this post was submitted on 15 Jul 2025
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I do not want to over complicate things but there is some information that may help given that you have NVIDIA hardware.
Linux is going through a technology transition in its graphics technology from something called Xorg (x11) to something called Wayland.
Mostly you do not have to worry about this. Don’t let it distract you.
Everybody will be using Wayland in a year or two but right now today, it depends on the distro and desktop environment you choose. For example, current Ubuntu will default to GNOME on Wayland. Linux Mint defaults to Cinnamon in Xorg.
Until recently, NVIDIA has been buggy with Wayland. Specifically, NVIDIA needed something called “explicit sync”. This has now been added to newer NVIDIA drivers, Wayland compositors, Mesa, etc. So things work great now if you use the latest versions of things.
Again, you may not need to know any of these details. So, why am I bring it up?
Well, if you have an “up-to-date” distro, NVIDIA will likely work well. But if any of the required components are not available or older on the distro you use, you may have problems with NVIDIA. Only “may”. It may also work fine.
To avoid problems, you can use a very up-to-date distro like EndeavourOS. Or you can use a distro that will default to Xorg for now, like Linux Mint.
If you use a distro with older software versions, like Debian, or older software drivers, like OpenSUSE, or that lacks proprietary drivers, like Fedora, NVIDIA hardware can be a pain.
The reason people recommend AMD or Intel for Linux is because none of the above really matters on that hardware. They are more likely to “just work”.
Again, I hope I did not complicate things. I offer all this just so you can make sense of things if you run into trouble. You probably will not. And in a year or so, none of this will matter anymore even on NVIDIA. On many distros, it already doesn’t.