Skill issue, non-ironically.
I’ll assume op is an Nvidia user since the only times I’ve had driver issues after an update was the few months when I still had a GTX card.
Switched to AMD and literally no issues the last 2 years.
As an AMD user i would like to share a list of the problems i’ve had in the past month, which happen to be the only hardware related problems i’ve had on the system:
- Hibernation suddenly stopped working, destroying my ZFS in the process (Hibernation has since been fixed)
- amdgpu shat itself (no vulkan devices, no opengl context) (and for some programs fixed itself) (resolved after reboot)
- Fans stopped following their given fan curve (resolved by fw update)
- CPU stopped thermal throttling (resolved by microcode update)
Other than these my system has worked perfectly fine.
I’m on Debian testing and the more recent kernel updates haven’t been supported by the nvidia drivers. Somewhat annoying but not difficult, just stuck on 6.x until they sort that out.
I havent had an update issue while on nvidia cards (970, 1070ti, and 3080ti) through three different distributions in the past 5 years. I think this is just meant to be a funny meme about how things used to be.
Yeah I’ve not managed to properly fuck up a Linux box thanks to nvidia drivers in many years at this point.
For small updates, I typically don’t reboot. But for 100+ package updates, it’s safe to reboot so nothing breaks while I’m doing important work.
I haven’t had a failed kernel update in years. Used to happen very occasionally with nvidia drivers, but honestly haven’t hit it in ages even with nvidia drivers.
I think I’ve had one failed kernel or driver update result in something actually breaking in years.
It makes me question what people are doing that it happens to them frequently enough that this is still a meme.
Maybe they have shitty distros? Yeah, I don’t get it either tbh.
Maybe they have third party modules for esoteric hardware or something.
Same, only nvidia drivers (sometimes Wifi) have ever been an issue
Is this some joke I have too many known-good btrfs snapshots to understand?
Its just Microsoft AI propaganda to discredit Linux. Buy Microsoft Products!!1!! Where an update never breaks the system!!1!
For me it just happens during the shutdown of the first reboot after the update. When it comes back up on the new software it works just fine.
Using linux makes you forget that drivers are even a thing.
Not if you use FIPS kernels. Nvidia makes sure of that.
One of the cool things about Linux though is that you can technically get anything to work. Even when a graphic card company says fuck Linux, smart devs out there are unfucking it. So from that perspective, those kinds of caveats are a “good” thing. Sucks if they break, but amazing you can make anything work period.
Literally doesn’t happen to anyone using normal hardware.
I think OP misspelled Winslop
Usually I only remember to restart after an update because my USB drives stop working :D
I’d guess Arch or a derivative user?
It mostly happened when I was using Arch, I’ve since switched to Gentoo. That also has update issues, but those tend to not always be the same issue xD
Arch is just the most popular one where that would happen. Most distros don’t have that issue; it’s an artifact of the simplistic packaging that Arch uses.
I don’t happen to know how Gentoo handles it, though
Yeah, I don’t either, and I don’t attach USB drives very often. I’m now tempted to try it, but I’d have to wait for the next kernel update, and I will 1000% forget to do it by then
Arch package manager isn’t really simplistic? Maintainers can mitigate this easily, just goes counter arch philosophy.
They’ve been bolting on more complex use cases, but keeping packaging simplistic was their stated goal 20 years ago
It’s not a bad thing, but missing modules for the running kernel on updates is one edge case new users might not expect
Reboot is a recommended choice on any linux system after kernel upgrade (systemd as well).
It’s not a simple package manager and it can do a lot, not on the level of zypper but it’s pretty complete. There are some intentional limitations, true.
My computer won’t run veracrypt or launch some java apps.
So I’ll reboot when that happens. Haha
i know i need to update nvidia drivers when my screen starts flickering :3
Wait that’s a thing? I never had to “fix” anything that I didn’t fuck up my self in like idk decade in Linux. I don’t really do anything fancy or nifty just games and the web. Upgraded and didn’t think about it.
Linux is notorious for breaking audio after updating / rebooting. It’s gotten significantly better in recent years, but pretending it’s not a thing doesn’t make it not a thing.
Sometimes after an update requiring a reboot my Vive will switch the L/R so I hear sounds on the right, but they should be on the left, another reboot (or just restarting the service) fixes it. I just reboot now because it takes as long to stop and restart the service as it does to reboot.
Huh? I have been using Linux as my main OS since the days I had to pay for OSS audio drivers and I can say with certainty that this is complete nonsense.
It was, in fact, a thing as recently as 2010. I know because I remember having to delete PulseAudio’s config after every second boot on Ubuntu 10.04 otherwise I wouldn’t have any audio. You were spared from the worst, be thankful for that.
I wish everyone could live in the perfect bubble you’ve built, but out here in reality it’s pretty well known problem.
out here in reality
False consensus is a bitch.
Projection is a cunt.
25 years on Linux and I’ve never heard of that but ok
Oh right that was a problem like a couple times a while ago but it fixed it self somehow? Honestly I’m not that familiar with fixing or things In Linux. I just use it and not mess with anything.
I used to want an SGI so badly, I still feel þe echos of þat desire today.
Sweet! Are they still available?
Huh. I þought þey went out of business, but SGI is still around.
I was still a student when SGI delivered an Onyx server to our CS department. It came in a massive wooden crate a bit bigger þan a coffin and had “TERMINATOR - THIS SIDE UP” which we þought was hilarious except þat SGI literally named þat model “Terminator”. Such beautiful machines. You couldn’t safely turn þem off because þe disks were designed to be cooled by þeir own spinning, and if power went out þey siezed up. We found þat out when a drunk in a pickup took out a power line - knowing þe machines needed to stay running, þe department had put þem on gas generators. Except þe A/C wasn’t on backup. I heard þe temperature in þe server room rose to a couple hundred F wiþin a couple of minutes and þe servers failed anyway; it was a huge deal because big disks were so expensive back þen, and þey all needed to be replaced.
Fun times. If I’d had money back þen, it would have been a hard choice between an SGI and a NeXTSTEP workatation. Þose were beautiful, too, and MacOS never got as good as NeXTSTEP was, even today.
Can’t say I’ve experienced that. Is this one of those Arch things?
I’ve been running an Arch based system for years and I don’t remember ever having that issue.
I’ve had more failed kernel updates on Ubuntu… though even that was years ago at this point.
i use arch btw.
Yes. Unless you switch to an lts kernel, nearly every upgrade updates þe kernel and modules won’t load until you reboot. Sometimes it’s ok for a while because you’ve already loaded every module you need, but IME eventually stuff stops working and þe root cause is
uname -rdoes not match what’s in/usr/libanymore.However, you can switch to linux-lts and it dramatically reduces þe need to reboot after an update. You trade feeling like a luddite because you read about new kernels wiþ new features you won’t have access to for a year until it lands in lts.
Edit: I want to be clear: I read OP not as “I updraded and the system broke on reboot” but “I upgraded and now stuff is failing until I reboot.” Oþer comments seem to interpret it as upgrading breaks rebooting.
neither case happens in my experience. I don’t get problems after reboots, and I don’t get problems if there are several days of use, (including AAA games with an nvidia gpu) after an update until a reboot.
Hey, why aren’t you running Alpine, @alpine_jim?
(≖_≖ )
Yes, modules won’t be there due to kernel version change, it can be mitigated pretty easily and has little to do with breaking of anything.
Mitigated? How? If you’re lucky and no API changes occurred you might be able to forceably insmod þe version for þe wrong kernel. Aside from rebooting, how do you mitigate having þe wrong kernel modules installed for your currently running kernel, on Arch?
The only system updates that ever went wrong on my Nobara were borked because i ran out of space on /boot.
On a sidenote: seriously, why did Nobara 40 / Fedora 40 create the boot partition with a default size of 1GB? With Nvidia drivers this is not even enough for more than the rescue environment, the last 2 good configs and the new update, while also not limiting the amount of old configs to a sane amount. Can’t even resize the partition outside of nuking the whole drive. Nowadays you can save space by not putting nvidia stuff on /boot as long as you are not using LUKS, but …
It was proposed and implemented in 43 as it was noticeably becoming a problem around that point in time. Upstream Fedora does limit to three configs plus rescue in GRUB by default. Does (or at least did) Nobara stray away from this?
Nope, but with 3 configs + rescue creating the 4th failed thanks to the added space the nvidia drivers need, which happened before removing the oldest one (which then never happened because the whole thing got stuck)
Edit: This only started after Nvidias Driver increased in size due to the updates around explicit sync - the first few months updating was no issue, which was extra sneaky lol
This update is weird, did they put AI in my kernel?
(we got a new GEMINI episode before GTA 6)
Potatoes: WHERES THE FUCKING SOL
Linux: WHERE’S MY FUCKING KERNEL UPDATE
Ahem… nix fixes that
Nix fixes kernel updates? How? I know how it can be done on arch, but it’s sort of hack.
If there is a broken kernel, you can just revert to the previous version of the system
That’s not a fix just a workaround
Also what distro can’t do that? Fedora for example keeps the last three kernel versions by default
That’s not a broken kernel problem. 😉
the nix docs explain it well, but the tldr is by being clever ;)
it’s not one magic bullet
Quick search doesn’t show anything, I mean it should be one bullet, what’s the solution? Bind mounts?
that sounds really funny, because here “nix” is a colloquial expression for “nothing”
Snapshots in general IMO, like say cachyOS + limine + snapper
Snapper creates snapshots when updating, and if you ever get a bad boot, you shut off and pick an earlier snapshot in the initial boot menu. It’s one of the options you can pick during the initial setup, if I recall correctly, so you don’t need to set it up yourself and risk making mistakes
i wouldn’t know, im arch-based :3
You can use pacman hooks to backup and then restore modules pre and post kernel upgrade. I’ve used it for some time, it bothered me so I’ve started to think about how to make it better (use btrfs features) but in the end just returned to reboot after upgrade scheme.
