The small linux problem thread

pretty sure it is supported by the open source drivers that are in Ubuntu 18.04 but follow Baz’s advice if it doesn’t work.

The Ubuntu 18.04.2 image contains an updated kernel that may support your GPU out-of-the-box. If not, try a testing kernel from the Canonical Kernel Team PPA (kernel-hwe or kernel-hwe-edge), or the Ubuntu Kernel Update Utility (Ukuu) which can be installed from ppa:teejee2008/ppa.

It should work no problem, you might want to run newer versions of think then what 18.04 has because there are some goodies on the newer stuff for AMD hardware.

Oh, and Ubuntu 19.04 (disco dingo), with Linux 5.0 kernel, is due for release today. The improvements to GNOME performance are tangible and the beta has been quite stable.

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I would like to use that if it is lts release, because i dont visit here often.

I don’t think its lts

Your GPU is supported and you should be fine. The recommendation would be that if you are planning on gaming, you may have better luck using the AMDGPU open source driver versus the radeon open source driver.

If you plan on using Vulkan, then you must use the AMDGPU driver.

Depending on if you are using X or Wayland, you may need to do some dri.conf tweaking as some of the 280 - 390x GPUs hd some weird quirks.

Okay! Nice to know this, and yes i’m planning on gaming so, i need the AMDGPU driver.

I’ve seen conflicting data on which is more performant

The performance delta is not that much different for GCN 1 and GCN 1.1 cards (a couple percent max and is situational). More importantly, some of the X cards in those generations caused users hell when using the radeon driver, but have no issue with the AMDGPU driver.

Behind the scenes, they still use the radeon WMI.
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/ATI
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AMDGPU

As you can see here on phoronix, here is a case were radeon has 0 performance on a 290 because it will not load correctly.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amdgpu-radeon-linux50&num=2

So should i try proton first and if it doesn’t work, then install the amdgpu drivers?

Proton is just a custom spin of wine. That has nothing to do with you drivers. I just updated my post above with links to the arch wiki

Lts releases are more geared towards workstations (and recommended if you use proprietary drivers) just due to the fact that they don’t basically change.
Thus lagging behind fresh updates and new features, but since you’re rocking an amd gpu I’d recommend just using the latest version of ubuntu and the open source drivers (which are built-in in the kernel.)

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^ This.

I run Debian SID as my main (read stable rolling) and I use Arch for gaming and bleeding edge testing. Rolling releases tend to be better unless you need absolute stability. In that case having the latest and greatest takes longer to get to you.

With the improvements being made to the GPU drivers and Mesa, I recommend sticking with a rolling release.

I’m on rolling and no complaints here. all my shit works

Just when i setup the lts release to have kde with nice theme and steam :smiley: Well, i guess i have to install ubuntu with cinnamon since its the latest and greatest distro.

Well if you’re a bit familiar with linux and installed the home partition in a separate partition it’s no biggie to install whatever distro and still keep your files and customizations intact.

Edit: Also going from lts to the latest version one trick is to just add the latest versions’ repos to you lts environment and do an apt dist-upgrade

Particularly with Debian based systems, if you are apprehensive, perform a upgrade instead of a dist-upgrade and you will be relatively safe. If you are not on a testing or unstable release, perform a dist-upgrade could be a little dangerous because once the never stable/lts release becomes available, it could break your system. Example, Debian stretch -> jessie introduced the change from Sys-V to SystemD. While most did not have issues, if you had heavily custom init scripts, they may have not all survived the the transition

Nah i didin’t do that, but its not a bummer for me to have something functional :slight_smile:

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I use OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, so I can always roll back if I run into an issue, which rarely happens.