Combination of Linux distro, boot options, and NVIDIA Drivers for RTX 5060?

Graphics / Linux Linux
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Previous thread got derailed. Let’s try again. I’ll put the last line up front just in case:

Could anyone suggest a combination of Linux distribution, kernel options, and NVIDIA binary driver that is know to work with a RTX 5060? If I have that starting point I can dig further and determine the point it breaks. (including, for example, any small variation on what is here if it’s doomed to fail)

(I’m not after help yet, just a starting point per above, no logs, hard to get when the machine hangs, and I’m pretty sure you don’t want every test case I’m using, there’s a lot)

Here we go:

I’m trying to install Linux to a setup with the following (key components only):

ASUS PRIME B550M-A WIFI II Motherboard
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5060 WINDFORCE 8G
AMD Ryzen 5 5600 Desktop Processor

I’ve tried multiple operating systems (Debian, Ubuntu, etc), dozens of boot options, and drivers (both NVIDIA and nouveau). As a general rule:

I need to use nomodeset or boot fails, but that’s no drama.

If I use acpi=off I generally can get in, but I’m stuck with a single core processor after that.

acpi=ht doesn’t help at all, which made me suspect the CPU, but I don’t think that’s the actual case (see below).

I’ve had some luck with pci=realloc=off instead of acpi=off.

Without these the typical result is that a live USB will boot up, or an installer will run, but once I either start things from the live USB or try to run an installed distro, the screen will go black (sometimes with minimal text before it) but will never recover, sometimes will spin up the case fans, sometimes will drop out and fail in initramfs. If I use a successful set of options, the system boots up quickly OR takes minutes after a black screen and then comes up.

A fresh install of Windows works fine.

If I switch the RTX 5060 out and drop in a cheapie card (ASUS Phoenix GeForce GT 1030 OC, 2GB), things generally work fine and sometimes immediately.

I also have a separate PC with similar specs (but a Gigabyte GeForce RTX 5060 Ti EAGLE OC ICE 16G instead) and it exhibits similar issues, though it is not tested as thoroughly.

I’ve tried with Debian distro-packaged NVIDIA driver packages and the NVIDIA binary one myself. No luck.

Sometimes when I install the NVIDIA binary driver, disabling nouveau results in a system that won’t boot, so it’s hard to test each driver version without a complete reinstall.

I know no combination that works with the NVIDIA binary driver.

I’ve made dozens of attempts across different configurations.

I don’t mind doing a complete reinstall, in fact I’m doing multiple test installs already.

Could anyone suggest a combination of Linux distribution, kernel options, and NVIDIA binary driver that is know to work with a RTX 5060? If I have that starting point I can dig further and determine the point it breaks.

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as explained before, start from reading some basic docs, then try the open flavor driver and if it does not help then finally post your bug report file.

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See paragraphs one through three. Let’s let someone else have a crack at the question. I’d like to hear about known configs.

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I have two machines with similar hardware and they needed above 4GB decoding and resizable BAR turned on in the BIOS. Turning secure boot and CSM off are good choices too.

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Many thanks for the tip, I’ll have an explore. I’m using the latter two, and while I was originally trying to research the issue I’d seen mentions of the first one. I’ll check them both out. Much appreciated.

If it’s okay, are you happy to share distro name and version, and the driver version you used, for one of your working setups? Private message is fine if you’d rather it not be public. This would cut my search space down considerably. Finding one working combination basically means I can take it from there. It’s been challenging with blank screens in most configs and minimal logs!

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Arch Linux (Custom). Set the motherboard to UEFI mode and disable secure boot. Turn on resizeable bar in bios. Nvidia-open driver from pacman. Bootloader options nvidia_drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1. In mkinitcpio (/etc/mikinitcpio.conf) MODULES=(nvidia nvidia_modeset nvidia_uvm nvidia_drm) and delete kms in HOOKS(). My system CPU: 7950x3D and GPU is 5070 Ti. For the 5000 Series in Arch Linux nvidia-open is the only driver option that I am aware of that works with the 5000 Series.

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Thankyou SirBiod! That’s given me a good data point and I’ll be able to explore soon. Much appreciated!

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In any distro, I would enter into tty mode (Terminal only mode) and install the correct Nvidia driver that works for the 5000 series using whatever package manager comes with your distro. Throw in the bootloader options too. Use nano to edit the initial RAM disk image for that distro, and add whatever is needed for the Nvidia driver to work on that distro.

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Thankyou, much appreciated. I’ve been using this approach to explore and try different configurations.

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My machines have Linux Mint 21.3 with the standard kernel. Driver versions 570 and 575.

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Perfect. Thankyou!

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Many thanks for the configurations and suggestions, much appreciated marq and SirBiod. I’ve got this solved. Thankyou for your help.

In terms of solving things, aside from these contributions, I’d recommend pci=realloc or pci=realloc=off, nomodeset, and blacklisting drivers (nouveau) at the grub/boot stage. acpi=off is a bit of a sledgehammer, though it’s also useful to narrow things down; and as needed tackling it as three separate problems- how to get the installer to boot reliably, how to get the system to boot reliably, and how to get the system with binary drivers installed to boot reliably. Having a known good configuration or too is useful too, because you can subdivide the problem.

Now before I wrap up this one, I’d like to share some tips on how to make a positive forum contribution.

First, it is important to understand the question being asked. For example, when someone says: “Could anyone suggest a combination of Linux distribution, kernel options, and NVIDIA binary driver that is know to work with a RTX 5060? …”, they aren’t asking for personal support for their configuration (yet), possibly because they don’t feel they’ve explored enough themselves.

If they’re met with someone with a relatively small amount of knowledge, a poor attitude, and a lack of reading comprehension, there is no justification for that person to lash out at people asking such an innocuous question. It comes off as incredibly insecure and makes them look foolish. For example: My post here was about collecting working data points. Even if it was about asking someone to fix my personal setup, there would be no need for a hostile attitude. Statements like:

  • “you didn’t bother to ready ANY proper documentation”

  • “And you failed to provide a single bug report file or even a single line from logs”

  • “given how little information you provided”

aren’t actually relevant to the question, merely come across as condescending and immature, and illustrate a desire for conflict while contributing nothing, demonstrating little competence, and they also show that the original post wasn’t even correctly interpreted. It puts their insecurity on full display. This shows strongly here as the information requested isn’t even relevant to the question.

Persisting to reply to someone when it has been made clear that the negative contribution is not wanted, and following them between threads, does highlight that insecurity further. Having the need to deny help or information to someone further demonstrates a lack of confidence in their approach. It shows a yearning need to display how correct or clever one is, while showing the exact opposite. Also, it makes it look on a casual glance that the problem is solved, discouraging contributions that could be valuable to everyone. When this happens it pushes people (or sometimes customers) away, those curious enough to dig into a product or with a desire to make something work that did not initially. Thankfully, it didn’t work in this case.

There are certainly times where pushback is warranted. For example, if someone clearly hasn’t made an attempt to self-solve and outline what they are trying to do. There are better approaches of course in this case. For example: If this post was actually asking to solve a specific setup, taking the statements above, they could be turned more positively as here:

  • (no valuable alternative, statement clearly incorrect from data provided)

  • “The most important thing is to provide a bug report (see: XXX) and lines from the log (see: YYY)”

  • “We need those details to be able to look into things further”

It becomes a learning opportunity for all involved, and takes just as long to write. Of course, it doesn’t cover this post, this is just an example. The issue here was more attitude, lack of knowledge, and limited reading comprehension.

I’ve seen the negative version of this plenty of times. Someone comes in with a small bit of knowledge, minimal ability in reading comprehension, a short trigger, and considerable insecurity; and tries their best to belittle or drive people away. You can usually identify them by the styles of posts they make: A mix of mildly useful things with disproportionate condescension. People like this ruin forums, as they drive away people with questions or looking to learn, but importantly the more experienced people can’t stand being alongside them for the arguments they start. Often insecure people cannot stand being around people with more knowledge and ability who also have superior communication skills, so you see them acting out in this way.

So, I’d certainly encourage the constructive approach, and a close reading of the question, particularly if a lot of information is provided. There’s never a need to lash out at someone, and it looks particularly foolish if minimal reading comprehension is also on display.

For our good friend Muggie, I hope this post is educational. I feel there is much you could learn from it. Don’t be discouraged, you have plenty of potential, and we can all improve no matter where we start.

Thankyou marq and SirBiod, your leads have been genuinely helpful and have helped me solve the problem. I greatly appreciate you taking the time to share them.

2 Likes
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The short of it is that the 5060 doesn’t require any special driver/config combination. I simply installed Ubuntu 25.04, allowed it to install proprietary drivers, and it handled the rest, including secure boot.
It was so simple, I actually found it a bit boring…

If you’ve already tried 25.04 and it didn’t work for you, you are probably dealing with firmware bugs. Ensure that your motherboard’s BIOS is up to date (and reset the settings to defaults just in case you have something weird set there), and also consider updating the GPU firmware: https://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/5665/

The only downside with this approach for me was that Ubuntu’s repo didn’t have the latest driver (it was 575 at the time, and 580 was available from other places.) But aside from that, it worked fine out of the box.

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