I have an HP Victus laptop that I’m trying to get to fully work. It has two GPUs. The integrated is an AMD and the discrete is an Nvidia. For about a month I’ve been attempting to get Debian 12 to see and use the Nvidia card. My knowledge on anything Linux is not strong.

I got as far as getting the proprietary driver loaded. I just couldn’t get anything to side load it when I launched anything.

I’ve stepped back a bit, and started to wonder if I’d have a better experience if I tried a different distro. I’ve heard some are better for multi-GPU situations like Manjaro.

So I guess I’m asking everyone if I should try jumping distros for this AMD/Nvidia situation?

  • @Psynthesis@beehaw.org
    3•7 months ago

    Have you checked this? https://wiki.debian.org/NVIDIA Optimus I have never needed to mess with dual gpus, but this should hopefully help with your current distro. If you use another distro, you are still going to have to search how to use hybrid graphics on it. So if you’re happy with Debian, try the guide. Before jumping to another distro, research /look into what that would take to get running before you jump.

  • @demomantf2realEnglish
    3•7 months ago

    I have dual-GPUs and Arch seems to work fine for me. I’d try it out on a live ISO before you wipe Debian though.

    • @NullOPEnglish
      1•7 months ago

      I’ll give that a try this evening with a couple USB sticks. Besides the installer and that Manjaro delays the package releases, what would you say is the difference between Arch and Manjaro?

      My first distro was actually LMDE on another laptop, and this time I just figured I’d try Debian this time. I know Manjaro is based on Arch like LMDE is to Debian.

      • @demomantf2real
        3•7 months ago

        Manjaro is aimed more at newcomers from what I know. You’re usually supposed to use GUIs instead of CLIs for a lot of thing. Personally, I don’t use it (Garuda and Endeavor are my favorites), but I don’t see the problem with using it.

        IMO, Arch (and most Arch-likes, Manjaro being the exception) has a big focus on customization. The goal of Arch is to let you basically do whatever you want, whereas Manjaro is designe to work out of the box. As kalzEOS on r/archlinux put it:

        Manjaro (and other similar distros) is like ordering a pizza from a pizza place. It comes to you all done and ready. You accept whatever they put on it and eat, or you can pick the toppings that you don’t like and eat the rest. Arch is like buying the bread, the sauce, the cheese and the toppings that you want, put them all together, cook it and enjoy. The final result is the same, but the first one takes less time to fill your stomach. Lol

    • @AVincentInSpaceEnglish
      1•7 months ago

      HOW??? I’ve been trying off and on to get dual GPUs (AMD+Nvidia) working on Arch for coming up on a year now. nvidia-xrun turns off the internal display and I have to connect an external monitor in order to see anything, and nvx works for compute applications (works great in Blender, for example) but when I launch a game, either it runs on the IGP, or I get audio but no video. Which method do you use?