NVidia graphic cards, text-only Debian stable, any driver issue?

[Mycelium]

Hi,

I plan to recycle a family member Windows desktop into a home server. That machine comes with a NVidia GTX 1660 graphic cards. The machine will be used to practice some home server ideas. NAS, Proxmox, OPNSense, etc. where the user interface is text-only. And most of the time the server will be managed through SSH so its monitor would be likely off almost all the time.

I heard that NVidia cards (drivers?) are rather troublesome in Linux. But would this come in play if there is no graphic interface in the system?

With regards to the planned usage (text-only, no GUI). I am looking for a low powered graphic operation. I wonder if the GTX 1660 card would consume a lots of power if the server is idle in text mode with monitor turned off.

Overall, I would prefer to avoid the overhead of dealing with NVidia specific issues. In case of possible troubles, I would rather buy an old AMD card in the used market.

 

[CyklonDX]

you should install drivers only if you bother to use the gpu for transcoding or something as such; else you don't need to install drivers.

 

[necr]

GPUs, like CPUs, have P-states, if your card is idle it's going to consume ~< 20W.

It's completely fine to manage the server over SSH - for that, you can choose an operating system that's designed for servers, that has no desktop environment (text-only). It's quite a normal scenario for GPU in home lab/data center - no outputs connected, standard or even open NVIDIA kernel drivers, nvidia-smi to monitor the workloads - with text-only system, its usually zero or close to zero.

 

[Mycelium]

GPUs, like CPUs, have P-states, if your card is idle it's going to consume ~< 20W.

Wow, for doing nothing ~< 20W looks like a lots.

standard or even open NVIDIA kernel drivers, nvidia-smi to monitor the workloads - with text-only system, its usually zero or close to zero.

standard or even open NVIDIA kernel drivers = ???

The operation system would be Debian 12 stable. In case of Proxmox, this would be Debian based as well with a different kernel. If OPNSense, this would be FreeBSD 14.x. In all cases, no graphic user interface.

Does that mean I will just boot the machine from USB drive, install the Linux OS, go through the installation/config steps, reboot in terminal and complete some further customization?

More exactly, I hope I will not need to do any extra step related to the NVidia card like download/install a driver to enable the Linux kernel to recognize the card.

Sorry for the silly question, I could just run a test to figure out myself but I will have this machine only around the summer this year.

 

[necr]

More exactly, I hope I will not need to do any extra step related to the NVidia card like download/install a driver to enable the Linux kernel to recognize the card.

it's okay, it's easier than it sounds I run Debian 12 with GPU among other systems (and still swear badly at this MOK/SecureBoot crap). Neither AMD, nor NVIDIA or Intel drivers are included in kernel - all those are third-party drivers that are available through Debian non-free or vendor's repositories. Once you start working with CUDA/TensorRT, you will want to have the option to grab the newest stuff. So, you don't need to download and unpack the driver manually, but you will need to specify the repository from where the driver and relevant packages will be downloaded.

 

[nexox]

Neither AMD, nor NVIDIA or Intel drivers are included in kernel

AMD and Intel have pretty great open source drivers included in the kernel. AMD has some extra stuff in their closed source driver, which they're working on getting into the open source version, but as far as I have seen Intel drivers you can download separately are just builds of the in-tree kernel module.

 

[necr]

AMD and Intel have pretty great open source drivers included in the kernel. AMD has some extra stuff in their closed source driver, which they're working on getting into the open source version, but as far as I have seen Intel drivers you can download separately are just builds of the in-tree kernel module.

Thanks for providing more info, I corrected my answer.

There's a good comment on Reddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux4noobs/comments/15uuu8o/_/jwrzoey

Yes, the drivers should be working on relatively mature hardware as the necessary updates will have been applied on most distributions.

However, for instance if you were to be using an RX 7900 XTX GPU prior to Debian 12 or an RX 6000 series GPU on Ubuntu/Mint closer to it's release (which was the case for me) then these cards would be non functional by default as the required updates were absent from those distributions at that time. In such case, you would have to manually update the kernel, firmware and mesa to get functioning hardware, which can be an overwhelming task for someone who is new to Linux.

It's a misconception that AMD GPUs just work out of the box on Linux. They work as long as the required packages have been updated to include new hardware support.

 

[Markess]

@Mycelium , any recent Linux or BSD based OS will load a basic driver to give you text (and usually some sort of graphic if desired) capability.

Proprietary and/or non-free drivers are usually only necessary to make use of additional or higher performance related GPU features. For text, I think you’ll find that nothing extra is needed.

What motherboard/CPU will you be using? If the CPU has integrated graphics you might not even need the GPU at all.

 

[Mycelium]

@Mycelium , any recent Linux or BSD based OS will load a basic driver to give you text (and usually some sort of graphic if desired) capability.

Proprietary and/or non-free drivers are usually only necessary to make use of additional or higher performance related GPU features. For text, I think you’ll find that nothing extra is needed.

What motherboard/CPU will you be using? If the CPU has integrated graphics you might not even need the GPU at all.

What a relief, that this NVidia GTX 1660 will just work out of the box. On a fresh test-only install of Debian/FreeBSD.

The CPU is Xeon E5-2650L v4 on a HP z640, which doesn't have integrate GPU. I guess may b/c integrated GPU would become confusing when Xeon runs in multi CPUs motherboard. Otherwise this would make a lot of sense to add a minimal GPU on a Xeon chip.

 

[Markess]

The CPU is Xeon E5-2650L v4 on a HP z640, which doesn't have integrate GPU. I guess may b/c integrated GPU would become confusing when Xeon runs in multi CPUs motherboard. Otherwise this would make a lot of sense to add a minimal GPU on a Xeon chip.

Yes, with that configuration you would need some sort of graphics card. There are Xeons with integrated GPU, but not for that socket (LGA2011-3). To the best of my knowledge, even the consumer CPUs for that socket had no iGPU.

 

[nexox]

What a relief, that this NVidia GTX 1660 will just work out of the box. On a fresh test-only install of Debian/FreeBSD.

There is an open source Linux kernel driver for Nvidia too, just unlike AMD and Intel it's not always very complete or functional, but for basic server use it should be fine.

If you decide to replace the GPU, the AMD Radeon Pro WX 2100 is super cheap used, only fills one slot, no AUX power connector.

Also definitely consider replacing that CPU, those L parts are pretty lame and actually tend to use more power at idle than higher-spec CPUs, which cost like $15-20 now.

 

[louie1961]

The CPU is Xeon E5-2650L v4 on a HP z640

I was going to suggest removing the video card after installation, to save power, but I have an HP z640 and it won't boot without the video card. There is a workaround that involves modifying the bios, but I haven't tried it. The z640 is fun for a first home lab box, but mine, which has a E5-2690 v3 and a quadro video card in it draws about 170 watts at idle. I only use this machine as a test/dev environment now for things like kubernetes. But I shut it down when not in use. I built a new server to run my websites and other 24X7 services, that only draws 37 watts at idle.