My end goal is to get my desktop running functionally like a high-powered Steam Deck with my HDR monitor. I’m beyond fed up with Microsoft and really want a Linux distro to be the primary OS on my PC (and ultimately the only OS once Ubisoft decides to support R6: Siege on Linux). Eventually I’ll switch from my NVIDIA GPU to AMD since everything I’ve read makes AMD out to be far more consumer and Linux friendly than NVIDIA, but in the time being I’d love some help getting this working on my current hardware.
To get KDE Plasma 6 with HDR running, so far I have tried installing the latest HoloIso and Manjaro’s official Plasma desktop stable branch. Before doing all of the below I made sure that the option to use the iGPU ports was disabled in my BIOS.
For HoloIso, I’ve followed the directions from the GitHub readme file and installed from a USB drive to one of my internal 1 TB SSDs. I’m able to boot from the ISO on the USB drive and run the installation tool in HoloIso. The installation seemingly runs successfully and tells me to restart. After restarting and booting into that drive, I see the GRUB menu which disappears quickly, and then I see nothing but a black screen. I have tried booting with both of my monitors connected to my GPU via DisplayPort, and booting with only one monitor connected to my GPU via DisplayPort. Neither seems to solve the issue.
I then went on to try what seemed like a more stable distro that was similar to SteamOS - Manjaro with Plasma. Installation went smoothly and I was able to actually boot into Manjaro after installation. Noticing there was no HDR option in the display settings I did some Googling and found that I was using X11 and not Wayland (which is where the HDR support lies). I did some more Googling and found a guide to switch to Wayland (I can’t find the guide again now dangit) but upon doing so and restarting, all I saw was a black screen.
Honestly, if anyone has any suggestions for what to try I would love some help. I’m familiar with navigating Linux but relatively unfamiliar with installing it and VERY unfamiliar with display technologies so any suggestions for what to try are appreciated.
I do, using endeavourOS, which is basically "arch but with a graphical installer, using some sane defaults". Not 100% true, but true enough to think of it as such.
If you have no experience installing Linux, either use endeavouros, or go the RFTM way, and use arch. But that last one requires a lot of reading, and grasping quite a lot of Linux concepts, or be willing to learn them.
PS: I do use plain arch on my AMD laptop, but couldn't be arsed to go through the installation for my Nvidia desktop.
I’ll definitely check out Endeavor. A lot of people are suggesting it. I’m far from ready to install a distro without assistance. I struggle hard enough when I have a GUI to work with already lol
To get Nvidia working on Arch here is what I did:
During installation of Arch when it asked if I wanted to chroot into my distro I did. However if you enter commandline by hitting CTR+ALT+<F1 or F2 or F3> to change to a virtual console. If you are doing this from a chroot environment you don't need sudo.
edit the mkinitcpio.conf
sudo nano /etc/mkinitcpio.confIn the MODULES=() section I added "nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm" without quotes. So it looked like this:
MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm)Afterwards I updated my initramfs images by running:
sudo mkinitcpio -PThen I edited my grub config:
sudo nano /etc/default/grubFind the line that says "GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="""
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nvidia-drm.modeset=1"Then I updated grub
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
Note: I use the Nvidia Proprietary drivers
Resources: Arch Wiki
I do not recommend Manjaro especially if you are going to be using the AUR (Arch User Repository) as it can cause things to break.
I been on endeavourOS for a few years now and I updated to plasma 6 at some point and just switched over to wayland on my 3080. Works fine in my opinion. Not perfect, but fine.
I'm on endeavour, though i also really liked manjaro. in terms of nvidia+wayland I'd say it's very flaky.
- vrr works SOMETIMES. i have to log out and in 2-3 times into my account until the option shows in the settings, and also functions as proven using vrrtest-git
- standby corrupts cuda and you'll need to modprobe or reboot to fix it.
- hdr shows up but looks really grey and colorless for me, but it might be my monitor's edid being faulty. kde's sdr color vibrance option didn't help.
- external screens are dropping frames, down to 30fps, where it was fine on windows with 60.
Keep in mind this is a 3060 laptop gpu. that means it could well be due to mux switching or whatever else. nonetheless i think nvidia seems more reliable on xorg as of this point in time, and I'm not going to buy another nvidia gpu.
this might not apply to desktop cpus at all but i thought I'd share these in case someone else has the issues as well and knows a fix, or knows for sure it's better on desktop, so i can reconsider my stance for a tower build 🤔
I don’t know how to help with the black screen, but you are on the right track with switching from x11 to Wayland for HDR support.
If you get that resolved, look into gamescope to launch Steam/games using the hdr-enabled flag.
Went through this on opensuse with an AMD build and Wayland + gamescope were the key parts getting it to work for me.
Yeah I’ve seen notes around the internet about Gamescope. I’ll be sure to look further into that when I get the OS working. Thanks for the tip
I'm on Arch (actually a converted Antergos) and I have an NVIDIA card as well. My first attempt a few months ago was horrible, bricking my system and requiring a bootable USB an a whole evening to get Linux working again.
My second attempt was recently, and went a lot better. X11 no longer seems to work, so I'm kinda stuck with it, but it feels snappy as long as my second monitor is disconnected. I've yet to try some gaming. My main monitor is a VRR 144Hz panel with garbage-tier HDR. The HDR worked out of the box on KDE Plasma, with the same shitty quality as on Windows, so I immediately turned it off again. When my second monitor is connected I get terrible hitching. Every second or so the screen just freezes for hundreds of milliseconds. Something about it (1280x1024, 75Hz, DVI) must not make Wayland happy. No settings seem to change anything, only physically disconnecting the monitor seems to work.
