Title. I remember having a laptop with an intel iGPU and NVidia dGPU back in the day, and trying to use Linux on it was – Yeah not really a thing. It meant spending a whole day trying to configure the driver, then you could do optirun command, but depending on the application, it didn’t matter how hard you tried or how good you smelled, that shit just wouldn’t work.
It’s been a long long time. Gaming on Linux has gotten better and better, but I’ve been using AMD stuff exclusively since ~2018
Still, getting a laptop with an AMD dGPU is… Does anyone other than Framework even make them? Either way I tried and couldn’t find any to buy in my country at all.
So I’m eyeing a laptop with an NVidia GPU and an Intel processor. … But it worries me that I would buy it and find Linux doesn’t work on it. I categorically refuse to use Windows on a personal machine ever again, so I’ll just do without if NVidia+Linux is still as fuckt as it was back in the day.
In my current machines I use CachyOS, but yeah.
Bumblebee and BB switch are deprecated now. iGPU will default unless you run with
primusrun.You can also completely turn off the dGPU at the PCI bus to save power.
I’ve been maining Linux for a couple years now on Nvidia and it’s… awesome. It is not the nightmare it used to be, assuming you use the Nvidia drivers. I’ve not found anything in my Steam library I can’t run. Same with Heroic.
I prefer CachyOS but Bazzite I’ve heard good things about as well. I’ve successfully used Fedora and a handful of others also (but I refuse to try Ubuntu - not a fan), so, pick your flavor and try it out.
Now it’s to the point where I rarely have to visit protonDB… most games just work (I use cachyos’ proton build as my default).
Give it a shot. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
It’s not a nightmare, but I’ll still go with AMD next time. I think NVIDIA does a really poor job with drivers still. I keep having sleep issues.
I have an almost 20 year old laptop with an i5 and a 1050ti, installed CachyOS and it just works. Afaik it uses igpu by default, havent tried much yet but i can see that the laptop is pretty silent normally and gamee run well with a command that makes them use dgpu.
No.
I’m m running bazzite on an Alienware m15 laptop, with an i7 & a 1070ti. Works great, no issues at all. When my last machine died, I rolled the dice on an HP Envy refurb machine with an i9 and a 4070 Ti Super (cheapest I could find with 16gb vram). I daily drive LMDE on it, also works perfectly. This is a desktop though to be fair.
It’s fine. Asus laptop with Intel/Nvidia (2023ish), all-AMD desktop (2026ish), both fine with CachyOS. No issues to note really
I have an Intel + Nvidia laptop, it works as it should. Is it a recent laptop?
I installed CacyOS on my MSI laptop with Nvidia m2060 + igpu and Intel CPU a couple of months ago. I can play genres through Steam just fine. It performs better than it did on Windows 11.
I’ll be honest, I was amazed I had no issues getting it running. CachyOS has sone great tools to set things up and their wiki is excellent. I just followed the steps in there to set up GPU switching. I disabled secure boot, since that can get in the way of drivers loading, but they have instructions for that as well.
Wi-Fi worked out of the box. I even have a luks encrypted root.
The main issue I had was MSI specific hardware, like battery charging control, normally managed by the Dragon Center. I found an open source replacement for that.
I can’t speak to the battery performance since I always use it plugged in. It’s a few years old so it’s probably not great anyway.
Your mileage may vary. It’s probably going to be more off a struggle with hardware specific to the model of laptop rather than Nvidia.
i got a used thinkpad with nvidia t1000 about a year ago. i installed kubuntu on it, chose the proprietary driver from the driver manager thingy and rebooted.
i forget the driver is even a thing. it switches to it automatically when i start a game, and it uses intel igpu when on battery. not a single issue yet and I’ve used it almost daily.I’m running a 13th gen core i9 and an rtx 4070 on my rog zephyrus. It runs CachyOS beautifully.
No complaints for the two-ish years I’ve had it.
I can’t answer the laptop issue specifically. I have two desktops with Nvidia in it. And it runs fine apart from one of them being out of date of the official drivers. It’s not nearly the hassle it was a decade ago. AMD is always easier generally. But these days Nvidia is pretty stable as well. Especially if you have a modern 20+ series card supported by their current drivers
What made Laptops hard was the whole “two GPUs, and the dGPU switches off to save battery” thing that required the installation of a specific daemon (I think it was called bumblebee or something?) and running games with a specific command to make it happen.
The laptop I was eyeing has a low-end 50 series card.
Yeah therev was some version of it called Optimus as well I think. I installed kinoite on my old xps9570 and handed it to my brother and he’s been gaming on it so the dedicated card surely works. Can’t remember exactly what I did but I think I had to start steam with a specific param or something.
Sorry I can’t be of more help.
I second that Optimus sucks a bit still. That said, I have an older laptop with a 1060 mobile and that one runs smooth af.
For like 80% of the hardware I would assume things work without much hassle.
For the 20% there are more or less reliable workarounds.
But the only thing you need to know: these 10 years Linux’ drivers issues really have improved in a major way. If you ask whether it’s worth it to try again, I would say yes. Not a guarantee but a new roll of the dice.
Interesting. Today I learned. The last new laptop I bought for myself was in the late 90s at the local micro center. Sporting an AMD k6-2. My current one has an AMD iGPU. I’ll have to keep this in mind if I ever get lucky enough to find a good deal on a used laptop with a dedicated or discreet GPU.
I have been using NVIDIA under Linux since 2005, then in 2025 I switched to AMD. I have lots more problems with the Radeon, like the driver just crashing, taking the whole X server and all applications with it. That never happened with NVIDIA.
Gaming on a laptop is a path that will lead to failure eventually; get a desktop computer.
Defeatist mindset
The only issue of note is the binary blob, and NVIDIA’s refusal to digitally sign the driver. Thus if you have Secure Boot enabled, you need to take the added steps to resign your drivers every system update, which is a pain, or disable secure boot, which may lock you out of some future stream games.
which may lock you out of some future stream games
Don’t those that require Secure Boot use Kernel Anticheat? You’ll be locked out of them on Linux anyway
Lol, I don’t know. I purposely bought AMD / Radeon because I heard I didn’t have to load no dumb proprietary binary blob. It’s been good. Just works.
