I’ve seen stuff about Nvidia cards not working well with Linux, is that true?
If one was in the market for a new laptop anyway, would you recommend not getting nvidia and going with AMD?
I’m currently intrigued by the Lenovo LOQ line (full size numpad). Not buying anytime soon, just scoping out good brands and ideas.
*Primary role is laptop productivity, secondary role is maybe patient gaming, so I’m ok with budget gaming. Going Linux is not guaranteed, but maybe in the future because windows keeps getting more nuts. So I’m looking for info to make sure Linux is possible.
*I want this to last a long time, 10 years should be easy.
When you buy Nvidia for Linux, you’re buying obsolescence. It will work fine for a while and then they’ll hard-drop driver support at a certain kernel version. Your 3d acceleration will last as long as you can run an LTS kernel compatible with it. You may have moved on by then, but I currently have 3 Nvidia laptops that have between limited and zero 3D support in Linux. If I cared to run Windows or MacOS, 3D would still work. MacOS would also be outdated, though. In the future, I’m going AMD only.
How long do they support it typically?
It varies quite a bit. I have an i5 with a 740M (2013) that is just barely supported. For reference that will run 360-era games fine given drivers. My 320M (2010) gets no love at all.
My 5 yo acer nitro 5 with nvidia 1050 mobile still gets support (driver update), but it’s true that they don’t care about their older cards as much. New features like the NVK driver would never support my card.
I’ve got fairly old nVidia cards (8yr) and running current Fedora. There’s some lag insupport but you still get older drivers supported to a degree