GPU for Linux

P

pibbur who

Guest
Hi

I need to buy a GPU for a Linux Machine I'm setting up. It doesn't have to be very fast (1050 level is just fine). But Nvidia or AMD? Which one is most suitable for Linux?

NB! I'm not asking for opinions of what GPU is best overall or for gaming, just which card is best/easiest for running Linux, with the least hazzle . (I'm not planning on using it for gaming, but I would like to do some openGL programming).

pibbur who regrets giving away the GPU originally installed in the machine.

PS. The machine is 4-5 years old. DS.
 
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I don't understand the AMD driver situation on linux. There used to be the free driver and the proprietary driver. Proprietary lagged behind its Windows counterpart badly so they dropped it. Now we have the old free driver and the new one (AMDGPU) which I guess is also free, but is developed by AMD devs (I'm not sure about that part). What I am sure of is that the new one supports only last few generations of cards, and even that partially. It might have gotten a little better since I last checked. I know my card was not supported (6670) and I got to choose either the old free driver, or the old proprietary driver with some caveats (no support, only able to use an outdated version of X server). And that was on Manjaro, if you are on anything Ubuntu based, forget about the old proprietary driver.
I'd say check on that or go with Nvidia. They had some issues with linux, but lately I haven't heard many complaints about their proprietary driver.
 
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AMD is working towards open drivers for Linux. For newer cards, the proprietary drivers are replaced by AMDGPU, which is an open driver supporting basic functions. At present, a higher performance proprietary module called AMDGPU PRO is used in addition to provide best performance in OpenGL and Vulkan. In the longer run, the official Vulkan driver is intended to be fully open source.

I don't have an AMD card at present, so I can't comment on whether this transitional state of affairs is problematic, but certainly their stated plans sound appealing.
 
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I use 1070 for gaming with ubuntu 16.04. For AMD this is a short period of badness. With 14.04 you can use the amd proprietary driver and it works well (less issues than with nvidia) - i used it iwth r290. For 16.04 you must use the open source driver and it is still fairly new and rough (perf issues and graphic glitches) but it will get better - probalby be fine by 18.04 not sure of current state with 17.x since i switched to nvidia.
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When I switched with nvidia there was a fair amount of graphic glitches with the current game i was playing (Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor) BUt there was a beta version fo the game that fixed these issue (it was a game bug not exercised with r290. Part of the reason I switched to the 1070 is i downsized my systems to micro-itx and there is a 'mini' 1070 that is nice and short - i think around 6 inches. It also runs a lot cooler than the old amd r290/r390 but as I noted above not only size but driver issues caused me to switch to the 1070 when I upgraded from 14.04 to 16.04
 
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NVIDIA's had the best Linux driver situation, by far, for as long as I can remember (and I've been a sysadmin at companies that use Linux desktops for the last 16 years). Easiest to install on a wide variety of distros, most stable, best performance. True, their driver isn't open source, but if you're just a user who wants your card to work on Linux, and work well, you want NVIDIA.
 
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