The claim is true, with
It is a symmetric positive-definite matrix: for every nonzero vector , the fact that is an invertible matrix gives . Since , every candidate satisfies
The generalized minimal residual method therefore minimizes precisely this weighted norm of the error over the linear span of . The same matrix works for every and does not depend on .
Write and . The Arnoldi decomposition and give
Because has orthonormal columns, it preserves the Euclidean norm. The generalized minimal residual method therefore reduces to the small linear least-squares problem
Use Givens rotations on the upper Hessenberg matrix to obtain a QR decomposition
where is an orthogonal matrix and is an upper triangular matrix. Then solve by backward substitution in a triangular system and form . The resulting minimum linear-system residual has Euclidean norm .
The small problem has a unique answer: if , the Arnoldi decomposition gives . The invertible matrix implies , and the orthonormality of then gives . Thus has full column rank and is nonsingular.