I don't know about any specific quirks with that model (eg. When I bought a GTX750, I needed to add a PPA because the driver version in the main Ubuntu 14.04 repository only had beta support for it and there was a performance regression), but nVidia is by far the most painless as long as you install a new enough driver. (Which is as simple as "add-apt-repository ...; apt-get update; apt-get dist-upgrade")

nVidia does a much better job than AMD at implementing "our proprietary Linux driver shares most of the Windows driver's code" and, aside from really old cards (in which case, you'll need either the -legacy driver package or Nouveau), nVidia uses the same "one driver for all models, release the drivers either before or at the same time as the hardware" approach as on Windows.

Looking through this list of every reason that someone might consider Linux not ready for the desktop, here are the main avoidable issues you might encounter with nVidia binary drivers:

1. nVidia HDMI audio has no volume control at the ALSA layer, so you rely entirely on PulseAudio or an ALSA softvol hack for that.

2. Due to a design shortcoming in X11, you'll have to choose between maximum performance and preventing tearing in video playback. (a side-effect of pre-Kepler nVidia GPU designs used to prevent that) However, it IS possible to switch between them. (You can use the nvidia-settings tool in a wrapper script for your game/player to turn on and off " ForceFullCompositionPipeline = On" as part of the command you'd normally use to dynamically change the list of allowed resolutions via MetaModes.)

3. nVidia is less friendly to the open-source driver community than AMD or Intel, so Nouveau (the open-source driver effort) is much further behind.

4. If you ever get a laptop with a "two GPUs: one for battery life, one for performance" design, neither the nVidia nor the AMD proprietary drivers have very good GPU switching support. (But, as mentioned, AMD is better at working with the open-source guys and they're working on opening up the kernel side of their driver, which should help to fix that).

All in all, for a desktop, I'd happily buy an nVidia card with the research being limited to price and benchmarks. Potential "need a PPA for a newer driver" issues aside, I trust them to Just Work™.

nVidia actually works around one of the "a problem for everyone" issues in that list. (Setting up modelines in X11 being a big pain. nVidia's TwinView multi-monitor feature basically reinvents monitor detection and configuration within the driver, so you can use the MetaModes configuration option to feed the driver a "These resolutions. You figure it out." instruction and let it do the rest.)

btw...
http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2994

[i]Does this affect you?

As far as we know, the only compromised edition was Linux Mint 17.3 Cinnamon edition.

If you downloaded another release or another edition, this does not affect you. If you downloaded via torrents or via a direct HTTP link, this doesn’t affect you either.

Finally, the situation happened today, so it should only impact people who downloaded this edition on February 20th.[/i]

I don't know how the drivers compare to one another, but I'm pretty happy in Ubuntu Gnome with my R9 270. I do have to get them from AMD's site for them to be worth while, though. If I grab from the repository, there is a significant performance hit, although the driver is easier to maintain down the road.

The trouble with the AMD website driver is that you have to uninstall it, and then reinstall it whenever your kernel is upgraded. There's probably a better work around to this, but I haven't spent a whole lot of time looking for it.

A german computer magazine tested different video cards (with different drivers) under Linux. With a GTX 970 and the proprietary driver you can expect almost double the framerate as with a R9 380 according to the test. (Link: [url=]http://www.heise.de/ct/ausgabe/2015-24-Test-Grafikkarten-zum-Spielen-unter-Linux-2854143.html[/url])

Maybe DKMS ([url=]https://help.ubuntu.com//community/DKMS[/url])? It does the trick with other distros, but I do not know if the drivers from the AMD website are configured accordingly.

I'm trying to get to the bottom of my troubles. I've installed Staw Wars: Starfighter (under native wine 1.9.4 & PoL same wine version), it runs but for the love of Thor I can't get it to see the keyboard. It accept keyboard input to get thru all the intro stuff, but once the menu load it no longer accept keyboard input. I've tried all the "solutions" that is available on the net, but so far none work. Zenohell is another game that also don't get input from the keyboard.

I'm using mint 17.3 with a microsoft keyboard. And I know the keyboard is setup correctly as all the special keys works the same as it did under XP, and have no problem with it anywhere else

Have you tried a wine-staging build? (eg. 1.9.3-staging in PlayOnLinux or wine-staging from the appropriate PPA?

I believe it has some keyboard-related patches that haven't yet made it into mainline.

Nope no solution for me :(

Did anyone here manage to run the Linux version of Frozen Synapse with one of the 'radeon' or 'amdgpu' open-source graphics drivers?
On my Debian Sid it crashes when attempting to draw the first window.

More details here:
http://forums.mode7games.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=10753

For any and all fellow Linux users, I have made a really simple desktop shortcut (Execute.desktop) that simply runs
sh -c "%u"
inside of it allowing it to be used from the 'Open With' option of whichever graphical file manager you prefer.
The way I've packaged this is as such:
[.local]
[share]
[applications]
Execute.desktop
In theory (depending on your archive management) you should simply be able to extract to your home directory, then right-click and launch any downloaded files (*.run/*.sh/*.bin, etc), WITHOUT changing file permissions even!
drive google com/file/d/0B948ARL3x1ubeGhiYkU5el84VEk/view?usp=sharing
I removed the initial dots (.'s) from the link as I'm apparently not allowed to post links, so you'll have to copy & past, fill in blanks. The link is to my personal Google Drive share. There is no included license, use at your own risk, I don't think it requires any license or guarantee, but even if I'm sued, I'll win, because all our lives just got easier.
Namaste & Shalom!
Have fun![i][/i]

I did see a keyboard related regression that was introduced in wine-1.7.44. Likely unrelated unless you are using a non-qwerty layout, but you might want to test some older Wine versions if you haven't already.

Liked your ideas regarding this topic.Would be interested in getting more knowledge.

Were you replying to me or was the "Reply to one of your posts" mark just a forum bug?

I made a script to extract music from KoTOR II. Enjoy.

FYI, I couldn't run installed games, because the .x86 files wouldn't run as executables.

I had to install the libraries indicated in the following QA: http://askubuntu.com/questions/348267/x86-file-not-executing

Also, I would highly recommend the advertisement (with a big splash) that the burden of installing pre-requisite libs (thanks for listing them in the game sheet though) has now been shifted to the end-user, otherwise some users might wonder why installers that previously worked seamlessly now install games that have no sound.

Overall, I highly recommend a better communication with regard to the direction of the Linux experience for end-users. It seems the decision to go from .debs to .sh install scripts to .sh install scripts with incomplete prereqs has been done rather suddenly and in a "hush hush" manner with minimal communication with end-users.

It makes for a less than ideal user experience. It's ok to change direction, but pls inform your customers.