Linux on Raven Ridge

Well the build should be proceeding this week, a Ryzen 5 2400G, 16GB of RAM, 128GB NVMe and a 1TB spinning HDD.

So the most relevant question right now is what to use for a distro.

A very short background: I’ve been using Windows since 3.0, but did dual boot a few flavors of Linux years ago, including Ubuntu, Slackware (that was a very long time ago), and I think Red Hat at one point. However, I essentially consider myself a Linux noob again at this point, and beyond initial installation I’m going to be pretty clueless.

The last thing I messed with that wasn’t Windows was Raspbian (which I never got working properly) and XBMC, but the hardware was too anemic for my use-case at the time.

So what I want to do now is have a Linux system in which I can do some light gaming (I realize this is a new part and haven’t heard much about Ryzen/Vega APU drivers yet) and emulation, potential media server options and streaming box. It’ll get a Logitech wireless keyboard/touchpad (I believe that even works in the BIOS so doesn’t need any drivers) and will get plugged into a 1080 TV.

At this point, which distro should I be looking at? I’m going to be doing a lot of learning during this process too but I appreciate granularity and was never much a fan of Ubuntu but would give it a shot again if people more knowledgeable than me suggested starting with it. Qubes intrigues me, but almost certainly not going to be the best option here.

I *might *want to dual-boot with Win10 (because games), in which case I’ve heard it’s best to install Windows first and then Linux for the boot loader? Unclear on this one. I’m also open to VM’s, but the case this is going into won’t even have room for a dGPU so no passthrough learnin’s on this iteration.

Thoughts, experiences, suggestions welcome.

Tagging @wr250 because… well, Tux. What are you using and how’s it working?

From the little that I have read online thus far, Linux on Raven Ridge is still a bit problematic. However, emulation of everything (except some cemu titles like breath of the wild), works wonderfully, but they did that on Windows. My personally suggestion would be to find the distro that interests you for the uses that you are wanting, make sure that the compatibility isn’t terrible with Raven Ridge at the moment (it will improve, no doubt), and then just give it a shot. You can always reinstall, or emulate Windows, or install Windows, or dual boot, or whatever. But a new build is a great excuse to try out some new OSs.

I would stick with Windows for now, or if are feeling very adventurous setup a dual boot system,but I caution you if you do setup a dual boot system do your self a favor and use separate drives for each operating system. The installation will be so much easier, at least that has been my experience. As to which Linux distro to use I would stick to either Centos, Fedora, RedHat, Ubuntu, and Debeain.

I have an R5 2500U, it’s a bit problematic on Linux with Vega graphics. That may get resolved rather soon when Kernel 4.16 comes out (even though I thought it was suppose to be with 4.15, turns out it wasn’t from my experience).

1 Like

Right now?
Something with a very new kernel.
OpenSuse Tumbleweed. Arch. Antergos. Manjaro.

Or whatever else but you setup and maintain your own new kernel.

1 Like

Other than that stupid freezing issue, probably because of a PCIe Bus Error, I have to say Manjaro KDE runs very well on my 2500U laptop. (a low TDP variant of RR, if I’m correct) I am also running Manjaro XFCE on my Ryzen 7 1700 @3.8GHz with a fury and I still need to fully test out the Vega64 in my main rig at home. (Currently a bit stuck at my parent’s place, helping out.)

2 Likes

i didnt put linux on the 2400g because of video issues i dont feel like dealing with for now. so i put win10 on it and that works fine. ill change it back in a month or so when the linux drivers get sorted out more and 4.16 is final. ive had zero luck with firegl drivers in the past, i may try them again with the 4.16+ kernel.

1 Like

So given my inexperience with Linux right now I think I’ll just run Win10 until things get sorted as well. I did see that 4.16 is supposed to be landing around early April, so that’s not too long to wait.

In that time perhaps I’ll pick up a small SATA SSD for a dual boot option. I haven’t done any playing around with partitions in a long time either so I’d rather avoid that as well for now. Not much point on a 128GB anyway.

Thanks for the feedback folks.

i had problems with the intel linux driver when i bought my skylake i7 in 2016 . i ended up just buying a gtx 1050 and installing the nvidia driver to solve the problem.

Very quick reply; just built a new Ryzen 3 2200G system for my folks. Tested it with Linux Mint 18.3 Cinnamon. Did get it working of sorts. Updated Kernel to 4.15.5 via UKUU and updated MESA to 17.3.3. Also had to update linux-firmware to 18.04 proposed release. Firefox seemed really crash happy and I did have Cinnamon crap out once. Whilst it was happy the system seemed pretty nice. I didn’t try much else with it as it took a while to get the above researched and applied.

I will be very happy to see some driver improvements for Raven Ridge soon.

Gotta thank the Phoronix article for the pointers for the fixes: Phoronix R5 2400G test

1 Like

Hi,

Can anybody please post the IOMMU groups for 2200G or 2400G?

Thanks.

That is entirely dependent on the motherboard, and varies on each motherboard.

I wouldn’t say entirely, but yes, I know.
Still, one example is better than none.

I would like to passthrough the integrated GPU to a VM and I thought checking the IOMMU groups would be the place to start with.

This topic is 3 months dead. If you have a question that you would like to ask, please feel free to create your own thread.