Hi all,

I’m in the market for a new big desktop replacement gaming laptop, and looking at the market there are almost exclusively Nvidia powered.

I was wondering about the state of their new open-source driver. Can I run a plain vanilla kernel with only open source / upstream packages and drivers and expect to get a good experience? How is battery life, performance? Does DRI Prime and Vulkan based GPU selection “just work”?

The only alternative new for my market is a device with an Intel Arc A730M, which I currently think is going to be the one I end up buying.

  • Aniki 🌱🌿@lemm.eeEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    This is just wrong. Intel GPU support in MESA has been serviceable at best.

    It’s still getting Arc optimizations… today.

    https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mesa-23.3-rc4-Released

    • mesh shader support by default for Intel ANV

    LOL

    Wasn’t even supported until earlier this year:

    https://news.itsfoss.com/linux-kernel-6-2-release/

    The landscape is bleak. I WANT Arc to be badass. I’d buy one in a heartbeat if it wasn’t such a crapfest.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      31·
      10 months ago

      When is the last time you tried Intel hardware and with what software? I ask because your links do not really tell the same story as your post.

      The first link says that Mesa got “more Intel optimizations”. That sounds like a good thing. It basically says the same thing about AMD and NVIDIA. The only GPU “crash” that was addressed was for AMD which is widely regarded as the best option for Linux. I would not read that article and come away with any concerns about Intel.

      The second link says that kernel 6.2 added “full Intel support”. We are now in kernel 6.7. I use a rolling release and how a much newer kernel than 6.2. A brief Google leads me to believe that 6.5 ships with both Ubuntu 23.10 and Fedora 39.

      I have not used these cards myself so I do it know but others have said the experience was decent now. The OP does not seem that demanding. If it ok now and actively improving, he may be quite happy. It sounds better than nouveau for sure. Is it really as bad as you say?