It ranges from “automatic” to “infuriating”.

If you have Secure Boot enabled, there are some hoops to jump through. Read the docs and follow the steps for DKMS.

Depending on your distro and your requirements, you might want to install the drivers manually from Nvidia rather than using older drivers from your distro.

If you need CUDA, god help you. Choose a distro that makes this easy and use containers to avoid dependency hell. Note that this is not any easier on Windows (at least not last I checked, which was a few years ago).

It’s an extra step in macOS 15. You need to go into System Settings now.

Used to just be able to use the contextual menu to open it and get an approval dialog.

I’m actually using an atomic distro now (Bazzite). But that’s not why I chose it, and honestly I don’t think the advantages are significant.

There are some downsides that affect me on a regular basis, though.

I need to reboot more since every update requires it. That feels like going back in time 25 years.

I need to deal with the complexity of multiple distros with DistroBox to get the functionality I am accustomed to. I think that alone is proof that atomic distros are not quite ready for prime time.

The advantages elude me. Snapper or timeshift handle rollbacks just fine, as long as you use a modern filesystem like btrfs. So I haven’t worried about busted updates in years.

I’m quite happy with Bazzite, but I can’t point to anything good about it that is specific to immutable distros. I just don’t get it, really. I guess the advantages are more for the developers and maintainers than for end users.