Just a small concern : I installed OpenSUSE 42.3 recently and so far, everything is OK. During the installation, I manually added the official repos from Nvidia, in order to get the performance and stability from my graphic card.
However, I just don’t see how a beginner will remind to manually add the repos (not so easy to find though), knowing than some don’t even know which graphic card they have (believe me, this is true).
Nouveau drivers are just a joke. I tried, the performance were poor, and sometimes crashed my system (I have in mind the last try I did on an HP zBook laptop. This was a pity).
I know there are some issues related to license (even if I am sure Nvidia won’t complain that we automatically add the repo if the installer detects an Nvidia card). So why not try to solve this issue ? There are different workarounds :
During the installation, give the choice to the user to use either the official driver or the unofficial one
Add an icon on the desktop to automatically switch to the official driver at will
Automatically starts a graphical tool during the first boot to let the user choose
I can assure you that a beginner could be prevented to switch to Linux due to lack of performance or instability. Have you ever tried to use Nouveau with the latest games on Steam ?
What I mean is, how to find the best suitable solution to solve this issue ? And believe me, for a beginner or someone coming from Mac OS X or Windows, this is not common to manually add a repo through YaST.
Hi
That’s why it’s called ‘open’ SUSE… free from proprietary blobs, licenses, patents etc except the few that get through the legal hoops.
So a beginner user adds said Nvidia repo at install and the system breaks, who to blame/fix? From a beginners standpoint not a good start/experience either…
Install with the oss software/drivers then if/when it breaks a lot easier to sort out…
Ok but from my own experience, Nouveau with Plasma is a nightmare. Performaces are ****. So what’s the use experience with Linux then ?
Nvidia should rather give the sources for their driver off-course but for now, their driver is the best on Linux. check at Steam official stats and you will realize that Nvidia proprietary drivers are the preferred ones.
Please test OpenSUSE with plasma with Nouveau and try to use some 3D games from Steam and please give you thoughts.
On Sun 13 Aug 2017 03:06:01 PM CDT, Arnaudk93 wrote:
malcolmlewis;2834044 Wrote:
> Hi
> That’s why it’s called ‘open’ SUSE… free from proprietary blobs,
> licenses, patents etc except the few that get through the legal hoops.
>
> So a beginner user adds said Nvidia repo at install and the system
> breaks, who to blame/fix? From a beginners standpoint not a good
> start/experience either…
>
> Install with the oss software/drivers then if/when it breaks a lot
> easier to sort out…
Ok but from my own experience, Nouveau with Plasma is a nightmare.
Performaces are ****. So what’s the use experience with Linux then ?
Nvidia should rather give the sources for their driver off-course but
for now, their driver is the best on Linux. check at Steam official
stats and you will realize that Nvidia proprietary drivers are the
preferred ones.
Please test OpenSUSE with plasma with Nouveau and try to use some 3D
games from Steam and please give you thoughts.
Hi
I don’t use Plasma or nouveau… all GNOME and amdgpu (R4/R5 card) oss
driver (play steam - volo airsport and minecraft) without issues.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° SUSE Knowledge Partner (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE Leap 42.2|GNOME 3.20.2|4.4.74-18.20-default
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Well, truth is I’ve had dozens of issues with the OSS driver, but nvidia never left me without being able to access the system / start X. This is even clearer if you have modern hardware and can’t get it to work unless you have the proprietary driver. Bad to the point where you have to blacklist nouveau just in case yast decides to install it again. I’m not even talking about performance issues!
There’s nothing inherently wrong with openSUSE getting more and more ideological about free software, but I do agree this is the kind of thing that puts new users off. And then you have the side-effects like proprietary driver users getting the sorter end of the stick when it comes to rolling updates because most of the focus is on the OSS driver.
You can use the Bumblebee’s “latest” repo combined with DKMS and you’ll be fine with Tumbleweed’s rolling updates (in theory things might break but in reality everything so far has worked for ages now)
A much bigger issue than proprietary or open source is the fact that Xorg has absolutely no fallback method to VESA/FB. If the driver doesn’t load, you’re boned - hell even Windows 2000 could do this. Why is this so hard - even OS X manages this with the proprietary driver, it’s able to fall back to a simple device driver if the nVidia Web Drivers fail.