What's the current AMD Situation on Linux?

Zarathustra[H]

Extremely [H]
Joined
Oct 29, 2000
Messages
38,743
Hey everyone,

I have somewhat unexpectedly wound up ordering a 6900 XT. I hadn't planned on going team Red this generation, thinking I would probably wind up with a 3080TI or 3090, but an opportunity presented itself and I seized it.

So, it has been a while since I used an AMD GPU. Las time was my Radeon HD 7970 which I bought on launch back in early 2012. I can't remember what I did back then.

So, I ahve become quite accustomed to the Nvidia way under Linux, and just going with the binary blob driver. What is th ebest way to get the 6900XT working well under Linux? I hear AMD open source drivers are quite good these days. Are they just a part of the kernel drivers (If so, whats the oldest kernel I should use?) or are they a part of xorg/mesa? Or should I be using the old FireGL binary blob drivers?

For what it's worth, I'm kind og a Debian tree guy, currently using Mint 20.2.

Appreciate any suggestions.
 
Well I had a 5700 XT installed with Linux Mint, latest version and it worked good. Installed the 6900XT, no go, installed several different Kernels, no go and the forums were not that helpful. Bought another license for Windows 10, happy camper. It maybe the same now, eventually it should be supported. With the 5700XT I missed all the unique features one gets in the Windows version, there is no UI and limited monitoring. As usual, I install Linux, use it, like it and then something just does not work or works poorly, spend an inordinate time plowing through endless threads, misleads, to no avail -> Back to Windows. Maybe next time.

My suggestion is to install the AMD driver for Ubuntu, 21.30 until the Linux Kernel supports it.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/grap.../amd-radeon-6900-series/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt
 
Well I had a 5700 XT installed with Linux Mint, latest version and it worked good. Installed the 6900XT, no go, installed several different Kernels, no go and the forums were not that helpful. Bought another license for Windows 10, happy camper. It maybe the same now, eventually it should be supported. With the 5700XT I missed all the unique features one gets in the Windows version, there is no UI and limited monitoring. As usual, I install Linux, use it, like it and then something just does not work or works poorly, spend an inordinate time plowing through endless threads, misleads, to no avail -> Back to Windows. Maybe next time.

My suggestion is to install the AMD driver for Ubuntu, 21.30 until the Linux Kernel supports it.
https://www.amd.com/en/support/grap.../amd-radeon-6900-series/amd-radeon-rx-6900-xt

Hmm.

I hope I didn't make a mistake in buying this.

I was under the impression that the tables had turned and that AMD GPU's just worked under Linux these days with the open source driver, changing the old afage that you always buy Nvidia for Linux because nothing works better than their binary blob driver.

I was honestly expecting it to work out of the box with the kernel driver (at least with the latest HWE kernel), or at worst have the mint driver installer handle it automatically...

I found this post, was that you?

It seems to suggest that the kernel driver should be the best for general purpose use and to only install the AMDGPU-PRO driver if you need compute applications.

Could you maybe point me towards more info on the Ubuntu driver you are mentioning? Is this something in the Ubuntu repositories or something I need to get elsewhere?

Much appreciated!
 
I installed a kubuntu test setup 2-3 months ago and had no issues with 6800 xt card I wanted to test with running a game in wine., just worked out of the box so to speak. I didn't try to do oc or anything, no idea if you can do that on linux or not.
 
I installed a kubuntu test setup 2-3 months ago and had no issues with 6800 xt card I wanted to test with running a game in wine., just worked out of the box so to speak. I didn't try to do oc or anything, no idea if you can do that on linux or not.

Good to know thanks.

Yeah, I'm not planning on doing any gaming or compute loads (at least not under Linux).

I just need basic desktop output (across multiple monitors) As long as I can get that I'll be happy.

I use my Linux install for my day to day productivity / browsing type of stuff, and open a Virtualbox VM for Windows for work stuff.

All of my gaming and that sort of stuff happens under a dedicated Windows 10 dual boot.
 
Hmm.

I hope I didn't make a mistake in buying this.

I was under the impression that the tables had turned and that AMD GPU's just worked under Linux these days with the open source driver, changing the old afage that you always buy Nvidia for Linux because nothing works better than their binary blob driver.

I was honestly expecting it to work out of the box with the kernel driver (at least with the latest HWE kernel), or at worst have the mint driver installer handle it automatically...

I found this post, was that you?

It seems to suggest that the kernel driver should be the best for general purpose use and to only install the AMDGPU-PRO driver if you need compute applications.

Could you maybe point me towards more info on the Ubuntu driver you are mentioning? Is this something in the Ubuntu repositories or something I need to get elsewhere?

Much appreciated!
No that was not me but it does look like he resolved the issues. Mine was much earlier in the year.
 
So I replied to that thread on the mint forums, asking a few follow up questions, and a zealous forum mod took it upon themselves to identify that my follow-up question was a new question, edited my question and created a new thread for me. (how nice of them).

Anyway, for reference, it is here.
 
Well I am having a fun time. Not. Anyways made a live USB stick for latest LinuxMint 20.2, booted up on the 6900XT and it gave the generic 1024x768 display with no options to change it. Checked what kernel it was running and it was 5.4 something, older kernel that does not support the 6900XT directly.

I tried to update the kernel to 5.11 something but since a live session using the USB stick, no changes would be made which was expected. OK, I have a spare Kingston 120gb SATA SSD, I installed the 120gb drive into system. I will just load LinuxMint onto that drive separate from the Windows installation, piece of cake.

I followed the LinuxMint installation instruction during the live session inside of LinuxMint, did not select wipe everything, kill windows erase all of your data etc. -> Selected Other as shown on the installation guide, it indicated to create a root directory for the drive it was going to be installed on, I selected the Kingston 120gb SATA drive, partition a root directory as shown and tried to install. The installation immediately flagged I did not have an EFT partition and to create one, that was not in the instruction. So I made a root partition, EFI and a swap partition on the Kingston 120 SATA drive. This time the installation proceeded and got to a point where it said it had a fatal error, Grub something or another.

I rebooted just wanting to get into Windows, boot menu of bios did not show the Windows drive to boot from. Huh? Went back into the Live LinuxMint sessions, the drive did not exist. Used Windows installation disk to do a repair -> It could not do a repair, no Windows drive was found. The windows drive was basically toast, no file system, just one big unallocated space. Everything was gone.

Well I just completed reloading Windows back onto the 1TB Intel NVME drive, starting from scratch. Good thing not too much was really lost, Windows is so easy now to load. Of course chipset drivers, AMD drivers and everything else I want/need to install now.

Every time without exception, Linux has been time consuming, always gives something unexpected and pain. Something so easy to have a separate SSD and install an operating system should just work, instructions clear etc. I may now just remove the two NVME drives and retry with just the Kingston drive using the destroy everything path and let mint do what it wants. I would like to have other options for an operating system. Loved AmigaOS, IBM OS2 with Windows 3.1 and of course plowed through the various stages of Windows following. Linux just never seems to be mature or gets beyond a certain level for a personal non business computer. I want to keep Windows and Linux totally separate storage wise, tried grub menu picking OS's before upon boot -> pain and more pain -> The bios using F9 gives a boot menu, that is the only thing I want to use with Windows just automatically booting unless F9 is used for Linux.
 
Last edited:
Well I am having a fun time. Not. Anyways made a live USB stick for latest LinuxMint 20.2, booted up on the 6900XT and it gave the generic 1024x768 display with no options to change it. Checked what kernel it was running and it was 5.4 something, older kernel that does not support the 6900XT directly.

I tried to update the kernel to 5.11 something but since a live session using the USB stick, no changes would be made which was expected. OK, I have a spare Kingston 120gb SATA SSD, I installed the 120gb drive into system. I will just load LinuxMint onto that drive separate from the Windows installation, piece of cake.

I followed the LinuxMint installation instruction during the live session inside of LinuxMint, did not select wipe everything, kill windows erase all of your data etc. -> Selected Other as shown on the installation guide, it indicated to create a root directory for the drive it was going to be installed on, I selected the Kingston 120gb SATA drive, partition a root directory as shown and tried to install. The installation immediately flagged I did not have an EFT partition and to create one, that was not in the instruction. So I made a root partition, EFI and a swap partition on the Kingston 120 SATA drive. This time the installation proceeded and got to a point where it said it had a fatal error, Grub something or another.

I rebooted just wanting to get into Windows, boot menu of bios did not show the Windows drive to boot from. Huh? Went back into the Live LinuxMint sessions, the drive did not exist. Used Windows installation disk to do a repair -> It could not do a repair, no Windows drive was found. The windows drive was basically toast, no file system, just one big unallocated space. Everything was gone.

Well I just completed reloading Windows back onto the 1TB Intel NVME drive, starting from scratch. Good thing not too much was really lost, Windows is so easy now to load. Of course chipset drivers, AMD drivers and everything else I want/need to install now.

Every time without exception, Linux has been time consuming, always gives something unexpected and pain. Something so easy to have a separate SSD and install an operating system should just work, instructions clear etc. I may now just remove the two NVME drives and retry with just the Kingston drive using the destroy everything path and let mint do what it wants. I would like to have other options for an operating system. Loved AmigaOS, IBM OS2 with Windows 3.1 and of course plowed through the various stages of Windows following. Linux just never seems to be mature or gets beyond a certain level for a personal non business computer. I want to keep Windows and Linux totally separate storage wise, tried grub menu picking OS's before upon boot -> pain and more pain -> The bios using F9 gives a boot menu, that is the only thing I want to use with Windows just automatically booting unless F9 is used for Linux.

I've usually had the opposite experience. Generally windows instead are a major pain int eh ass requiring 27 reboots and hunting for chipset drivers, whereas Linux is up in one go, a booted system in less than. 5 minutes after starting the install.

If you don't know how to custom create EFI partitions jus seöection the option that wipes the entire drive and creates everything for you usually just works.

I just did it yesterday on a system for my mother in law and it just worked on the first try.

Not sure what happened in your case.
 
Me either. No problem in making an EFI partition and such. Yes, Linux is easy to install when you nuke it :D. I just installed an extra SSD for it and ended up with the Windows SSD totally corrupted, it was never selected during the installation process. As for Windows installation, it was less than 15min, then chipset drivers and Radeon drivers. Zero issues. I am going to removed the two SSDs used for Windows and install Linux Mint on the 120gb drive and take her for a ride, update the kernel to 5.11 and see if the 6900XT works, if not then try installing the Radeon Drivers from AMD (done that before with the 5700XT for getting Modo to work, worked pretty good except gaming was subpar). Then put the two M.2 drives back in later.
 
Okay, so I understand that Linux can sometimes break easily, and it gives you all the freedom to destroy anything you want without warning. But if you spend the time to learn it, it works much better and you can get everything exactly like you want.

In any case, AMD is well supported on the open-source Mesa drivers. These will come with most distros, for example when I booted up on the latest stable version of Ubuntu (21.04) and an AMD 6800 XT card, everything was working no problem out of box.

There are AMD official binary drivers, but they are not widely compatible (only a few specific distro versions work) and anyway the FOSS drivers can have just as good or better performance. I couldn't get them to work anyway since they only support LTS Ubuntu and I'm on a newer version.

If you want newer Mesa drivers, that usually improve performance and support more games, then install the Kisak PPA. These are what I use and they fixed some issues on some games from the older repo drivers.

https://itsfoss.com/install-mesa-ubuntu/

Otherwise there is not much you need to do. It works fine.
 
Well in any case, :rolleyes:, took out the two m.2 drives and installed LinuxMint onto the Kingston 120gb SATA drive. The default kernel did not support the 6900XT which was expected, 5.4. Just the default 1024x768 display was shown which is good enough to work with.

Updated OS with all the updates, rebooted and then updated kernel to 5.11 (latest). Rebooted and had a 4k native resolution display. Mesa drivers were loaded:

Screenshot from 2021-10-04 21-36-01.png
Installed Steam and Rise of the Tomb Raider, Benchmark, 4k, very high preset:

Screenshot from 2021-10-04 22-07-32.png

Screenshot from 2021-10-04 22-08-25.png
I say, working pretty damn good here, benchmark ran super smooth, no glitches or rendering issues. Now this is only a first very short take but appears Linux supports the 6900XT with the Mesa Drivers.
 
Last edited:
I liked Linux Mint at first, but the repo and libraries are super old. By the time you update everything, you might as well have just gone with vanilla Ubuntu.
 
I liked Linux Mint at first, but the repo and libraries are super old. By the time you update everything, you might as well have just gone with vanilla Ubuntu.

Usually (in cases where hardware compatibility is not an issue) older is better. Bugs have been worked out and patched, and things are generally more stable.

Heck I only just got around to upgrading my servers from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS :p
 
For servers I can understand, but for a general desktop I like having new stuff to play with.
 
Usually (in cases where hardware compatibility is not an issue) older is better. Bugs have been worked out and patched, and things are generally more stable.

Heck I only just got around to upgrading my servers from 16.04 LTS to 18.04 LTS :p
Yep, I am one who also thinks if it works don't F_ _ _ with it. There is not much GPU AMD UI apps, you can do some interesting stuff with the console. Previously I could only control the fan manually, no fan curves but on the VegaFE that was pretty much preferred, better having a constant noise vice a constantly changing irritating noise. OCing via console commands was changing gpu pstates, unfortunately I lost all my notes (about 3 weeks worth) on tinkering AMD GPUs. So once again back to noob state with Linuxmint, probably never really got out of the noob state. Now if all goes well after putting back in the two Window dedicated m.2 drives, Linux should be here to stay on at least one machine of mine.
 
I'm running a Radeon RX570 so definitely nothing new. Running Manjaro with the open source drivers in the kernel and mesa I've had no real trouble. There are some hiccups such as not being able to use freesync due to running multiple monitors. It's annoying but something I can live with.

Stay away from the AMD GPU-pro drivers unless you know you need them for specific programs. In many cases they'll work worse than the built-in open source drivers.

GUIs for controlling anything about the GPU are a serious issue especially since there is no control panel for the drivers. Most of the stuff you might find is usually outdated and unsupported on anything even remotely modern. My Polaris card is too new for most of them from the research I've done. However, there is one program I did find that has some control over my RX570, it's called CoreCTRL. It has a hardware monitor which shows me GPU speed, memory speed, temp, core voltage, power use, activity %, video RAM use and fan speed. I can also use it to setup a custom fan curve which is the main reason I wanted it. For the Polaris it also has some limited overclocking functionality. I can adjust power limit and core clock speed with no problem. Voltages and RAM speed are a different story. Voltage changes don't seem to work and I get weird issues if I try to overclock the RAM (which is a pity since I can usually run an extra 250mhz on the RAM with little or no voltage increase.) Functionality is hit or miss depending on what card you have. The program is relatively new so support may be a problem depending on what card you have.

Link to program page in case you want to check it out.
 
Been running a 6900xt under Arch since July. Currently running kernel 5.14.7. Have had no issues, use "gamemode %command%" in my Steam games, get great performance.

Sam
 
Been running a 6900xt under Arch since July. Currently running kernel 5.14.7. Have had no issues, use "gamemode %command%" in my Steam games, get great performance.

Sam

I'm not planning on playing any games under linux, but I am curious, what does "gamemode" do? Is it an Arch thing?
 
I'm running a Radeon RX570 so definitely nothing new. Running Manjaro with the open source drivers in the kernel and mesa I've had no real trouble. There are some hiccups such as not being able to use freesync due to running multiple monitors. It's annoying but something I can live with.

Stay away from the AMD GPU-pro drivers unless you know you need them for specific programs. In many cases they'll work worse than the built-in open source drivers.

GUIs for controlling anything about the GPU are a serious issue especially since there is no control panel for the drivers. Most of the stuff you might find is usually outdated and unsupported on anything even remotely modern. My Polaris card is too new for most of them from the research I've done. However, there is one program I did find that has some control over my RX570, it's called CoreCTRL. It has a hardware monitor which shows me GPU speed, memory speed, temp, core voltage, power use, activity %, video RAM use and fan speed. I can also use it to setup a custom fan curve which is the main reason I wanted it. For the Polaris it also has some limited overclocking functionality. I can adjust power limit and core clock speed with no problem. Voltages and RAM speed are a different story. Voltage changes don't seem to work and I get weird issues if I try to overclock the RAM (which is a pity since I can usually run an extra 250mhz on the RAM with little or no voltage increase.) Functionality is hit or miss depending on what card you have. The program is relatively new so support may be a problem depending on what card you have.

Link to program page in case you want to check it out.

The freesync thing seems like a bummer.

Just to be clear, are you trying to render across multiple monitors, or is it enough to just have a second monitor connected to throw a wrench in the works?

The nvidia-settings app has a setting for which monitor to use for syncing framerates, but I think that only has to do with video playback, not games, and from my experience it doesn't work very well...

1633456236555.png


Other than framerate loss compared to Windows, it's the small niggling issues like this that keep me dual booting.

This happens even on native linux titles. I haven't tried running many titles under linux, but years ago when I last tried both Aspyr Media's port of Civilization V and Metro Last Light would refuse to open on my main screen, instead always starting on one of my side monitors. It was frustrating, and there was seemingly no setting to change where they started. (I tried setting th eprimary monitor in display settings and that had no impact)

I'm just as happy dual booting to Windows. It has the side benefit of allowing me to maintain a hyper-focused and debloated minimal Windows install just for my games which is nice.
 
I haven't had major issues but the trend of it taking 2-3 months after a GPU is released to have reasonably stable drivers is still true IMO (this is probably not solely and AMD thing). The 6600xt has been out for awhile and yet I still had to go through a reinstall to get it working. Had the same /similar issues with 6800s and the 6700xt. It's never as simple as just plug in the new GPU and download some drivers. When it comes to overclocking, fast timing and more power tool on windows are nice things to have without resorting to a bios flash. It's much better than it was years ago but it's still not ideal.
 
The freesync thing seems like a bummer.

Just to be clear, are you trying to render across multiple monitors, or is it enough to just have a second monitor connected to throw a wrench in the works?

The nvidia-settings app has a setting for which monitor to use for syncing framerates, but I think that only has to do with video playback, not games, and from my experience it doesn't work very well...

View attachment 400514

Other than framerate loss compared to Windows, it's the small niggling issues like this that keep me dual booting.

This happens even on native linux titles. I haven't tried running many titles under linux, but years ago when I last tried both Aspyr Media's port of Civilization V and Metro Last Light would refuse to open on my main screen, instead always starting on one of my side monitors. It was frustrating, and there was seemingly no setting to change where they started. (I tried setting th eprimary monitor in display settings and that had no impact)

I'm just as happy dual booting to Windows. It has the side benefit of allowing me to maintain a hyper-focused and debloated minimal Windows install just for my games which is nice.
The freesync issue is simply because of having more than one monitor connected but I am not trying to span a game across multiple monitors, just on the primary. If I had a single monitor freesync would work just fine. From the reading I have done the problem is a limitation in X.org itself and the way it deals with multi-display setups. I have no clue about the technical aspects, simply that freesync doesn't work with multiple displays connected.

There's no way I'm giving up multiple monitors so the limitation is something I live with.
 
The freesync issue is simply because of having more than one monitor connected but I am not trying to span a game across multiple monitors, just on the primary. If I had a single monitor freesync would work just fine. From the reading I have done the problem is a limitation in X.org itself and the way it deals with multi-display setups. I have no clue about the technical aspects, simply that freesync doesn't work with multiple displays connected.

There's no way I'm giving up multiple monitors so the limitation is something I live with.

Ah, right. I vaguely remember dealing with something similar in the past.

If I recall I think you can partially fix it by running a separate instance of X on each screen, but when I looked into it it was very complicated.

Hopefully once Wayland replaces Xorg as the default display server these types of issues will go away. X11/Xorg has served well, but it is quite long in the tooth and really needs to be retired.

Ubuntu tried to go Wayland by default in 17.10, but it wasn't quite ready enough and backfired on them. They went with Wayland again in 21.04.

Experience has taught me to treat non-LTS Ubuntu releases like public betas and just steer clear. Mint does the same, basing their builds on the most recent Ubuntu LTS. The next LTS is due in 22.04, which means Mint will probably adopt it next summer, unless they decide to put it off and keep using Xorg (Xorg will likely remain in the Ubuntu repository as a fallback/alternative to Wayland for some time)

it is unclear to me at this point how well Cinnamon or Mate run on Wayland. Cinnamon/Mate being ready for Wayland will likely be the big determining factor of whether or not we get it in Mint next summer.

You could just switch to one of the versions that supports it now if you want to, but personally I'd rather wait.
 
So yes, I should have mentioned FreeSync. It works on X.org (single monitor only) but not on Wayland GNOME. I'm using Wayland on Ubuntu 21.04 because it fixes some other things (namely WebGL performance) and it's annoying to constantly be logging in and out, so I live with Wayland.

Technically Wayland is way better than X.org, supports multi-monitor and the protocol supports VRR (they are still working on mixed mode monitors, like monitors with different refresh rates, or some monitors having VRR and others not). Unlike X.org, these problems are solvable, but it still needs time.

In my case, the GNOME compositor (Mutter) is required to support VRR and that is not implemented yet. The patch has been done, and I think it works, but it may not be merged until GNOME 41, and Ubuntu just updated to GNOME 40 on the beta, meaning FreeSync still doesn't work.

If that is a deal breaker, you can just continue using X.org if you need FreeSync. Or try Wayland with a different compositor, Sway does work with FreeSync right now.
 
Ah, right. I vaguely remember dealing with something similar in the past.

If I recall I think you can partially fix it by running a separate instance of X on each screen, but when I looked into it it was very complicated.

Hopefully once Wayland replaces Xorg as the default display server these types of issues will go away. X11/Xorg has served well, but it is quite long in the tooth and really needs to be retired.

Ubuntu tried to go Wayland by default in 17.10, but it wasn't quite ready enough and backfired on them. They went with Wayland again in 21.04.

Experience has taught me to treat non-LTS Ubuntu releases like public betas and just steer clear. Mint does the same, basing their builds on the most recent Ubuntu LTS. The next LTS is due in 22.04, which means Mint will probably adopt it next summer, unless they decide to put it off and keep using Xorg (Xorg will likely remain in the Ubuntu repository as a fallback/alternative to Wayland for some time)

it is unclear to me at this point how well Cinnamon or Mate run on Wayland. Cinnamon/Mate being ready for Wayland will likely be the big determining factor of whether or not we get it in Mint next summer.

You could just switch to one of the versions that supports it now if you want to, but personally I'd rather wait.
I also did some research on getting X.org to support freesync with multiple monitors and came to the same information you did. It's an extremely tedious and involved process to get it to work. Even worse the multi-monitor desktop would no longer act as a normal spanned desktop between the monitors. Basically each monitor would have its own X.org session and would be completely separate. The mouse would have no issue spanning monitors but you wouldn't be able to move anything around between different monitors. That would defeat a lot of the usefulness of a multi-monitor setup for me. I remember around 2007 or so having this type of multi-monitor setup on openSUSE with an nVidia card. It was my first foray into multi-monitor setup and it was better than nothing at the time but it was very annoying and other than mirroring the display there was no other way to get it working different.
 
If you want newer Mesa drivers, that usually improve performance and support more games, then install the Kisak PPA. These are what I use and they fixed some issues on some games from the older repo drivers.

https://itsfoss.com/install-mesa-ubuntu/

Otherwise there is not much you need to do. It works fine.


Thanks for this suggestion. I am trying that PPA now. You never know if they install something shady from those PPA's, but this guy at least does a pretty good job of appearing legit.

I don't play games under Linux, but I was having a weird issue where everything was flickering when waking the monitors from sleep. I hope this resolves that issue.
 
I had a problem recently where my monitor would never wake up after going to sleep. After doing tons of things, I found it was because I overclocked the refresh rate.

My screen is 144Hz native, but comes with a factory 160Hz overclock. This was never a problem on Windows (or even older UIbuntu versions) but somehow now it doesn't work. So I have to run 144Hz and disable the OC in the monitor settings.

You can also install this GNOME extension, which will just keep your monitor on 24/7 so it never sleeps. This is good if you just want to lock your computer, but it won't help if you want to suspend.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1414/unblank/
 
I had a problem recently where my monitor would never wake up after going to sleep. After doing tons of things, I found it was because I overclocked the refresh rate.

My screen is 144Hz native, but comes with a factory 160Hz overclock. This was never a problem on Windows (or even older UIbuntu versions) but somehow now it doesn't work. So I have to run 144Hz and disable the OC in the monitor settings.

You can also install this GNOME extension, which will just keep your monitor on 24/7 so it never sleeps. This is good if you just want to lock your computer, but it won't help if you want to suspend.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1414/unblank/
Had this issue too - also, some games don't like higher refresh (grr) - D2 resurrected for instance, running in lutris, doesn't like 120hz or 144 - screen goes nuts. but works fine at 60hz.
 
I had a problem recently where my monitor would never wake up after going to sleep. After doing tons of things, I found it was because I overclocked the refresh rate.

My screen is 144Hz native, but comes with a factory 160Hz overclock. This was never a problem on Windows (or even older UIbuntu versions) but somehow now it doesn't work. So I have to run 144Hz and disable the OC in the monitor settings.

You can also install this GNOME extension, which will just keep your monitor on 24/7 so it never sleeps. This is good if you just want to lock your computer, but it won't help if you want to suspend.

https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1414/unblank/

I have a recurring issue waking from monitor sleep (system is set to never sleep, just turn screens off when inactive fror a few minutes) with black flickering all over the screens. It seems to last until I force Xorg to update those sections of the screen (by running the point pointer over them or moving a window. It's odd, a little annoying, but ultimately harmless right now.

My main screen officially supports up to 120hz, but I only run it at 60hz in Linux, because I don't really need anything higher in Linux, and Xorg seems to behave better when all screens run at the same refresh rate (my old side screens are 60hz only)

I suspect it might be related to Virtualbox. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I sort of feel like it only happens when I wake from sleep if virtualbox is running. I need to do some more troubleshooting.
 
Yeah, Xorg doesn't support mixed refresh rates since the compositor can only run at a single refresh (and this includes all screens). Wayland should support it but I'm not sure if they allow it yet.
 
Yeah, Xorg doesn't support mixed refresh rates since the compositor can only run at a single refresh (and this includes all screens). Wayland should support it but I'm not sure if they allow it yet.

Yeah,

I'm usually not a fan of new things in Linux (SystemD, Netplan, Snaps, etc.) but Wayland is way overdue.

I wonder if Mint will be ready to adopt it when it likely shows up in Ubuntu's next 22.04 LTS release, or if they will put it off.
 
Can you even install a game with steam or Linux these days without still feeling like your typing DOS commands like it was 1992?
 
Can you even install a game with steam or Linux these days without still feeling like your typing DOS commands like it was 1992?
Yes? Other than the Lutris install (copy paste the command) I haven’t had to touch the CLI for a game in years. Steam is a double click. Lutris handles installs. It’s all seamless from that perspective.
 
Can you even install a game with steam or Linux these days without still feeling like your typing DOS commands like it was 1992?
Have you used Steam on Linux in the past 3 years? It's exactly the same as Windows for like 90% of installs (sometimes there are config changes, but even then you don't need the command line).
 
I got my first experience of using AMD video cards on Linux recently. I must say using AMD's kernel drivers make the experience WONDERFUL. No more trying to match up driver versions with header files. No more upgrading the system only to reboot to command line. It's a breath of fresh air really.
 
Yeah, I'm definitely sticking with AMD on my Linux box from now on. Everything works great. I still have an Nvidia card on my Windows 11 box, since of course Nvidia does have slightly better hardware (and works well in Windows) but for Linux I would definitely recommend AMD.
 
I still consider the Nvidia binary blob drivers the gold standard for Linux, that said I don't run games under Linux, only productivity tools.

That said, I've been pretty impressed with the open source kernel drivers thus far.

Only problem I have had has been some flickering and graphical bugs in the 10 seconds after waking from monitor sleep.

Not sure what is going on there.
 
Last edited:
Sorry for the bump! Has this changed at all? I knew about using most recent kernels (recent stable kernel, at least) and install MESA. If I can ever build a recent gen. computer in the near future - my plan is a Z690/i5-12600K and RX 6600 XT (providing I can find one that isn't too overpriced). From what I hear, the RX 6500 XT (or whatever it's called) is gimped/crippled so I would rather go 6600 XT or GTX 3060/Ti.

Fedora, Open SUSE, Manjaro and Ubuntu (*with upgraded kernel/PPA), Debian (Testing/Sid) would seem to be the distros to try (with up-to-date kernel version and Mesa)?
 
Back
Top