Installing Linux on the UM690

Hi!

Wendell said at the end of his UM690 video that if we were interested in installing Linux on the UM690 we should visit the forums… so here I am!

I can’t find an existing thread so maybe this is it? :slight_smile:

I want to configure Ubuntu and KDE Neon on separate USB-C SSDs so I can switch between OSes.

If anybody has already got Linux up and running and has any tips (eg drivers for network, wifi, bluetooth etc) please let me know.

Thanks in advance

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Ohhh,
I don’t have one, but that looks like a cool little unit!
Am gonna watch this, even tho I can’t really help

Not too likely you’ll find many others here with that specific unit to give you the kind of advice you’re asking for. Meanwhile, the company has their own forums where you’re more likely to find other owners of the hardware:

I don’t see a specific section for that model yet, but prior gens (like Ryzen 9 5900HX) have specific sub-forums just for Linux questions.

Got mine a little while ago and it was easier booting my Linux (Ubuntu 22.04) drive than my Windows (10) drive, didn’t even need to install any drivers to make LAN work (haven’t tested Wifi but it also seems to see networks).
The specs page also lists 4k60 as the max output on the HDMI ports but I had both OSs set to 4k120 and it seems to work just fine.

I also tore the thing down just to check and it looks like they managed to NOT screw up the LM application as well, take a look:


It has 2 foam barriers, one around the die, and one around the APU and (what I think is) a layer of something like kapton tape.
Overall I’m super impressed with this thing, I only wish they supported faster ram out of the box as the performance gains I’ve seen from people using quicker 5600 - 5800 sticks is upwards of 50% in some titles.
Hopefully they’re already hard at work on a new one with those Ryzen 7040 APUs with RDNA 3.

1 Like

Hi DoublesAdvocate,
you’re right - installing Linux was super-easy as always!
I havent used my box much yet but I am concerned about the level of fan noise (ideally I want a silent machine).
Do you have any tips?

Thanks rxcb, I’ll check it out :slight_smile:

Oops I just noticed this reply, not quite sure what you mean though I’ve had little to no issues with fan noise as mine is usually near silent.
Is yours quite noisy or do you just mean literally silent like a fan stop mode?

On Windows I have installed a free utility called fancontrol and tuned my fans to be silent at normal load.
In Linux I have installed lm-sensors and fancontrol (bot the same as the windows one obviously). When I rm the pwmconfig utility it reports that there are no pwn devices available. (So I don’t see to be able to use this at all).
So Windows has a method of controlling the fans. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t know how to access it in Linux.