick to Gnome or Wayland.

I use wayland with KDE plasma. I haven't used Gnome in years, so I don't have any personal experience there with Nvidia vs AMD or xorg vs wayland in Gnome.

 

[Judge]

I use wayland with KDE plasma. I haven't used Gnome in years, so I don't have any personal experience there with Nvidia vs AMD or xorg vs wayland in Gnome.

I tried KDE Plasma attempting to install Kubuntu on my older hardware platform...which resulted in total failure. Similar experiences with Arch-based distros as well. Go figure.

I tend to lean towards Gnome simply because I'm familiar with it and have been able to make some wild modifications with a couple of Ubuntu-based GUIs. Though the latest version of Ubuntu seems a bit intriguing, apparently quite an improvement from past versions. But it's apparently based on Gnome 46.0, not clear how backwards compatible it is (if at all) with earlier Gnome applications back to 42.0.