Nvidia drivers

Raised as a usability problem by 34 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2011–2025), in 36 threads.

People raised many different problems with Nvidia drivers, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.

The newest 37 complaints

Users download the wrong driver file from nvidia.com, so the card does not work well2025-11-20
Login breaks after changes, and fixing it takes an hour of digging2025-08-26
Screen flickers so badly the desktop is basically unusable2025-03-02
Drivers break after updates or reboots, forcing hours of manual fixing2025-02-28
Downloading drivers manually takes many steps, unlike updating other software2024-11-03
Plasma UI becomes unresponsive and panel icons fail to show under Wayland2024-07-18
Can't run two different-generation Nvidia cards; installing one driver breaks others after kernel upgrades2024-03-21
Proprietary driver randomly fails at boot, adding about a minute to startup2024-01-03
Shutdown reboots instead of powering off, so user must press power button before BIOS2023-01-31
Scrolling a Jupyter notebook in PyCharm under Wayland pegs a CPU core and redraws at about 5fps2022-07-21
SRGB clamp is hidden, so users need third-party software to enable it2022-04-21
Switching GPUs requires logging out and back in, unlike on Windows2022-03-04
4K monitor detected as two displays, breaking full-screen video2022-03-04
Spent three days failing to get basic graphics switching working, unlike seamless Windows behavior2022-01-01
Driver updates push a social-network-style interface that gets in the way of simply updating2021-12-12
Getting drivers requires visiting the website, creating an account, and installing slow bloatware2021-10-27
Updating NVIDIA drivers on laptop is painful and doesn't work well with system2021-09-15
HDMI screen won't wake from sleep; only switching to a text tty and back fixes it2021-06-25
Desktop lacked vsync and manual vsync settings had no effect2020-12-07
KDE users get a terrible experience with Nvidia hardware due to driver support2020-09-01
Navigating nested device and model lists to find the right driver is tedious and confusing2020-02-06
Switching GPUs required restarting the whole X11 session each time2020-02-02
Could never get PRIME working to switch to onboard graphics, wasting days2019-05-22
Connecting external monitors is a nightmare that wastes lots of time2019-04-25
Users must know to install drivers, then hand-edit config files found via forum searches2019-01-07
Nouveau keeps taking over despite blacklisting, making the official driver nearly impossible to use2019-01-06
Getting Nvidia drivers installed and TensorFlow using the GPU caused problems2017-09-01
Must create and log into an account just to reach graphics settings2017-03-16
Third monitor never activates and apps can't be launched on extra screens without manual DISPLAY configuration2017-01-31
Forced driver update re-enabled ShadowPlay, and turning it off requires creating an account2017-01-27
Switching to Nvidia card causes poor window composition, repainting and vsync problems2016-03-12
Settings app lacks vsync option, leaving screen tearing unfixable without deep documentation digging2015-01-04
Nvidia's configuration tools are needed to make the driver work and are hard to use2013-02-23
Linux multi-monitor setup is not as hassle-free as OS X, needs fiddling2013-02-18
Forces monitors to 1024x768 and wrong arrangement, making display setup hard to fix2012-11-06
Freezes for 30 seconds on new monitors, reverts display, and bottom-edge alignment fails2012-02-14
HDMI hotplug doesn't work, and switching monitors requires manual clicking in settings2011-12-02