Black screens, X server crashes, OpenGL programs either crashing or running slow. Just general unreliability. Different driver versions seemed more reliable than others, which meant I was always very reluctant to upgrade, which then gives you more problems as you end up pinning old versions which then makes it harder to troubleshoot online...
> My nvidia problems are generally software and update related. The NVidia stuff usually works on popular distros, but as soon anything custom or a surprise update happens then there is a chance things break.
I mean if you run mixed versions then yeah that will work for some upgrades and not others. A decent package manager should prevent that; some distros refuse to put effort into packaging the nvidia-drivers out of principle. But if you keep the drivers in sync (which is what the official package from NVidia themselves does, it's not their fault some distros choose to explode it into multiple packages) and properly rebuild just the kernel module every time you do a kernel upgrade (or just reinstall the whole driver if you prefer), then it's rock solid.
Black screens, X server crashes, OpenGL programs either crashing or running slow. Just general unreliability. Different driver versions seemed more reliable than others, which meant I was always very reluctant to upgrade, which then gives you more problems as you end up pinning old versions which then makes it harder to troubleshoot online...
> My nvidia problems are generally software and update related. The NVidia stuff usually works on popular distros, but as soon anything custom or a surprise update happens then there is a chance things break.
I mean if you run mixed versions then yeah that will work for some upgrades and not others. A decent package manager should prevent that; some distros refuse to put effort into packaging the nvidia-drivers out of principle. But if you keep the drivers in sync (which is what the official package from NVidia themselves does, it's not their fault some distros choose to explode it into multiple packages) and properly rebuild just the kernel module every time you do a kernel upgrade (or just reinstall the whole driver if you prefer), then it's rock solid.