Nvidia drivers on Linux

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I installed Ubuntu a year or so ago but I ended up giving up with it because there was insane screen tearing. I couldn't scroll browsers without it tearing like mad. I installed the drivers but it didn't help at all, and twice I had to reinstall because I managed to totally Bork it....

Is this something anyone else has had our just me being bad at Linux? Are there any Nvidia drivers for the 900 series that people know work? I want to setup Linux again because it was actually a nice and smooth development environment.
 

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You need to use the non=open nvidia drivers, there is an option for this when you install. The open drivers (nouveau?) are not very good, especially for games.
Google is your best pal when looking for command/installation routines.
 
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You need to use the non=open nvidia drivers, there is an option for this when you install. The open drivers (nouveau?) are not very good, especially for games.
Google is your best pal when looking for command/installation routines.
I'm assuming by non-open, you mean straight from Nvidia? I can't remember which drivers I used but I'm fairly sure I used the ones from Nvidia...

First time having to do so much from a terminal so I may well have just messed it up!
 

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If you dont get on with the command prompt, go to the start menu and under Administration heading there is a 'driver manager' app.
This will give you some options of which driver to use, preferably a 'nvidia driver metapackage' rather than a 'nouveau display driver'.
Probably wont the the most up to date but will self install without you messing with the command prompt.
How well it works may depend on the age of your gpu, my 3090fe works quite well in games and 3d stuff using the propriety drivers, but not with the opensource nouveau ones.
Whereas the amd drivers using my old xt5700 used to work just as well with the open source drivers.
 
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If you dont get on with the command prompt, go to the start menu and under Administration heading there is a 'driver manager' app.
This will give you some options of which driver to use, preferably a 'nvidia driver metapackage' rather than a 'nouveau display driver'.
Probably wont the the most up to date but will self install without you messing with the command prompt.
How well it works may depend on the age of your gpu, my 3090fe works quite well in games and 3d stuff using the propriety drivers, but not with the opensource nouveau ones.
Whereas the amd drivers using my old xt5700 used to work just as well with the open source drivers.
Thanks I'll give that a go when I get around to partitioning my SSD again. I've got a 970, so 2014 - hopefully not too old... I don't care much for 3D capabilities as I'd only use it for experimenting with Linux, and as a web development OS, but the tearing I got before was just unbearable.
 
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This issue may be caused by hardware acceleration getting switched off in chrome/chromium. You can check if it's off by going to chrome://gpu. I've had this problem a few times in the past and I fixed it by setting hardware acceleration off, restarting chrome, setting it on again and restarting chrome again. Also you can try going to chrome://flags and enable Override software rendering list and restart chrome.
 
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Are you using 21.04? I think tearing is something that was inherent with the old display model but Wayland fixes it.
 
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No idea what I was using to be honest. I'm going to set up Ubuntu on a partition again to give it another crack.

Use Manjaro (KDE is nice and light). When you boot the USB select the proprietary drivers.
Ubuntu even 21.04 doesn't install by default the closed drivers you have to search for them on the package manager and won't get the 5.14 kernel improvements until 21.10

I use Manjaro on the laptop having 1060 6GB, with great success for years and is always up to date, no need to run 6-10 months old drivers and kernels like with the Ubuntu.
Just make sure if you set up password and profile, to run the drivers from "sudo nvidia-settings" that way you can save your config.

Also say goodbye to the Nvidia CPU resources tax, games run 20%+ faster on Linux even GPU & CPU hog ones like X4 Foundations, on a laptop!!!
(yes Gsync works too even at 100fps with a 60hz monitor!!!)
 
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Are you using 21.04? I think tearing is something that was inherent with the old display model but Wayland fixes it.
Got Ubuntu 21.04 installed last night, found out about the driver manager! Selected the Nvidia 470 Proprietary and tested driver and I get 2560x1080 75hz and no tearing!
 
Soldato
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Ben Skeggs at Red Hat has long been the primary Nouveau DRM kernel driver maintainer for keeping this open-source NVIDIA GPU kernel driver within the mainline kernel going... Throughout all the battles, particularly after the GTX 900 series and later has required signed firmware images for enabling any accelerated GPU support, he's now resigning from maintaining the driver. Ben Skeggs has contributed to the Nouveau project for more than one decade -- he's earned references on Phoronix since 2008.

Other than booting to desktop it's been useless for ages.
 
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