Ryzen 5 3500U Notebook running a Linux

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Just on the 25th. I saw a great Deal for a Lenovo V155 Laptop with a R5 processor and incl. Vega 8 graphics. I own a Dell Studio 1535 that I plan to replace and I was somehow lucky, since I had no idea that this was relativly linux friendly, also I never were quite hapy with the radeon HD 45xx graphics.

The question is how well will Ryzen and the Vega graphics do with, lets say Mint? (but Im open to other Distros)

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Ryzen laptops have fun bugs that cause processor locks without the right options being passed to GRUB.

The 3000U series might not need it, but the 2500U still does on most distros as of about a week ago.

Passing that option should work on any distro that uses GRUB.

The built-in AMDGPU on Vega works fine, just be sure to update your firmware. It’s the linux-firmware package on Ubuntu, and the firmware-amd-graphics package on Debian.

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That gives me some confidence, since I normaly read that ryzen is not ready for Linux now (or the other way around) and I was suggested a Thinkbook instead.

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I’d bet on manjaro, the “bleeding edge” plus the friendliness is a good chance it’ll work and make you happy

also fedora, but that’s GNOME as default

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Mint still uses an older kernel. It can be updated to a newer kernel and PPA’s for mesa drivers and such. It was the only thing I could run when I first built my 2400G system. Once *buntu 18.10 came out I moved to Lubuntu and things have been great for me there. I don’t know if the newer kernels will smooth out the few problems I had back then or if it is a different experience for mobile. I’m sure the new Mint next summer will work better out of the box.

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Can confirm that even on the latest upstream kernels, I need those workarounds on my 2500u laptop. I’ve tried nearly everything that has been suggested (running gentoo, custom configured kernel) and still have to boot with amd_iommu=on ivrs_ioapic[4]=00:14.0 ivrs_ioapic[5]=00:00.2 idle=nomwait

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thats a lil above my horizon, can you tell me what the codes means?

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I have a Lenovo Flex 14 Ryzen 5 and I’m interested in this post as well.

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Those are kernel flags that work around bugs in ACPI in most ryzen 2000 series laptop’s. The idle=nomwait works around another bug that prevents booting, and I don’t remember the specifics of what it does, though battery life I do know gets worse because of it. I’d rather have worse battery and actually boot to something usable though, so I use it as an unbootable system is of no use to anyone.

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Those I believe work out of the box as they have the 3500u and bugs were worked around. If I’m incorrect, just add the flags in my first post in this thread and it will let the system boot fine.

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Ok, and how do you set Kernel flags when it is not booting? Is GRUB giving you this option our woudl I have to SSH into the Notebook or smthg.?

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You can’t ssh in as it’s not going to boot. You can hit “e” to edit the menu when at grub. Add those flags once, then edit your bootloader (check your distros docs on where to find the file) and add that to the end of the kernel parameters. Arch has some good docs on that here.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/kernel_parameters

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To temporarily add a boot parameter to a kernel:

  1. Start your system and wait for the GRUB menu to show (if you don’t see a GRUB menu, press and hold the left Shift key right after starting the system).
  2. Now highlight the kernel you want to use, and press the e key. You should be able to see and edit the commands associated with the highlighted kernel.
  3. Go down to the line starting with linux and add your parameter foo=bar to its end.
  4. Now press Ctrl + x to boot.

Source:

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Lenovo Flex 14 Ryzen 5

You’re in luck, my roommate got one today. :slight_smile:

Ubuntu 19.10 boots and installs just fine. The ivrs_ioapic options aren’t needed.

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