💯 I use Linux as my daily driver and don't feel like I'm missing out on anything. It's come such a long way! Still not perfect but it's really incredible
How is the current Nvidia driver situation on Linux? I wanted to give it a shot on my gaming PC for a long time now but was deterred by the various driver horror stories…
people always complain about nvidia drivers on linux, but personally my experience has never required anything more than sudo apt install nvidia-driver
Arch is similarly this easy. I think where I usually see the most people complaining is when a new shiny version of the driver has come out and they try to update manually, breaking system packages and borking their system.
I'm not saying I have personally done this before. Nope. Not saying that at all...
For gaming? I haven't really run into any issues. If you're trying to virtualize your GPU for VMs and stuff like that, Nvidia is a lot more locked down. I use the proprietary drivers - the open source ones don't seem to perform as well. Most Distributions will just give you a prompt where you select which drivers you would prefer to use.
Not great for my use case but your mileage may vary
I need very high res with 240hz which is only in beta drivers atm so it's very difficult to find a distro I can use without messing about
I'm a Plasma on Wayland enjoyer, running a 1080ti, and pretty much every bug I've encountered since I've started using Linux has been resolved. There's probably some stuff I don't know about, purely because it doesn't affect me, but it's been smooth sailing here
I've been using Linux full time on my desktop since 2019 and while I don't think I'll buy nvidia again, the experience in the meanwhile has been fine. The things I can do with my computer are much more limited, especially when it comes to Wayland. But assuming you're just using your computer like a normal person you can stick to Xorg and basically have a totally normal computer experience.
Personally, one of the worst parts about nvidia proprietary drivers with Wayland is that I cannot use the night light feature in Gnome, which makes my display unreasonably uncomfortable during night time usage. When will nvidia provide the necessary support for the thing that makes it work? Who knows.
Ancient computer and nvidia card here. Not sure what Gnome's nightlight is ultimately based on, but you might try Redshift or f.lux which - I assume - do pretty much the same thing.
I've used both and am currently using Redshift. f.lux stopped working for me a few years ago and I haven't bothered trying to find out if that was a fluke and whether it will work again now. Redshift uses geolocation by default, but that can be turned off.
I recently switched to Linux for my daily driver. I picked Nobara. It installed, detected my card, and installed drivers. Pretty straightforward. That said, performance isn't the same. I have just been playing Elden Ring and I am getting the fps, but there's some stutter and screen tearing even with VRR active. Also, ray tracing isn't a default, you need to add some stuff to your Steam launch.
Overall if you are looking to switch, get a new drive and start Linux on that. Keep your old Windows setup. At least that worked for me. Now I only boot Windows to mod Skyrim since I haven't gotten that ironed out in Linux.
tbh it's overblown. I have been holding off on wayland for this and various other reasons, but gaming on x11 with nvidia proprietary drivers is fine. The only difficulties I've ever run into is installing/updating the package using a distro-specific method. I've never hit a driver bug.