AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

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soundscape
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AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by soundscape »

First of all, thank you a ton to everyone contributing to AV Linux MX-21.

(Back story of gratitude that can be ignored: After facing limited capabilities and high expenses of Mac hardware, and almost succumbing to accepting a possible reality of needing to run Win 10 for my peripherals (MOTU M4) to work (due to unreliable and complicated audio setup in Ubuntu)... in looking at kernels for solid audio support, found my way to AVL-MX21 and just thrilled it's so solid out of the box, testing out OBS Studio (especially for audio that just works). AV Linux is far preferred over Mac, Win, or Ubuntu, and I hope to move to AVL-MX21 for my main AV workstation OS.)

The question: what would be the suggested way to install AMD graphics drivers?
  • For this AV workstation, I have an older machine and graphics card (i7-4790, AMD Radeon R5 240 [2GB] dedicated graphics, 16GB RAM, SSD+HDD), and the performance (including graphics) is actually good enough for my needs under Ubuntu 20 (after installing AMD drivers) and Win 10 (again, after AMD drivers), so I know good video performance is possible on the hardware. (It's just the audio support is a mess in Ubuntu, and I would do almost anything to not run Win.)
  • The problem is that dragging windows around is laggy on my 4K monitor in AVL-MX21. I think that installing proprietary AMD drivers or equivalent will solve this. I run into issues installing AMD drivers, though.
  • The AMD R5 240 driver is downloadable from AMD as .zip and .deb, and there is even a PPA someone makes available. And the AMD drivers work under Ubuntu. But all methods fail for me in AVL-MX21 (I think because of the later kernel in AVL-MX21?).
Here are some logs that show what I have tried so far:

Trying AMD-provided Linux installer:

Code: Select all

$ cd fglrx-15.302/
demo@avl-mxe-live:~/Downloads/fglrx-15.302
$ ls
amd-driver-installer-15.302-x86.x86_64.run  check.sh  doc
$ ./check.sh 
Detected configuration:
Architecture: x86_64 (64-bit)
X Server: XServer 
$ sudo ./amd-driver-installer-15.302-x86.x86_64.run 
Created directory fglrx-install.vKsfYh
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing AMD Proprietary Driver-15.302...........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................
=====================================================================
 AMD  Proprietary Driver Installer/Packager 
=====================================================================

error: Detected X Server version 'XServer 1.20.13_64a' is not supported. Supported versions are X.Org 6.9 or later, up to XServer 1.10 (default:v2:x86_64:lib32:XServer 1.20.13_64a:none:5.15.0-10.1-liquorix-amd64:)
Installation will not proceed.

Removing temporary directory: fglrx-install.vKsfYh
Trying the AMD-provided 'Ubuntu' .deb:

Code: Select all

$ sudo apt install ./fglrx_15.302-0ubuntu1_amd64_ub_14.01.deb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Note, selecting 'fglrx' instead of './fglrx_15.302-0ubuntu1_amd64_ub_14.01.deb'
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 fglrx : Depends: fglrx-core but it is not installable
         Depends: libqtcore4 (>= 4:4.7.0~beta2) but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
Trying the ppa that I believe works in Ubuntu:

Code: Select all

demo@avl-mxe-live:~/Downloads/fglrx-15.302
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo: add-apt-repository: command not found
As another hint, when I try to install the Zoom .deb, the output indicates "not installable" dependencies on: `libgl1-mesa-glx`, `libegl1-mesa`, `libxcb-xtest0`, and `ibus`.

Questions:
  • Ideas or thoughts?
  • I understand it's no fault of AVL-MX21 if AMD proprietary drivers don't support the latest Linux Kernels, e.g. 15 or whatever. But I think there should be a way to run AVL-MX21 even on an older AMD graphics card. The discrete graphics makes a difference for my application.
  • Is there a well-known alternative to AMD proprietary graphics for AV Linux?
  • For example, is there something like "mesa" graphics (just based on reading) that would is easy to install in AV Linux MX-21 and would work well enough?
Sorry for long post, as I erred on providing too much info. This OS is awesome, and I hope to become a daily user. Thanks a ton in advance!!!
Last edited by soundscape on Sat Jun 11, 2022 4:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
soundscape
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by soundscape »

Replying to myself, I think it may work to just follow https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo for AMD, e.g. `sudo apt update && apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers xserver-xorg-video-all` etc.

It appears a restart is needed, so it may be necessary to install AVL-MX21 instead of testing from USB, in order to try out with the AMD-supportive drivers for my older card.

I'll reply again if I get it working.
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by soundscape »

Following up, after installing AVL-MX21, I was able to get the older 2GB AMD graphics card (R5 240) to work with AVL-MX21, as evidenced by the graphical application windows no longer appearing visibly laggy when dragged around the 4K monitor. (Also, CPU use is now lower at idle, fluctuating between 0-1% instead of 2+% consistently.)

I did just follow the page at https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo for AMD, namely:

Code: Select all

apt purge *nvidia*
apt update
apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics libgl1-mesa-dri libglx-mesa0 mesa-vulkan-drivers xserver-xorg-video-all
After a reboot, no visible change had occurred yet. So I did the extra steps for "older cards" also as indicated on debian.org. Namely:
  • Wikipedia showed that my card was a "Southern Islands" card, so I edited the `GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT` line in `/etc/default/grub` to include `radeon.si_support=0 amdgpu.si_support=1`.
  • Then I ran `sudo update-grub2` and rebooted.
Now the graphics performance seems improved for sure in AVL-MX21! (Incidentally, the running of update-grub2 actually also appeared to help pick up a partition for another operating system on the disk that the initial installation appeared to have missed.)
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

Are AMD graphics chips/graphic cards not supported well out of the box by Linux? I'm an old geezer and can only remember Nvidia gra-ca's needing proprietary drivers on Linux in the beginning (or was that ATI which has been re-christened AMD Graphics? Hmmm, I'm getting really old!).
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by soundscape »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:54 am Are AMD graphics chips/graphic cards not supported well out of the box by Linux? I'm an old geezer and can only remember Nvidia gra-ca's needing proprietary drivers on Linux in the beginning (or was that ATI which has been re-christened AMD Graphics? Hmmm, I'm getting really old!).
The LinuxReviews website says the following:
AMD graphics cards and APUs are generally very well supported by GNU/Linux distributions. The vast majority will work fine out of the box. Some older AMD cards require special...parameters...Screen tearing can be a problem...That can problem be fixed.
I think my particular nine year old AMD graphics card discussed above just happened to fall into the category of one that does not work well "out of the box" on recent GNU/Linux distros (my experience, as already described).
  • There's also some brief history about this "Southern Islands" architecture, in which SI card owners were previously stuck on an older Ubuntu version for a while.
I'm just happy the fix ended up being documented and straightforward!
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Linuxmusician01
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by Linuxmusician01 »

soundscape wrote: Thu Apr 14, 2022 7:09 pm
  • There's also some brief history about this "Southern Islands" architecture, in which SI card owners were previously stuck on an older Ubuntu version for a while.
I'm just happy the fix ended up being documented and straightforward!

Thanks for that link. I'm slowly satarting to remember the time when I installed Linux for the first time on my "main PC" which had an ATI Radeon graphics card because I used to be a PC gamer back in the day. ATI has been taken over by AMD or something. Antway, I remember that fglrx closed driver thing. Completely deprecated nowadays. :wink:
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scott.thomason
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Re: AVL-MX21: AMD drivers installation?

Post by scott.thomason »

Linuxmusician01 wrote: Thu Apr 14, 2022 9:54 am Are AMD graphics chips/graphic cards not supported well out of the box by Linux? I'm an old geezer and can only remember Nvidia gra-ca's needing proprietary drivers on Linux in the beginning (or was that ATI which has been re-christened AMD Graphics? Hmmm, I'm getting really old!).
My 8gb Radeon 570 (from 2020) worked out of the box, too, reported by the kernel as "Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Ellesmere [Radeon RX 470/480/570/570X/580/580X/590]".
---scott

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