# Nouveau driver

Hacker Approved page: https://hackerapproved.com/p/nouveau/

5 people recommended Nouveau driver in Hacker News comments, 3 had mixed feelings and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to October 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 12 months, in 5 threads. It does not meet the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** More people criticize it than recommend it. Free open-source Nvidia driver that has become stable in recent kernels, but people say it lags the proprietary driver for 3D rendering and gaming.

Summary written by Claude from the comments below.

## What people warn about

- Weak 3D, gaming and desktop performance (4 comments in the sample): "Nouveau has never been good for gaming. Not their fault (they had to reverse engineer everything" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46462032)) "the proprietary driver has always blown away nouveau at 3D rendering performance and featureset" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131214)) "basic desktop graphics are slow (no hardware acceleration) and crash-prone" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46479885))
- Incomplete support for some GPUs (2 comments in the sample): "Noveau can't talk properly with the backlight control of my card" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46287209)) "sometimes only has very basic support for some GPUs" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48128418))
- Limited clock control and crippled firmware (1 comment in the sample): "Nouveau drivers are intentionally crippled with a special firmware" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46838208))

## Why people recommend it

- Much better in recent releases (2 comments in the sample): "Nouveau got a bunch of stability improvments in Linux 6.19, without which Wayland crashes roughly weekly." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48375687)) "Nouveau seems pretty damn good these days." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711601))

## Other graphics drivers people recommend

- [Mesa](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mesa/): 24 recommend, 3 mixed, 8 criticize
- [NVIDIA proprietary Linux drivers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-proprietary-linux-drivers/): 22 recommend, 15 mixed, 48 criticize
- [Nvidia drivers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-drivers/): 16 recommend, 8 mixed, 51 criticize
- [amdgpu driver](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amdgpu/): 11 recommend, 2 mixed, 11 criticize

## The badge

A product earns the Hacker Approved badge when at least 10 people recommend it, recommenders outnumber critics at least 2 to 1 (mixed feelings count toward neither side), it was recommended in at least 4 of the 12 months and in at least 5 different threads, and no single thread supplies more than half of the people who recommend it. Health and money products are never badged.

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Nouveau driver", https://hackerapproved.com/p/nouveau/ (5 recommend, 3 mixed, 9 criticize; Hacker News comments, November 2025 to October 2026).

Counts updated 2 Nov 2026, with data through October 31, 2026.