Why is every Distro/DE choppy? -Nvidia

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

Kia ora folks.

What causes cinnamon/gnome/KDE on their most popular distros (mint, ubuntu) to drop frames and all around run awfully?

I have a gtx 1070, 4k and 1200x1920 vertical display under displayport and dvi respectively.

Some specifics:
Dragging windows is slow.
Screen tearing is very bad
Opening the overview in gnome is very laggy.

This happens on the nvidia proprietary driver and the default xorg

The option in the nvidea GUI to (i may be wrong, cant remember it word for word) to force pipeline rendering, which a few older forum posts from around the internet circa 2016, state may fix this does not exist anymore.

This is frustrating as 40 minutes of writing in Cinnamon brings my desktop to a psuedo crawl.

Ive got MATE going just now, its smooth but a little boring.

2

Looks like while i was typing this someone else posted something similar:

https://forum.level1techs.com/t/stuttering-and-screen-tearing-on-nvidia/127998/3
3

Yup the stuttering (specifically in youtube videos) is pretty much the only thing keeping me from daily driving Linux.

Interestingly enough, I just installed Ubuntu on a PC with only Intel graphics and it seemed much smoother than on my system with a Nvidia GPU.

1 Like
4

Literally a nvidia driver problem. This happens every few versions. Use 390 or 384 and don’t worry about it till like 398 or 400. Only a few months away really.

Or be reasonable and buy an AMD GPU.

2 Likes
5

I’ve been using Kubuntu 18.04 with the 396.24? PPA drivers and haven’t noticed any issues at 2560x1440. I have two monitors, one is a 144hz G-Sync, the other a normal 60hz at the same resolution. No issues with stuttering on either monitor. (even with the stock 390 driver on Ubuntu)

My biggest gripe is that you have to disable the second monitor to have G-Sync work. WTF Nvidia?

6

@VirginGrandma

I think I found a solution. Uninstall the Nvidia drivers and install nouveau. Add this option to xconfig:

Option “GLXVBlank” “true”

On PopOS I had to specify at log in to use Wayland, not sure about Ubuntu though. Since Wayland is the default there.

7

nvidia-lts <— if you cant figure it out