Do graphics cards work on Linux?

Graphics is one of the areas where Linux has quietly become easy. For AMD, the driver is called amdgpu and it lives in the Linux kernel. The kernel's own documentation says it supports every AMD Radeon graphics processor built on the GCN, RDNA and CDNA designs, which covers cards from roughly 2012 onwards and every Ryzen chip with built-in graphics. There is nothing to download and nothing to tick. Intel is the same story from the other direction. Intel states that most Linux distributions already include Intel graphics drivers, maintained by the distribution rather than by Intel.

NVIDIA is the one that asks something of you. The card will work on first boot using a basic driver, enough to see the desktop and browse, but not enough for games or video editing. To get full speed you install NVIDIA's own driver. On Linux Mint that means opening Driver Manager from the Administration menu, ticking the recommended driver, clicking apply and restarting. Ubuntu has the same tool under a different name. That is the whole job.

NVIDIA has been moving to open-source kernel modules and now considers that the right default. They are required on the newest Blackwell and Grace Hopper hardware, recommended for Turing, Ampere, Ada Lovelace and Hopper cards, and not compatible with the older Maxwell, Pascal and Volta generations, which keep using the proprietary driver. From driver release 560 onward the open modules are what gets installed by default. None of this changes what you click, but it explains why NVIDIA on Linux reads better now than its old reputation suggests.

What to expect day to day: AMD and Intel machines wake, sleep and drive external screens with the least fuss, and AMD is the common recommendation for gaming on Linux. NVIDIA works well once set up, with the rough edges showing up most often in sleep and multi-monitor behaviour on laptops that switch between two graphics chips.