Well that’s the thing, if I do that I just won’t use the other PC because as I mentioned with my camping analogy I simply don’t enjoy messing with OS’s. It might have been different 10 years ago but now I have limited free time.
I wanted to move away from Microsoft because I dislike the direction they are going but I’m starting to realise that I might be becoming too lazy for Linux, at least with brand new hardware.
Yes, I think that’s what I will do. I’ll try the beta later.
I tried wertigon’s suggestion and managed to upgrade the Kernel to 5.3 and I’m pretty sure I have Mesa 19.3 as well but somehow it’s even worst than before. I used to be able to launch native games at an horrible FPS but now it won’t even start.
I’ll try Kubuntu 9.10 Beta on another partition to see if things are better.
Thank you for the advice!
The 5700XT is really what throws the wrench here. I have Vega56/64, a fury and some polaris cards and those are perfectly supported at this point. But Navi is just completely different in so many ways… gonna take time.
If you can return that 5700 series and live with less performance for a while, there have been crazy Vega56 deals going on lately. (At least here in Germany.)
This is exactly why when I built a new 3900X system I went with an affordable Vega 56 (it was a refurb) instead of a brand new 5700XT. I knew that the new card wouldn’t work well in Linux for several months and probably more like a year.
Vegas are also excellent compute cards. I haven’t seen comparison benchmarks vs 5700 yet but I doubt any speed increases would be worth the bleeding edge hassles.
You seem to be having a bleeding edge hardware yet you are on a slow “stable” OS - You should probably switch to a rolling release distro such as Manjaro. It has the latest Mesa drivers and a kernel switcher. SInce it is not as fast rolling as arch, it should give you less headaches…
the graphics stack in Linux is divided in two parts, the kernel part which handles all low level communication with the hardware, and the mesa part which handles all communication with the userspace applications.
And precisely why I stay away from it.
On Debian Sid, you install the AMD drivers like so:
sudo apt install firmware-amd-graphics
and the nvidia drivers like so:
sudo apt install nvidia-driver
If it’s harder than that, I start blaming vendors (AMD’s graphic stack is a dumpster fire) or distros. It doesn’t have to be that complicated; the fact that it is comes down to design decisions.
One thing that i would seriously suggest is that if games are a thing, maybe evaluate if a console will help alleviate that.
If you’re a hardcore PC gamer then unfortunately you’re always going to have to be dealing with less compatibility than windows.
The other compromise you need to make generally is that it is a while before games work on linux after release.
But… depends how much you hate windows and how many compromises you are willing to make, doesn’t it?
Me? I’m so done with windows, and microsoft in general with their attitude towards customers with windows 10. So - i’ve taken the hit to games compatibility and purchased a nintendo switch to fill that niche outside of the games i can make run on linux.
I’ve been using Linux for the last 20 plus years, mostly Xubuntu since it came out. I always dual booted for Windoze only gaming until a year ago where I now use PCI pass-through. I’ll give up gaming before I go back to Windoze.
Oy, mate, I’ma say it before I go down on the other posts:
Don’t bother with Linux if you got new-gen hardware 
I’l probably be bashed here, but if you’re not so concerned with privacy and all the MS bullshit (which is a lot), stay with windoze and let it go… it’s just an OS, a way to use your hardware.
I’ve been cycling through a lot of distros and… (for the mainstream ones:) they’re all the same deep down… I still don’t know something you can do on linux that you can’t on winderp.
Yes, it is stupid, resource heavy and shit… but… do you really care?
Not going to disagree here, just going to point out the hardware will work great with Ubuntu 20.04, out next year. Until then though, yeah it is hit or miss for new exotic hardware.
I’m honestly really shocked at a lot of the responses here. I’ve read over and over how AMD drivers are baked into the kernel and that their open source technologies facilitate a lot more flexibility and functionality than the proprietary drivers.
Despite that, AMD is not fully functional on Linux distributions? I had a heck of a time getting Linux installed on my desktop (AMD 3800X), but after some trial and error and a UEFI update, it’s worked without a hitch. Then again, I’m running Nvidia graphics which is fully mostly generally supported very well.
@Fin getting Linux installed on any system takes some practice, patience, and experience. Whether that’s brute forcing it to work or trial and error, you have to get in some time to understand how the system works.
Sometimes the boot/GRUB screen will linger long enough to give a good error message if you’re having some hiccups. Definitely update the BIOS/UEFI before you try installing anything.
Ubuntu is pretty friendly, and Fedora is too for the most part.
But he’s not upset? He asked if you had his hardware? it’s a valid question.
Your observation is correct, but there is a method to the madness; and in this case it has to do with two different linux-isms that are clashing. More specifically:
Hardware is much more stable and better supported with in-kernel drivers in Linux.
This is more or less true, but does have a few legacy hold-outs like nVidia where the in-kernel driver is simply not allowed access to vital parts of the hardware to make it function properly. To combat this nVidia jumps through a ton of hoops to make sure their proprietary driver cards stay compatible for each new kernel release. This is also costing nVidia more and more money.
The Linux ecosystem is not very well equipped to handle new “exotic” hardware.
A Linux distribution consists of several parts. For instance, Ubuntu consists of a desktop environment (Gnome), a graphical shell (xOrg / wayland), a graphics API (mesa), a kernel (Linux) and finally a graphics driver (amdgpu / nouveau / intel). And a bunch of other crap not relevant to the discussion.
Just like a PC consists of a lot of different parts, so does Ubuntu. And just like Dell does with hardware, Canonical (the persons behind Ubuntu) simply collects this software and packages it into a neat little userfriendly package. So Ubuntu could be considered the case of the hardware.
Now, does Dell build all their own internal tech, like PSU, CPU, GPU…? Of course not, and neither does Canonical build all their software. They build some, brand some and “borrow” some. So the only thing Canonical controls is which parts are shipped to the end consumers. All these parts are built by other people; The Gnome foundation, the Mesa foundation, the Linux Kernel developers, AMD…
So what is required to get the new AMD cards to work? First AMD must provide decent drivers, then Linux and Mesa must adapt their software to work with the new drivers, then Canonical needs to verify everything works as intended with Gnome, Wayland and xorg, before a new version of Ubuntu is shipped.
This means the earliest version of Ubuntu where the new hardware works will be released between 3 to 9 months after a new hardware is released, longer if substantial bugs are blocking a release.
So, if Ubuntu 19.10 does not work automagically, 20.04 should work for you. If that is not acceptable to wait that long, try Arch which is the fastest of them all (bar Gentoo, which is… well, as far mainstream as you can get). 
I’ve read over and over how AMD drivers are baked into the kernel and that their open source technologies facilitate a lot more flexibility and functionality than the proprietary drivers.
The issue is distro packaging policy. Yes, AMD firmware is tracked under the Linux source tree, but that’s not worth of a hill of beans if your GPU firmware was added a month ago, your card released last week, and your distro ships a firmware snapshot from 4 months ago.
Rolling distro are effectively mandatory for decent desktop functionality, because the entire Linux graphics stack is terrible.
AMD’s packaging dumpster fire is in their proprietary OpenCL stuff, and it’s terrible. They’ve shifted focus over to the RocM stack, which is seeing a lot of positive progress on packaging, but it’s still a work in progress.
Hi Fin, Did you ever get it to work? I still can not get either of my Debian flavors (Mint and POP) to hardware accelerate. My Manjaro does now and I am very happy. There is a learning curve and it is a rolling release, but with Wendell’s prompting, I installed it. Once I got through the learning curve, I am rocking with my 3700XT / 3700X system.
I actually hate pop os looks. For the most part ? I hate all linux distros look. Plasma maybe ? There is a gross lack of effort in this regard. I understand the underlining ability but ? Fragmentation is an issue no matter what it is. Coming from the glory days of windows and customizing … amateurs.
Might spend more time and care in this . It actually means something and same with not wasting users time.
We can forgive at setup… after that ? You failed. In fact ? In this day and age… You have no excuse other than you did not give a shit. Which shows a lot in linux distros. It is one thing to purpuse build ? It is another to make a desktop for the general masses.
Linux could be great if it embraces this effort. There is literally no reason why everyone is not using a linux based desktop other than the linux community lack of effort to make it user friendly.
Sometimes ? You have to build that shit yourself ? Which is what I thought linux was all about ? Not relying on others peoples stuff. Corporate in this regard. ( I realize this is a complex statement )
One other thing i’d add - is that it is definitely, definitely worth spending a little time on protondb.com and looking at the notes on how to improve performance when running steam games under proton.
It can be the difference between an unplayable, stuttery mess, and “as good or better performance than windows on the same hardware”.
It’s normally as simple as editing the command line that steam uses to run the game, when setting up Proton as the forced compatibility tool, and paying attention to what version of Proton to use.
I’ve been entirely Windows free*** now for over a year (not even a gaming VM or dual boot), and haven’t had to make that many compromises.
edit:
*** i have a couple of server VMs purely for work R&D purposes. i.e., windows VMs to support a work windows environment. but could do without those if i left my Windows admin work at work.
As above - bleeding edge hardware can be an issue with stable distributions. Solution to that is to buy hardware that was released before the distribution you plan to run… or wait a few months after hardware release to give the distros time to catch up. That said, my Ryzen 2700X + ASrock Taichi X470 experience was far better with Linux than it was with Windows (no dvd drive for the included driver disc for the windows side :D). It was literally the final straw for me to ditch windows entirely.
Oh yeah, Fedora is generally MUCH better with new hardware than screwing around adding third party PPAs to Debian in my experience. Especially with AMD - video drivers are included in kernel, etc. and the kernels are pretty up to date. I just got kernel 5.3.7 today on Fedora 30, in the main tree for example. No dodgy maybe-not-maintained-in-future third party repo for it.
Yes, you’ll maybe need to screw with installation of non-included libraries to make some linux native games work, but Proton compatibility to just run the Windows versions is now pretty good.
So long as it isn’t a multiplayer title with anti-cheat, Win32 + DX compatibility is almost to the point where it’s “cross-platform” now. In some instances, i’ve had better compatibility on Linux with old Windows games than i have on Windows 10.