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PSA: It's Recommended To Avoid Using The Open-Source NVIDIA Driver (e.g. Nouveau) On Kernel 6.3

It's recommended to avoid using the open-source NVIDIA 'Nouveau' graphics driver on the current stable Linux 6.3 series as there is a serious bug present that could cause varying issues to your system.

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There is a use-after-free issue within the Nouveau DRM kernel driver and it can cause corruption of kernel memory. Use-after-free issues are also a potential security vulnerability but it's possible this corrupted kernel memory could lead to file-system corruption or other system issues.

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  • I would avoid that nVidia open source driver anyway. Sadly the proprietary one has been better in my experience.

    • Same .. I think this would only really impact a select few who are trying to do a fresh install with 6.3 kernel, as very few live discs use proprietary drivers during install (is it only PopOS that does that?). Even then most mainstream distros wouldn't have had live discs with 6.3 (Fedora 38 did not and I'm guessing all Debian based ones had an older kernel). Not sure about Arch and OpenSUSE tho

      Anyway, the good news is that there's already a patch for this out with 6.4 so even those handful that would have been affected should be fine now:

      https://www.phoronix.com/news/Nouveau-Use-After-Free-Fixed

      • When I recently did a fresh Manjaro install, it offered to load the Live CD with proprietary drivers. When I installed that way, nVidia proprietary was pre-installed. I guess they're learning from PopOS.