this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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It's almost completely the opposite, drivers are (almost completely) a windows problem. If you're willing and able to go the open source route, which for most people mean "I don't have an NVIDIA card or don't plan on getting every ounce of performance from it" you don't need to worry about drivers at all (bar some weird cards, but they're getting rarer and rarer, I don't remember the last time I had to install a driver that wasn't NVIDIA).
Good to know I should avoid NVIDIA for Linux. The only NVIDIA card I have is on my gaming rig, so I don't plan on having to deal with that since I'm sticking with Windows on that until (hopefully) more studios start caring about Linux compatibility. Can't wait to cut that Microsoft umbilical cord permanently.
~~That said, do I need dedicated graphics on a Plex server?~~ I was going to go integrated, but your comment made me realize I never checked hardware requirements. Which are probably on Plex's website. Which I am now going to go check because Lemmy isn't Google and it's not your responsibility to hand me answers I can easily find.
Nope, not gonna be that guy today. Thanks lol
Just to avoid any misunderstandings for the furture: you can run NVIDIA cards in ubuntu, you just have to install their proprietary driver. And on ubuntu, its pretty easy to do so. I used a few different nvidia cards on Ubuntu in the last years and never experienced any issues after installing the recommended driver. Before installing the driver, I got some flickering and artifacts, but with the right driver everything should be fine. And even for amd graphics you can install the proprietary drivers from their website to get out the maximum performance of the GPU. But for amd you can also use the "pre-installed" open-source driver, which has a much better performance in comparison to the open source driver for nvidia cards. Integrated grahipcs are supported out of the box in almost any cases.
Even Nvidia video works out of the box without any additional drivers.
The thing with Nvidia is that although the default drivers work, they are more generic and don't take advantage of all of the features and performance of recent cards. Most people would want to load the proprietary drivers from Nvidia to take full advantage of the card.
Linux would normally include the better drivers, but Nvidia keeps them under a software license that prevents Linux distributions from bundling them.
Even with this, Ubuntu includes a tool that will download and install these drivers that they can't
I think I wasn't clear, for NVIDIAs you need to take some action, on some distros is ticking one box during installation, on others is installing the driver afterwards, but they work, all of my current computers are NVIDIA. Even without installing the proprietary drivers NVIDIA cards work fine for 90% of things, the problem is that gaming will have less performance and you wouldn't be able use CUDA.
I know you're googling it, but in any case AFAIK Plex can run on integrated cards, most cards can decode video nowadays so it shouldn't be particularly hard. If you're looking into using Plex I recommend checking Jellyfin, it's an open source alternative, I've been using it for years and have nothing to complain about.