Fortunately, this fucking windows partition I only keep for VR with my shitty Oculus Rift CV1 reminds me how fucked up the alternative is. I can’t fucking wait to get a Steam Frame and ditch it.
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The only thing reading something like this does for me is paint the linux community as completely inept and dishonest.
I swapped GPU in windows by downloading the new driver, shut down the pc, swap cards, boot pc that then loads a default windows driver, install the new driver I downloaded, done. If it asks for a reboot, that takes another 20 seconds.
Done.
I agree that the original post is dishonest, but your solution is exactly the same as what they said with the exception that you knew it would be a problem so you downloaded the driver beforehand. Had you not known that would happen the series of misfortunes could have happened to you too.
This is, specifically, the workflow for changing graphics cards manufacturers on windows, e.g. nVidia to AMD. If you’re just going from one AMD card to another, or vice versa, generally you can just toss it in and reboot a few times, yes.
GPU manufacturers are fucking awful about actually uninstalling their bloatware shit on windows, and it often (potentially intentionally) interferes with other manufacturer’s drivers (and sometimes their own, though that’s less common these days.)
Windows Update installed the bare driver for both Green and Red GPUs directly. There’s no additional software needed for either unless you plan to adjust clock and memory speeds or want something specific from the vendor’s software.
That is one of the first things I noticed when I’ve switched between ATI/AMD and Nvidia early in my Linux usage time. Now I’ve swapped between Nvidia, AMD, and Intel with problems in the past few years
lol sure. When I installed a new GPU while using mint, it never booted again. Even years later when I assumed they would finally have support for the card, same story. Had to move to Ubuntu instead
I rolled my eyes real hard at this.
As a Linux supporter, this is absolutely not the case and it’s going to piss off every person who swaps to Linux thinking it’ll be this easy, and then when they’re hit with reality, switches back to Windows.
The problem they are talking about is specific to Linux Mint, not to Linux in general. Linux Mint is known for not working on newer hardware because of its outdated kernel. Ironically arch based distros would work well here as they always have a new kernel.
While there is truth to that, it’s nice distro-hopping was a solution for me. Can’t really solve your windows problems that way.
I’ve upgraded graphics cards multiple times with Windows, the hardest part was fitting my fat fingers in the case when I underestimated the size of the gtx660 for my tiny Dell case ages ago. I am looking into Linux atm though
I swear that some linux users are some of the most incompetent PC users around.
If this is your experience, you are seriously fucking shit up lmao
This is how I am with mac os. I’m pretty knowledgeable about computers, so there are a lot of tasks I view as simple that I will attempt to do, only to have it fight me the whole way. I’m sure it’s just that I don’t know proper protocol, but it’s annoying.
Example would be I had some photos on my phone I wanted to put on my mom’s macbook. Okay, I have a cable, just plug it in. Well, it shows up but refuses to show files in usb mode. Okay, the photo editor saw the phone, but it was import all or nothing. It wouldn’t let me send just one folder. Okay… So I can’t copy/paste files from the phone, import is all or nothing. So… I ended up having to put the folder on a usb stick- but the the photo program wouldn’t recognise that as a source to import from, so I had to copy the folder to the desktop and THEN import from that. Something that should have been relatively simple turned into a whole ordeal because it was designed for one type of workflow and I didn’t know all the little tricks to get it to do what I wanted. I know that’s on me for not knowing the easy way ro do it, but when the obvious option ‘import’ doesn’t give me any real options, I have to figure it out.
So, Windows is harder to use you say. And “incompetent” users should stick to Linux?
That’s a take that would have been absurd many years ago. I personally am willing to do things the hard way for some benefit, so I have a Windows PC for gaming. But all my other systems are Linux systems, laptop, workstation, or embedded. However Windiws is supposed to be the easier choice.
I’ll even grant that Windows PITA is mostly not deliberate action by Microsoft. It’s mostly letting vendors be their crappy self and messing up the experience, with a bit of windows driver model incompatibilities breaking hardware support abandoned by vendor, but kept alive Linux side.
I think in either direction, people forget how much becomes intuitive about their OS, and how quickly we can fall into “Works on my machine”. I’m sure plenty of people have never had problems with their graphics drivers breaking things. But can you really say with full certainty that some random driver conflict couldn’t possibly happen? What if they are swapping from AMD to Nvidia, does your confidence remain?
Everything is easy and intuitive when you know what is expected of you, and everything goes according to plan, but good luck if something gets fucky.
Yeah that’s exactly what Windows is like. Things normally work fine but when something goes wrong it can be a real pain and often simpler just to reinstall as Windows doesn’t always give you good tools to fix it. When something goes wrong on a Linux system there is pretty much always some way of fixing it because it’s an open book with good tooling for diagnostics and repair. The problem is things tend to go wrong more often or be more clunky to use in the first instance.
Honestly, I think some of them have simply been off windows so long that they only know issues they’ve seen in the news, and not used the relatively smooth experience you get. Like, I swapped to Linux not too long ago. Windows was MOSTLY easier to use, but it was getting to invasive for my tastes.
If you find Linux easier to use day-to-day, you’re either A) much better than the average person at getting an intuition for all the options and controls B) doing something fairly uncommon where windows just falls short C) simply so used to Linux over Windows that you have a better intuition on how to handle Linux
And, like, sure there are specific tasks where one OS is just going to grant a smoother experience, but if we’re talking most general usage, Windows will be such a smooth use for the average user.
Frankly, this is EXACTLY the problem that I had, that made me switch to linux.
I had a MSI laptop with a 3060. At first, it was wonky on Windows but overall it worked with a few workarounds. So far so good.
After some times, an update to Windows (I believe) made it that I had to run DDU to uninstall the drivers then reinstall everything. It took me more than one afternoon. Then I still had to do the workarounds.
After a while, I had to uninstall the video drivers at every boot, then reinstall a specific version of one driver, then had to run Windows Update, uncheck one specific little tickbox for the video card to function. At. Every. Boot.
And then, not even that worked.
On Nobara, I just had to install the distro and boom ! It worked out of the box. With the only downside that the HDMI was capped at 1080p 30Hz (when Windows wouldn’t even display over HDMI). I think the 30Hz part was a Wayland limitation at the time.
So no, it wasn’t because I was bad at Windows. Bloody thing just did not work and made me go full linux.
Laptops typically come with their own driver management software. Windows was probably trying its best to get something compatible installed, when your existing driver became outdated. There’s a decent chance that MSI supplies some specific driver for your laptop that Windows won’t touch or try to override through their own software.
Still, nice that Linux supplied better drivers by default!
Yes, those were never updated. This was the workaround : uninstall everything using DDU, then install the outdated drivers. That worked at first, then did not work anymore after a while.
I’ve been using windows since 3.1, and never had an issue swapping graphics cards. I agree that DDU being sometimes required is silly - vendors should be providing proper uninstallers, or at least officially sponsor/ship DDU.
you sound like how some people claim linux users are 😄
Sounds like the Linux user only ever used AMD cards.
You still need to download the drivers for nVidia. One of the top noob questions is “which one?” because there are several options without real explanation… At least on Ubuntu based distro, which a lot of new users will be sent to (i.e. Mint).
The experience with AMD cards seems to be the above; plug in and it just works immediately.
But don’t even get me started on Intel cards. Jeezus Effing Kristus. I got mine working, but it’s still a damned issue and a half. And you’ll have to go driver hunting if you want to do anything artistic with them, which is an absolute rabbit hole on Ubuntu distros. But mercifully much more simple on Fedora and Co.
windows is shit because windows fundamentally doesn’t care about you. it’s a company and has the fiduciary responsibility to make as much profit as possible; your experience in all of this is completely secondary.
This seems a far cry from reality, unless you’re using some magically niche card.
When stuff goes sideways it’s annoying regardless. In Linux it feels easier to really get in deep and fix what needs fixing, but windows has its registry and you often end up using some random utilities that may or may not work correctly to get what you need installed.
I also can’t wait to never interact with Meta again when I get a Steam Frame.
I haven’t replaced a GPU on Linux, but my experience on windows has been to always uninstall and remove the graphics driver (forcing the Microsoft generic display driver) before replacing the GPU.
Then, it was just a matter of getting the drivers installed before I’m good to go. Granted, this was under Windows 10
Same here. It was a matter of swapping one for the other and installing the new drivers. I was up and running rather quickly, even though I was switching form AMD to Nvidia.
There is also the fun part where Windows won’t recognize your PC / accept your license after some upgrades…
Yup.
Build PC
Activate Windows
Motherboard develops a fault
Get a refund/replacement
Install it
Windows is no longer activated, because they tied it to the motherboard…
motherfuckers… that’s awful.
irm https://get.activated.win/ | iexInsert meme template here: Wait, you guys license your Windows?
Wait, does this actually work??
Yes.
https://github.com/massgravel/Microsoft-Activation-Scripts
You can activate, change editions and extend support using it
Yes. You need to do it in a PowerShell, not a regular command prompt insofar as I know.
I had the exact opposite experience on Mint when I changed from Nvidia to AMD. Switched the GPUs and only my main monitor in my multimonitor setup was outputting signal. That lead to annoying rabbit hole and I still haven’t finished after several months (suspend still doesn’t work every time)
Ytou’re issue is probably that you are using Mint. They have serious issues with out of date drivers.
I actually had to use Windows to diagnose why my GPU wasn’t working on Linux after a zypper dup… :/
This is upgrading your AMD GPU on Linux. If it were nvidia then it’d be just as long as the Windows part, from what my friends have said
Nah, literally just swapped nvidia gpus last week.
Pull one out, pop one in, resume gaming.
If you don’t already have the nvidia driver or nouveau, you have to install that and make sure it isn’t blacklisted. Reboot and done.
Lol every few months I get an update that causes something to fail in the nvidia driver. What? I have no idea, I’ve not bothered to diagnose, I just restore the last snapshot and wait until another driver or kernel update is out.
I would say by my experience, in order from easiest to most difficult, it’s AMD on Linux, then Nvidia on windows, Nvidia on Linux. I haven’t had a recent enough experience with amd on windows, but from what I hear its like you either install drivers then it works or you gotta do some crazy shit like op did to unbork something.
I’d still rather deal with Nvidia on Linux than anything to do with modern windows if I have the choice, especially with the insane amount of anti-features+spyware they seem to be shipping it with these days.
Linux doesn’t know when to switch graphics rendering from CPU to GPU for me. When you launch a game it should switch. I have had to fix this repeatedly. Whenever I install a new NVIDIA driver, I have to fix it again.
That might be changing in the near future. Hybrid GPU work is currently being worked on a bunch.
I just set up optimus for the first time the other day, what are you using for GPU switching thats making you reconfigure each update?
Did you use DKMS modules so they’d update/reinstall with your kernel?
Did you use DKMS modules
And that’s why Linux will never be mainstream lol
DKMS is actually to speed things up, to cut out the middle man of waiting for devs to update their own stuff to work with the newest kernels, it speeds up release cycle quite a bit… theoretically.
In reality, whether it is a pain point or huge boon depends on your configuration and use case. On a gaming rig, you’d ideally have a bleeding edge system, where using all dkms would be a big boon for you, but would slow down updates. On an editing rig, you probably want something more stable, so you’d likely use a distro which holds back updates for longer like Debian. In this case, DKMS won’t help because you’re not updating your kernel often and it will end up just taking more space (but you might wanna use it anyway for convenience reasons down the line)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support
I personally thing DKMS should be the default, with users who want the less compatible option able to do so by installing from source.
I have no issue with DKMS, but the fact that it’s something to even think about would be too much for the average person IMO
Perhaps now that nvidia’s new driver excludes gtx-1000 series and older you would have to enter some commands to switch over gracefully.
For my 2070 to 5070 upgrade nothing was needed.
Can confirm, in fact there is a reasonable probability that you won’t be able to setup the
shittyofficial NVIDIA drivers and the new card will run slower than the old one :(The blame really goes on Nvidia more than Linux. There’s only so much you can do when the manufacturer won’t support the card properly
And also the HDMI people since they don’t allow drivers that use their official specs to be open source. So to use HDMI 2.1 you have to install a proprietary closed source driver.
They could do it by having a post install blob add-on though so we can blame Nvidia for not putting in the effort.
Idk, my upgrade to 4060 went pretty smoothly, though I was upgrading from another Nvidia card, so I had the official driver already installed…
Only if you need a different kind of driver. But if you upgrade from RTX 20 to RTX 50 for instance, you don’t change any software. On some dumb distros like Bazzite the drivers are built in and you can’t change it without a fresh install. That’s on you for choosing a distro without understanding its flaws. On linux anything is always just a skill issue.
The one time i borked the graphics wss the arch firmware thing.
1 weekend away arrived back late sunday to show my daughter her new graphics tab did an update rebooted like aclown and voilla no display.
After that i got rid of arch (endeavour) then in stalled arch (cachy) and life has been good.
Stuff can break and firmwsre changes do it beautifully.
Read the docs
