oh don’t get me wrong, when nvidia is an option for linux it seems to work ok, while maybe an older driver, but some distros are a pain to get the nvidia driver installed, or are designed around AMD like ChimeraOS. Not sure if you can still add nvidia to that distro, I haven’t tried yet.
Ok, maybe don't use an os that is designed around AMD if you have an Nvidia GPU.
I used Pop!_OS, Ubuntu and arch (current os) and it worked great on every single one. I did a downgrade on arch three times now (average once every 10 months or so), but to be frank I did the same for other software, that's more an arch thing than a Nvidia thing.
It's also the most up to date driver, at least on arch.
There’s also Linux Mint and ZorinOS to name others that have good built-in nvidia support.
The point of my comments was to highlight how linux doesn’t universally work well with nvidia unless you get a distro that’s more compatible or user friendly with nvidia drivers. I mentioned ChimeraOS solely as an example of one that openly says it doesn’t support nvidia, even though it’s possible you may be able to install it separately.
Your comments have confirmed what I said: that nvidia generally has the best compatibility [with games, emulators, etc] compared to AMD, unless you’re on linux, at which point you have to go to specific distros or go through the PITA process of making it work, when AMD generally just works.
So the suggestion that no one should buy nvidia until they drop prices is simply DOA on arrival, because nvidia is still the most compatible, and the linux market share where it might be a problem is not that big.
at which point you have to go to specific distros or go through the PITA process of making it work, when AMD generally just works.
Ok, I agree with this point.
My counterargument is that those "specific distros" make up the vast majority of desktop Linux use. So it's less that you have to choose a specific distro and more that you have to avoid niche distros.
Doesn't invalidate the core of your argument though.
I’m just pointing out the well-known compatibility issues that are evident if you spend any amount of time browsing a linux support channel, which would be the only solid argument for not buying nvidia cards en masse aside from pricing (or if you wanted to build a hackintosh), if the linux userbase was significant enough or if there weren’t other distros to choose from.
Otherwise the vast majority of compatibility issues I see for pc gaming or emulation is in regards to AMD cards, so I wouldn’t bother buying one of those, no matter how much more affordable they might be. Just not worth the trouble when nVidia generally works as expected, or driver fixes are delivered faster.
edit: unless it’s a game bafflingly designed around AMD, like Starfield apparently