Below are our top picks:

1. NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit

The Jetson Xavier NX developer kit is an enthusiast-level device with a consumer-level price. It takes the TX2 performance and ups it a notch. According to NVidia, the NX performance matrices outperform TX2 by approximately ten times in as little as 10W. That is sure to please a regular tinkerer. Its capability to develop and test energy-efficient, small form-factor projects with highly precise, multi-modal AI inference opens the gate for new breakthroughs.

The module’s computer has a 6-core NVIDIA Carmel ARM v8.2 CPU, 6 MB L2 + 4 MB L3 cache, 8GB computer memory size, and 16GB hardware disk size. Moreover, Its GPU is based on NVIDIA’s latest Volta architecture with 384 CUDA and 48 Tensor Cores. These are quite beast of specs for a consumer-level.

The only problem with this option is that L4T has a very small support community, which means not much software support. If you need software, you will probably have to build it yourself.

Overall, the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX Developer Kit has a power-efficient, compact Jetson Xavier NX module for AI edge devices. It’s a perfect portable solution for tinkerers looking into AI or robotics applications. And not just that, it also works great for entertainment and productivity.

Buy Here: Amazon

2. NVIDIA Jetson Nano 4GB Developer Kit

The second best Nvidia Jeston developer kit on our list is perhaps the most underrated SBC on the market. It delivers excellent performance to run modern AI workloads at an extraordinary size, power, and price point. That makes it a great little computer, especially for machine learning and teaching.

The Jetson Nano is also excellent as a general-purpose Ubuntu 18.04 LTS desktop. While the image is based on the preceding LTS, it’s still one of Nvidia’s more polished image. Even with just 4GBs of memory, it runs exceptionally well. The Nano has a very snappy feel while running a REAL full desktop Linux distribution. Yes, even the 8GB RaspberryPi 4 can’t beat the performance.

And then there’s the main draw: the GPU, programming, and its machine learning toolset. Everything comes pre-installed and pre-configured. You can also add other tools quickly via container images. The only downside of this developer kit is that the Maxwell-based 128 Cuda cores are somewhat outdated. But, hey, as long as they get the job done as a teaching tool, it’s all good.

The key takeaway here is that it’s quite a self-contained setup. If you’re a fan of pie, it’s as easy as pie (pun absolutely intended). Everything takes just 10 minutes to get up and to run. For the price, nothing beats it, especially as an independent learning tool.

Buy Here: Amazon

3. NVIDIA Jetson AGX Xavier Developer Kit (32GB)

While Nano is great, it can be slow for serious developers. The Xavier is Linux ARM64 at its finest. Sure, the AGX Xavier is noticeably costly, but it packs a punch when it comes to performance. And that too on just a 30W power level.

Let’s talk a little about the specs. The board is a nice ARMv8 developer box complete with CUDA, TensorRT, & NVIDIA’s libraries. On the other hand, the module has eight ARM v8.2 “Carmel” processor cores, 512-cores Volta GPU (with tensor cores),16GBs of LPDDR4x memory, 32GBs of eMMC5.1 storage, 2 NVDLA deep learning accelerators, and a seven-way VLIW vision processor. That’s some impressive firepower.

However, we love this kit because it comes with a “quiet” mode on. Because of this, it passively cools down with negligible throttling.

We have one minor gripe, though. in case of an electrical event, this unit does not automatically have power. You can jumper in some pins to get it to auto power on, but we didn’t try this method during our trial run. Overall, If you are training networks or doing some video AI, testing robotics, and other autonomous machines, AGX Xavier is the Jetson for you.

Buy Here: Amazon

4. NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Development Kit

The Jetson TX2 is another developer’s kit for the experts that comes nicely optimized for various AI forms. It’s rather hard for beginners to get started with this kit. But even if you’ve never trained a deep learning net, there’s plenty to appreciate here.

As for specs, the TX2 has a dual-Core NVIDIA Denver 2 CPU and Quad-Core ARM Cortex-A57 MPCore processor, 4 GB 128-bit LPDDR4 memory, 256-core NVIDIA’s Pascal GPU, and a 16 GB eMMC 5.1 storage. That translates to a performance three times faster than Raspberry 3. (The Jetson TX2 Development Kit came out in 2017).

To test its performance, we ran deep nets for image recognition using Tensorflow. Initially, the nets were trained using Amazon AWS. The nets transferred flawlessly to the TX2. But, of course, with some effort. This is not a toy. This is a pro engineering tool. It’s is a module that powers a self-driving car or a video-capturing quadcopter. These tasks demand fast processing capability with a low power budget.

That’s why there is no other tool like this. If you need a fast CPU that only draws 15 Watts, NVIDIA Jetson TX2 Development Kit seems like a logical choice.

Buy Here: Amazon

5. NVIDIA Jetson TK1 Development Kit

Finally, we have one of the oldest NVIDIA Jetson developer Kit. Of course, it’s still worth looking into in 2021. If you test the waters with Nvidia developer kits, the TK1 is still a great entry point and an inexpensive GPU platform for development.

The TK1 is built around NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 SOC. It uses an NVIDIA Kepler computing core that feels a little outdated today. However, it’s still a full NVIDIA CUDA platform that lets you develop and deploy compute-intensive systems for computer vision, robotics, agriculture, medicine, and more.

The footprint of this model is rather big and tall. Even though the system runs cool, the fan itself is placed quite high on the kit. As this is an older model, the RAM is also shared between the GPU and CPU, limiting its performance.

Like the options mentioned earlier, NVIDIA offers the entire BSP and software stack for this model. This includes CUDA, OpenGL 4.4, and NVIDIA’s Vision Works kit. With a complete development suite, plus out-of-the-box compatibility and support for cameras and other peripherals, NVIDIA gives you a nice introductory solution to get started with embedded systems.

Buy Here: Amazon

Buyer’s Guide for the Best NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kit

NVIDIA has no dearth of Jetson Developer Kits. So keep these crucial factors in mind when looking into the market for a purchase:

Footprint

The first thing to notice when you unpack the best NVIDIA Jetson Developer Kit should be your first consideration: the footprint. How much space does the kit need in your workspace? Is it heavy? Is the fan placed too high? Kits with a larger footprint aren’t portable. If your kid isn’t portable, then what’s the point of getting one in the first place?

Ease of Use

The developer kit should be ready to use out of the box. It shouldn’t put any limitation on your curiosity to explore AI with various sensors and peripherals.

Support

The next feature you should look into is the support and compatibility. First and foremost is the support for modern AI frameworks like TensorFlow, PyTorch, and MXNet. It should also support as many popular sensors in the AI community as possible. Having a large and vibrant developer community also comes in handy. You can then troubleshoot problems, share open-source projects as well as real-world applications.

How to use (or even use?)

After you receive your product, load the OS, and connect to the internet. Then open a browser text editor, and let it sit there for approx 6 hours or more. Letting it rest overnight is usually better. Afterwards, if there is no sign of rebooting, you should be good to go. However, if you notice rebooting, see if there is any kernel crash file under the “/var/log”? Open it and search for “kernel oops”. If it does show up, don’t waste your energies or time. Just return the product!

Final Thoughts

AI at the edge can unlock incredible potential in everything. Whether it’s healthcare, manufacturing, or agriculture, using the best NVIDIA Jetson developer Kit can make your task-at-hand incredibly rewarding. These kits reduce your software developmental costs and provide a scalable AI strategy for your autonomous machines. We hope this article helped you make up your mind. That’s all for now. Thank you for reading.

In this article, I am going to show you how to install NVIDIA graphics drivers on Ubuntu from the NVIDIA PPA. I will be using Ubuntu 19.04 for the demonstration in this article. But, it should work on any supported version of Ubuntu. So, let’s get started.

Checking NVIDIA Graphics Card Availability:

First, you should check whether Ubuntu detected your installed graphics card correctly.

To do that, go to System Settings > Details > About, you should be able to see NVXXX or something in the Graphics section as shown in the screenshot below. It means, you don’t have any NVIDIA graphics drivers installed yet. The open source nouveau drivers are used instead.

You can also check whether you have any NVIDIA PCIE graphics cards installed on your computer with the following command:

As you can see, the NVIDIA 1050Ti graphics card installed on my Ryzen 5 2400G is displayed. So, I can install the NVIDIA graphics driver on my Ubuntu operating system.

Adding NVIDIA PPA:

The official web page of NVIDIA PPA is https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

You can find what latest drivers are available in this page as you can see in the screenshot below.

To add the NVIDIA PPA, run the following command:

Now, press <Enter> to continue.

NVIDIA PPA should be added and the APT package repository cache should be updated.

As you can see, before I added the NVIDIA PPA, only nvidia-driver-418 and nvidia-driver-390 NVIDIA drivers were available for installation. These are proprietary NVIDIA graphics drivers.

After I added the NVIDIA PPA, nvidia-driver-396 and nvidia-driver-415 open source NVIDIA drivers are listed as well. Now, you can easily install NVIDIA drivers for your installed graphics card on Ubuntu.

Installing NVIDIA Drivers using Software & Updates App:

You can install NVIDIA graphics drivers using the Software & Updates app on your Ubuntu operating system graphically.

First, open the Software & Updates app from the Application Menu of Ubuntu.

Then, from the Additional Drivers tab, select the NVIDIA graphics driver that you want to install and click on Apply Changes as marked in the screenshot below.

Now, type in the password of your login user and click on Authenticate.

As you can see, NVIDIA graphics driver is being installed.

Once the driver is installed, you should see the following message. Now, restart your computer.

As you can see, now GeForce GTX 1050 Ti is in the Graphics section of System Settings > Details > About.

You should also find the NVIDIA X Server Settings app in the Application Menu of Ubuntu.

As you can see, NVIDIA X Server Settings says the graphics driver is being used is 418.56.

It also lists all the properties of my NVIDIA 1050 Ti Graphics card.

So, NVIDIA drivers are installed correctly and working.

Installing NVIDIA Graphics Drivers from the Command Line:

You can also use the package manager APT to install the NVIDIA graphics drivers from the command line.

First, type in the following command and press <Tab>.

You should see all the NVIDIA driver packages as tab competition. You can install any NVIDIA driver package from here.

Let’s say, you want to install the NVIDIA graphics driver 418 (nvidia-driver-418). To do that, run the following command:

Now, press y and then press <Enter> to continue.

NVIDIA driver packages are being downloaded and installed.

The NVIDIA driver packages are installed.

Now, reboot your computer with the following command:

Once your computer boots, NVIDIA graphics drivers should be used instead of Nouveau drivers.

Installing NVIDIA Drivers on Headless Servers:

NVIDIA also has headless drivers. If you want to install NVIDIA drivers on a headless server, then these are the NVIDIA packages for you.

As you can see, the NVIDIA drivers has a lot of headless versions. You can install any one of them using the APT package manager.

Installing NVIDIA Drivers using ubuntu-drivers:

You can use ubuntu-drivers to easily install NVIDIA drivers on your Ubuntu operating system.

To see whether you have any NVIDIA graphics card installed on your computer, run the following command:

As you can see, my NVIDIA 1050ti graphics card is detected and all the available drivers are listed.

Now, to install a suitable NVIDIA graphics driver for your graphics card, run the following command:

NVIDIA graphics drivers should be installed. Once it is, reboot your computer and enjoy.

So, that’s how you use NVIDIA PPA on Ubuntu and install NVIDIA graphics drivers on Ubuntu. Thanks for reading this article.

In this article, I will show you how to install Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint 18.2 with Optimus supported graphics card. Most of the new Laptops/notebooks these days have Optimus supported graphics card installed. The reason is that; Nvidia Optimus technology lets a device run in hybrid graphics mode. In hybrid graphics mode, you only use Nvidia high performance graphics card when you need it. Otherwise, you use the Intel HD Graphics if you’re using an Intel processor.

I am using ASUS Zenbook UX303UB for the demonstration in this article. It has Nvidia GeForce 940M Optimus Supported Graphics Card and Intel HD Graphics 520. So let’s get started.

You can install Nvidia drivers from “Driver Manager”. Click on Linux Mint “Menu”  and search for “driver” and you should see “Driver Manager” on the list.

Open “Driver Manager” and you should see a list of the proprietary hardwares you’re using.

As you can see, I have Nvidia GeForce 940M graphics card installed on my computer. Linux Mint is now using the open source nouveau driver. To install Nvidia drivers, click on ‘nvidia-384 (recommended)’ and click on Apply changes.

The installation should begin. It should take several minutes depending on your internet connection.

Once the installation is complete, just click on “Restart” to restart your computer.

Once the computer boots, you should see the following window.

Have you noticed any difference? Take a look at the panel. You should see Nvidia icon.

Click on the Nvidia icon from the panel, and it should open Nvidia settings.

You can see that Nvidia GPU is active. If you select the Intel GPU if you want as well.

If you want to use the open source nouveau drivers again, just open “Driver Manager” as select nouveau from there and click on “Apply Changes”.

It should take a minute to configure everything.

Once the changes are applied, you should be able to see a “Restart” button. Click on it and wait till your computer restarts.

To completely uninstall Nvidia drivers, open your terminal and run the following command:

sudo apt-get autoremove nvidia-* --purge

Type in ‘y’ and press to continue. Nvidia drivers should be uninstalled.

Now restart your computer and you’re good to go.

That’s how you install and uninstall Nvidia drivers on Linux Mint 18.2. Thanks for reading this article.

In this article, I am going to show you how to install and uninstall Nvidia Optimus Graphics drivers for devices that can run in hybrid graphics mode. In Linux, there are two types of Nvidia graphics drivers available. One is called nouveau which is open source and the other one is the closed source drivers from Nvidia. For most people, the open source nouveau drivers are enough. But if you strictly need the closed source Nvidia drivers for high performance graphics experience, then this article is for you.  Let’s get started. I am using GNOME3 desktop on Debian 9 Stretch.

First go to Activities and click on “Software and Updates”

Make sure all of these checkboxes are marked. If they are marked then you’re good to go.

Now run the following command to check whether your device supports Hybrid graphics:

lspci | grep 'VGA\|Nvidia'

You can see that I have Nvidia GeForce 940M and Intel HD Graphics 520 on my laptop.

Now to install Nvidia Optimus graphics drivers, run the following commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bumblebee-nvidia

Press ‘y’ and press <Enter> to continue. It should take a while for it to download and install all of these packages from the internet.

You should get the following message, simply press <Enter>. It’s nothing serious. The nouveau graphics driver will be blacklisted after installing the proprietary Nvidia drivers anyway. So it won’t be loaded from the next boot.

Once it’s complete, restart your computer. Once your computer boots, you have to perform some additional steps.

Open a terminal and run the following command:

sudo nano /usr/share/applications/nvidia-settings.desktop

The following window opens up:

Here you have to change only the marked section. Change it as it’s shown in the screenshot below.

Now press Ctrl+X and press to save the file.

Now click on “Activities” in the top left corner and search for “Nvidia”:

Click on Nvidia icon and you should be able to see Nvidia settings as shown below.

So everything is working correctly.

If you want to uninstall Nvidia Optimus drivers and go back to open source nouveau drivers, just run the following commands:

sudo apt-get autoremove --purge bumblebee-nvidia

Press ‘y’ and then press , Nvidia Optimus graphics drivers should be uninstalled.

Once it’s complete, restart your computer. That’s how you install and uninstall Nvidia Optimus graphics drivers on Debian 9 Stretch.

In this article, I will show you how to install Nvidia Optimus drivers on Ubuntu 17.10. Nvidia Optimus is a technology that enables a device to use 2 graphics card at once. One of the graphics card is not as powerful as the other. The benefit is that, it saves energy and increases battery life. The programs that don’t need much GPU processing can use the less powerful graphics card, like Intel HD Graphics. The high performance graphics card is only used when you run softwares that needs the GPU, like Blender. It’s also known as Hybrid graphics. Most of the Nvidia graphics card used on laptops/notebooks or any other mobile devices these days support Nvidia Optimus technology. So if you have one of these devices, this article is for you. Let’s get started.

First click on “Show Applications”  icon in the bottom left corner of the panel and search for “software”

Then click on “Software & Updates” icon to open “Software & Updates”

Note: Make sure all of these checkboxes are marked.

Then click on “Additional Drivers” tab.

Here you can see that currently I am using open source nouveau drivers.

To install Nvidia drivers, check the “Using Nvidia binary driver” and click on “Apply Changes”

It should take a while to install Nvidia drivers. Please wait till it’s complete.

Once the installation is complete, you should see a green mark right beside Nvidia Corporation and also notice the “1 proprietary driver in use” in the bottom of the window.

Now restart your computer.

Once your computer boots, click on “Show Applications” and search for ‘nvidia’

Click on “Nvidia Settings” and you should see the following window:

So Nvidia Graphics driver installation was successful.

If you want to switch to open source nouveau drivers, open “Software & Updates” like before.

Go to “Additional Drivers” tab

Select “Using X.Org X server — Nouveau display driver…”

Then click on “Apply Changes”. It should take a while for the changes to take effect.

Now restart your computer and nouveau drivers will be used again.

If you want to completely remove Nvidia drivers, open your terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the following command:

“sudo apt-get remove --purge nvidia-*”

Press ‘y’ and then press <Enter>

It should take a minute or two. Once the command completes, Nvidia drivers will be completely uninstalled from your computer. Now restart your computer and you’re good to go.

There are other packages that you don’t need anymore as nvidia packages are removed, you can remove these packages with the following command:

“sudo apt-get autoremove --purge”

That’s how you install and uninstall Nvidia drivers on Ubuntu 17.10. Thanks for reading this article.

In this article, I will show you how to install Nvidia drivers on Fedora 26. Let’s get started. I am using Fedora 26 KDE Desktop. For other Fedora 26 desktops, the process is similar.

By default, the latest version of Fedora, which is Fedora 26 as of this writing, uses open source nouveau Nvidia drivers. In this article, I will show you how to install the proprietary Nvidia drivers on Fedora. I am using Nvidia GeForce 940M Graphics card on my laptop ASUS Zenbook UX303UB. It supports Nvidia Optimus technology. So I am able to run it alongside my Intel HD Graphics in a hybrid graphics configuration. All the new Nvidia cards should have this feature.

NOTE: Before you proceed with the driver installation, turn of secure boot from BIOS.

Let’s first check if our NVIDIA graphics card is detected by the operating system. To do that, run the following commands:

lspci | grep 'VGA\|NVIDIA'

You can see that, Fedora 26 detected the Intel HD Graphics 520 and Nvidia GeForce 940M Graphics of my laptop. If you see 2 graphics cards like this, it means your Nvidia graphics card supports Optimus and you can follow this tutorial and expect everything to work. Otherwise, it may be that your graphics card is too new or Optimus is not supported.

You can check that nouveau driver is in use with the following command:

“lsmod | grep ”nouveau’”

You can see that nouveau driver is active.

Now I am going to install the Nvidia proprietary graphics using bumblebee. If you want to know, bumblebee manages hybrid Nvidia graphics very well in Linux. It is sufficient for almost all the latest Nvidia graphics based laptops/notebooks.

To install bumblebee, first we have to add the repository of bumblebee in Fedora 26.

To do that, run the following commands:

sudo dnf -y --nogpgcheck install
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee/fedora$(rpm -E %fedora)/noarch/bumblebee-release-1.2-1.noarch.rpm

sudo dnf -y --nogpgcheck install
http://install.linux.ncsu.edu/pub/yum/itecs/public/bumblebee-nonfree/fedora$(rpm -E %fedora)/noarch/bumblebee-nonfree-release-1.2-1.noarch.rpm

Before installing bumblebee, don’t forget to update your kernel. I had problems with not upgrading it in the first place. To update the kernel, run the following command:

sudo dnf update kernel kernel-core kernel-modules kernel-modules-extra

After you run this, restart your computer. You can check your current kernel version with the following command:

uanme -r

Now we can install bumblebee. To install bumblebee, run the following command and press <Enter>:

sudo dnf install bumblebee-nvidia bbswitch-dkms primus kernel-devel

If this command doesn’t work for you, then try the following command:

sudo dnf install bumblebee-nvidia bbswitch-dkms VirtualGL.x86_64 VirtualGL.i686 primus.x86_64 primus.i686 kernel-devel

You should see the following on the terminal. Press ‘y’ and press <Enter> to continue:

The installation should begin. It may ask you to verify the key, if in case it does, just type in ‘y’ and press <Enter> to continue.

Now add your user to the bumblebee group with the following command:

usermod -a -G bumblebee YOUR_USERNAME

Sometimes your installation will not work if you don’t pass ‘pcie_port_pm=off’ kernel parameter to your operating system. Doing this is really easy, just open /etc/default/grub file with the following command:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

Add the highlighted section to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINE and save the file. Then update grub with the following command:

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

Once these steps are complete, restart your computer.

Now you can verify bumblebee installation with the following command:

sudo bumblebee-nvidia --check

You can also check that Nvidia driver is working from Nvidia Settings.

You can see from the following figure that its working correctly.

To uninstall Nvidia drivers, run the following command:

sudo dnf remove bumblebee-nvidia bbswitch-dkms primus kernel-devel

Press ‘y’ and then press <Enter> to continue.

Then run the following command to remove the rest of the dependencies of bumblebee:

sudo dnf autoremove

Now restart your computer, Nvidia driver should be removed and nouveau drivers will start to function again.

You can see that nouveau drivers are used again.

That’s how you install and uninstall Nvidia drivers on Fedora 26. Thanks for reading this article.

Nouveau – Nvidia Open Source Driver

Nouveau is the open-source device driver to support Nvidia graphics cards and the Nvidia Tegra family of SoCs. The device driver was developed with the cooperation of Nvidia engineers but it’s not the official Nvidia driver.

Nouveau is based on Nvidia’s proprietary Linux driver. The project is currently managed by X.Org Foundation. It has three components:

• Linux Kernel KMS driver (nouveau)
• Gallium3D drivers in Mesa
• X.org DDX

The source code is hosted on freedesktop.org.

Nouveau is freely distributed under the MIT License. The predecessor of Nouveau is the deprecated 2D-only open-source nv driver. In 2005, Nouveau started as nv driver patches. The first official release was demonstrated in the Linux.conf.au in 2007. In 2010, Nouveau was accepted into the Linux kernel as an experimental device driver.

The initial versions of Nouveau were using Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI) for Mesa 3D for 3D graphics functionalities. But since 2008, Gallium3D is being used for 3D support. Nouveau is used as the default Nvidia device driver for Linux distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, and OpenSUSE.

The Nouveau project is actively supported by the open-source community. It is improving with every new release.

Limitations:

Nouveau users should be aware of the following limitations:

• Performance: 3D performance may be slower than Nvidia proprietary drivers.
• Refresh Rates: Higher refresh rates (above 60 Hz) might run into bottlenecks.
• Advanced Features: The driver might not support new advanced features in the latest Nvidia graphics cards (like multiple-display capabilities of Nvidia Quadro cards without Scalable Link Interface or SLI).

Nvidia Proprietary Driver

The Nvidia proprietary driver is developed and maintained by Nvidia. It supports a wider range of graphics cards than Nouveau driver. This closed-source driver provides better performance for 3D graphics and computer games than the open-source option.

The Nvidia proprietary driver consists of two parts:

• Wrapper functions compile against the Linux kernel.
• The binary blob (Binary Large OBject) takes care of the communication with the card.

The kernel module and the X11 driver are included in a single package. Users have to choose the specifics of how the components are installed from the package.

Hardware Compatibility

The package comes with support for multiple generations of Nvidia cards. You can find out about the card compatibility with your system using the Nvidia driver download page form.

Kernel Compatibility

Nvidia kernel driver installs and runs against the current Linux kernel. The driver builds as a module and needs a kernel that is capable of loading kernel modules. The kernel module is called nvidia.ko. The nvidia.ko consists of a proprietary part, known as the binary blob, and an open-source part, known as the glue. The binary blob takes care of the graphics card functionalities. The glue part works as the intermediary between the binary blob and the kernel. The binary blob, the glue, and the system kernel have to work together to create a smooth operation. These components take care of operating system issues like kernel panics, X server crashes, overheating and power management.

The Challenges of Nvidia Drivers

A risk of using the Nvidia proprietary driver is the changes to any Linux internal Application Binary Interface (ABI) can have adverse consequences. New Linux kernel releases can change the internal ABI for drivers. It requires all drivers using those ABIs to be updated. It is not a big deal for open-source products. Users can easily review the chain of calls between drivers and update the ABIs easily. But users don’t have that level of transparency into nvidia.ko. So after a new kernel release, Nvidia cards might start to showcase data loss or hardware failures. If you are using nvidia.ko, always use caution before a kernel update. It’s recommended to stick to the current kernel version until Nvidia releases a new version of nvidia.ko for general use.

Relationship with the Open-Source Community

Nvidia has a contentious relationship with the open-source community. The Nvidia graphics cards still outperform Intel and AMD cards on Linux systems. But the closed-source nature of Nvidia drivers makes it difficult for open-source communities to contribute. In the past, open-source Nouveau developers used to take the firmware images of the Nvidia device drivers and reverse engineer them to find out more about the internals of the drivers. Then they would replicate the functionalities on Nouveau. But Nvidia started to release signed firmware images which can’t be reverse engineered. Nvidia has claimed that they want to stop the use of imitation graphics cards. But it is preventing the development of open-source support for Nvidia cards.

Switching Between Nouveau and Nvidia Drivers

Users can switch between Nouveau and Nvidia proprietary drivers. It’s difficult but still possible. Here are three methods you can use:

• Switching with the help of two kernels
• Switching with the help of a single kernel and hprofile
• Switching with the help of a single kernel and systemd

You can learn more about the methods here.

Linux Distribution Specific Installation Instructions

Please use the following links to find the installation instructions for specific Linux distributions. The detailed instructions should help you install the Nvidia proprietary driver on your Linux machine. If your favorite distribution is missing, you can send us an email and we will look into adding the necessary instructions.

Ubuntu

Debian

Linux Mint

Fedora

CentOS

In Conclusion

Nvidia is one of the best companies for graphics cards for Linux machines. However, installing and running Nvidia drivers on Linux systems is challenging due to the company’s propensity to keep its hardware and software closed-sourced. You can use Nouveau open-source drivers to run Nvidia cards at a performance penalty. Also, find out more about the performance differences between Nouveau and Nvidia proprietary drivers from this Phoronix review.

Further Information:

Nouveau Information Page

Nvidia Driver Download Page

Switching Between Nouveau and Nvidia Proprietary Driver

References:

• https://linuxhint.com/install-nvidia-drivers-linux/
• https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau-410-blob&num=1
• https://www.x.org/wiki/nv/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouveau_(software)
• https://nouveau.freedesktop.org/wiki/
• https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Nouveau
• https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Nouveau_%26_nvidia-drivers_switching
• http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/346.35/README/index.html
• https://www.pcworld.com/article/2911459/why-nvidia-graphics-cards-are-the-worst-for-open-source-but-the-best-for-linux-gaming.html