Hey all! I hope everything is well with you guys and gals!
So here’s the thing: I have had Ubuntu Studio (24.04 or something like that) on my Mac Desktop in the past, and it worked great. I dare say i absolutely loved! My only issue was the audio not playing every time i restarted the computer. But then again, it was an older model from 2017-2018, running an outdated Intel chip, so of course there were limitations.
Fast forward to now: I got an Alienware Aurora with nice specs and can run basically any game (at the time of this post, because people in the future will look at this post probably).
Basically my question is this: is there anything that i need to grab as soon as I install Ubuntu Studio on my drive?
Here are my specs:
Processor: Intel Core Ultra 7 265F (2.40 GHz)
32 GB RAM
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Ti (16 GB)
Storage: approx. 2TB
my apologies. I normally use discord and steam, however the only game i play atm is Final Fantasy XIV. I know what apps I need to get and I know how to get those. I am just curious if I need to get any other drivers for the game to run properly, like NVIDIA drivers, sound drivers, audio codecs, etc. I am asking because i had issues with audio when I used Ubuntu Studio before (when i had the Mac) and i havent had an NVIDIA graphics card until now.
also, quick tidbit, i may be having an issue trying to install Ubuntu Studio from a thumb-drive for some reason.
If you game on Steam then Steam is all you will probably need. It does a great job of running a large assortment of games without needing anything else.
I haven’t used Ubuntu studio before but the other flavors that I’ve used normally handle installing Nvidia drivers automatically.
You need to elaborate a bit more as to how that issue manifests, but my first response is usually to check the integrity of the installation media. I’ve recently read that a goodly portion of installation issues is caused by faulty media. And it never hurts to do this check.
Then you should leave well enough alone. Ubuntu provides a great out-of-the-box experience, and advice like “you need to do this, that and the other thing to make it even more better [sic]”, is usually, well, ill-advised.
Come back for help, if you hit some rough edges, but do resist the urge of premature optimization.
Nvidia graphics have been excellent on WINDOWS but have always been problematic with Linux so I would suggest you investigate a bit. The link below is to the Ubuntu site and discusses using Nvidia drivers specifically.
It contains the steps to install Nvidia drivers right from the installer. That should be the first stop. If something didn’t work, we’d need details on what went wrong.
Since Ubuntu Studio is a flavour of the main Ubuntu release, the sources and tools for installing third-party drivers remain the same. In the GUI, there’s the Driver Manager which should already offer a populated list of drivers to pick for your Nvidia card.
If you wanted to receive a similar list in the terminal, you’d go with sudo apt update, ubuntu-drivers devices.
With your 5070 Ti, you should aim for the latest driver branch being offered (=the largest number) and also the ones with the “open” in the name. “Open” just referring to the open kernel modules being used. Those are recommended for all cards starting from the Turing generation. (Source)
Note on other drivers:
There also is a fully open source driver available, called “Nouveau”. You might want to avoid that one unless you want to stick with just a basic display output and many hardware-accelerated features missing. That’s not a fault of the devs, but a result of the reverse-engineered nature of that driver.
Installation:
Once you’ve selected the proper driver, it should install all things needed and then be in need of a reboot. After that, running nvidia-smi in the terminal should yield a display of the hardware and software components being present, plus info on load and temperatures.
To alter display settings on a system using Wayland, you just use the distro’s “Display” dialog. For older systems using X11, the Nvidia settings app would offer more options.
