[SOLVED] Problems with Kubuntu and AMD Video Card

[kapansa]

Hey all,

I have a Lenovo T495 with AMD Ryzen Pro 7 3700u mobile CPU and Vega 10 GPU. First time trying Kubuntu (after using Elementary OS and Manjaro). With a fresh install everything seemed very smooth (wifi, ports, sound, brightness, etc. all working and video playback seemed smooth). I was super impressed. Restarted several times without issue and then... black screen on boot. Added nomodeset to GRUB and was able to boot but couldn't adjust screen brightness. Tried adding acpi_backlight=vendor as suggested for T495 in the askubuntu forum. But when I removed nomodeset I was back to the black screen.

Then I removed quiet splash and nomodeset and acpi_backlight=vendor, so that nothing appeared in the quotes and was able to boot and adjust brightness. I thought I had solved it and rebooted a few times successfully. And then... for the first time since the fresh install, I closed my lid and suspended Kubuntu. Opening the lid an hour later I was met with a black screen. Restarted (losing my work) and once again it won't boot without nomodeset and I can't adjust brightness.

I don't think amd drivers are being used anymore, but the Driver Manager never shows anything except Intel Corporation's iwlwifi driver. Where are these settings?

Why did things work fine at first for several hours and several reboots and then degrade? All I've done is install some apps and configure KDE to my aesthetic liking, with the most audacious thing being installing the Latte dock.

I know the T495 is relatively new (less than a year old), but Ubuntu is certified for it. Why is the AMD driver side of things such a pain in the ass? I had the same problems with Elementary OS but heard that Ubuntu is already running smoothly on T495 machines. It seems that was a bit misleading. Manjaro KDE had 0 problems with this, but I can't install on Arch a program that I absolutely need to have.

I'm at a loss. Any help much appreciated. K

[claydoh]

AMD uses open source drivers (amdgpu) so there will be no driver for the graphics card in the Driver Manager.
For most cases, AMD have it MUCH better than Nvidia, as the open driver is well supported by AMD
As there are many, many cases of the laptop being well supported, I wonder if there has been a bios update that may affecting things, or there is one available, or minor changes to the hardware/manufacturing post-release? Suspend and brightness issues are not necessarily video card/driver issues.

The Ubuntu certification is using 18.04's original kernel (4.15) and xorg/mesa, maybe there are unreported issues with the current 18.04.3 kernel (5.3) and graphics stack?
This may help:
https://launchpad.net/~paulo-miguel-...ve/ubuntu/mesa
It has a better, more up to date Mesa/etc that might be useful with the much more current kernel, but again, this may not have an effect on suspend/resume.

After much research, I very nearly bought one of these last month (though with a Ryzen 5), with my company discount, but ended up replacing my PC with a less expensive refurb PC. But still use an AMD GPU because I am tired of futzing with Nvidia.
I have had zero issues with graphics since switching to AMD, though they have been discrete cards. I never had issues with suspend, though, not in many many years. But I have not had an AMD based system since that Athlon X2


I do find it highly odd that there is any software that can't be installed on Arch. At the worst, it would just require manual compilation.

[kapansa]

Hey claydoh, thanks for your reply.

Good to know about open-source drivers not showing up in Driver Manager. And I've always heard AMD was better for Linux. I installed a suggested BIOS update through Windows 10 prior to all my experimentation with Linux (I'm dual booting but want to avoid Windows as much as possible). I assume that would mean my BIOS is up to date for Linux purposes as well? Right?

Any disadvantages to going with the certified version of Ubuntu with the old kernel? (I assumed older was more problematic since this is a new laptop with relatively new hardware and read that might be the problem on other distros, but I don't need the latest I just want it to work!). Also, if Ubuntu 18.04 with kernel 4.15 is certified, would that mean Kubuntu 18.04 with 4.15 should function the same? (I much prefer KDE to GNOME)

Regarding Manjaro, the software in question is Accountable2you accountability software. It comes in a DEB file and an RPM file, with official support for Ubuntu LTS, Xubuntu LTS, Kubuntu LTS, Lubuntu LTS, Mint LTS, Fedora (Except 31). I tried a snapd packet associated with the software but it was just a developer testing thing that didn't work (or at least I didn't know how to make it work). I don't know anything about Arch or manual compilation of software. Not sure how hard that is, but I'd actually prefer to be on a more 'stable' OS because I just want things to work and not suddenly break when I've got important work to do. That being said, fear of everything crashing any time I close the lid doesn't exactly fit my criteria of 'stable'

[claydoh]

Hey claydoh, thanks for your reply.

Good to know about open-source drivers not showing up in Driver Manager. And I've always heard AMD was better for Linux. I installed a suggested BIOS update through Windows 10 prior to all my experimentation with Linux (I'm dual booting but want to avoid Windows as much as possible). I assume that would mean my BIOS is up to date for Linux purposes as well? Right?

Yes, though of course the latest could in theory be a cause of the issue. Unlikely, though.

Any disadvantages to going with the certified version of Ubuntu with the old kernel? (I assumed older was more problematic since this is a new laptop with relatively new hardware and read that might be the problem on other distros, but I don't need the latest I just want it to work!). Also, if Ubuntu 18.04 with kernel 4.15 is certified, would that mean Kubuntu 18.04 with 4.15 should function the same? (I much prefer KDE to GNOME)

No, not really, in most cases. I would actually suggest first trying out 19.10, or the beta of 20.04 LTS first, considering the freshness of the hardware. A live session might be enough to give you the idea if things work to your liking.

Regarding Manjaro, the software in question is Accountable2you accountability software. It comes in a DEB file and an RPM file, with official support for Ubuntu LTS, Xubuntu LTS, Kubuntu LTS, Lubuntu LTS, Mint LTS, Fedora (Except 31). I tried a snapd packet associated with the software but it was just a developer testing thing that didn't work (or at least I didn't know how to make it work). I don't know anything about Arch or manual compilation of software. Not sure how hard that is, but I'd actually prefer to be on a more 'stable' OS because I just want things to work and not suddenly break when I've got important work to do. That being said, fear of everything crashing any time I close the lid doesn't exactly fit my criteria of 'stable'

Manjaro is (based on) Arch, so arch things work on Manjaro afaik.
https://www.ostechnix.com/convert-de...inux-packages/
Also it is in Arch's AUR:
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/accountable2you-bin/
So it should also install in Manjaro if you do go back to that.
https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Arch_User_Repository

[claydoh]

More research on the suspend issue brings up a bunch of hopefully useful results:

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/co...endresume_fix/

https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpad/co...5_linux_avoid/

Which kernel do you have? Check KInfoCenter for the info.


There are many Linux/Thinkpad specific resources out there, as well ass Lenovo's own forums, which can often be very useful as well.

[kapansa]

Thanks Claydoh! I'ma tinker around with some of your suggestions and check out those links. You're right that there's a lot regarding Linux/Thinkpad out there, unfortunately most is intel-based. But those links regarding suspend look helpful so I'll dig into that. To be honest I didn't even google the suspend issue (as I should have), after having spent so much time investigating T495 video card Linux nomodeset issues over 2 days for Elementary OS and then another day for Kubuntu that I just figured it's more of the same and was ready to throw in the towel. But it looks from your link that the suspend issues might be related to bluteooth or something else. Hope to give this a try later today, but honestly might not get to it till next weekend at this point. Either way will let you know how it turns out! Thanks again!

[az2020]

I just wanted to chime in that I'm running Kubuntu 19.10 on a Ryzen 5/Vega 8 laptop (Acer Aspire 5 A515-43-R5RE). I didn't have to do anything special to install it.

The only weirdness was 1) the LiveUSB would occasionally hang immediately upon starting (the message was failed to write IOMMU, something like that). Trying again, it would proceed past that msg like nothing happened, the live desktop loads, etc.. 2) I always got "boot media not found" after completing the install, and getting the message "remove install media, press enter." Again, I rebooted and the installed system started without a problem. (That 2nd oddity happened with other distros too.).

What seems really strange to me is that older distros install fine, but newer ones don't. For example, Linux Lite 4.2 (from two years ago) installs.[1] Peppermint 10 installs fine. It was released a year ago (and is based upon the even older Ubuntu LTS). But, the latest version of MX Linux 19.1 (even the "advanced hardware support" version) doesn't make it to the LiveUSB desktop.

I thought my experience would be the opposite (have to wait for distros to support it). But, even Bodhi 5.0.0 (released two years ago) installs perfectly on the Ryzen 3/Vega 3. I haven't tried it on the 5/8. I assume it would work.

In Kubuntu, my Mesa driver is 19.2.8 (seen using the command "inxi -Fxrz").

There is a user (dimsum) on the MX forum who has an Asus Ryzen 5/Vega 8 laptop. He was able to get 19.1_AHS installed. His Mesa driver after install was Mesa 19.2.1. (The way he was able to reach the Live desktop to install MX: he let the laptop sit with the black screen for a very long time. At some point the mildly-backlit black screen turned completely black. I suppose that was power management blanking the screen. At that point, he hit a key and the live desktop appeared. He installed, and everything turned out fine for him. He ended up with that 19.1.1 Mesa driver.).

MX developer steveo said 19.1_AHS comes with Mesa 19.2.1, earlier than the 19.2.8 I'm getting from Kubuntu. (He said Ubuntu's HWE is serving 19.2.8.). But MX 19.1 is using kernel 5.4, whereas Ubuntu is 5.3. (I.e., maybe Mesa 19.2.8 wouldn't work with kernel 5.4.). He said they now have 19.3.3 in their AHS repository.

All of this makes me nervous about *buntu 20.04 LTS. It's going to have kernel 5.5. I hope these Ryzen 3/3 and 5/8 (and your 7/10) work with that. That LTS will be the "go to" distro for a lot of people for a long time. I'm wanting to test the pre-release ISOs and provide feedback.

[1] Linux Lite's current version is 4.8, but doesn't support UEFI. A test version of 4.2 was created with UEFI. So, people are installing that, then running system update to bring themselves up to 4.8.

[az2020]

Also: the developer (Jerry) of Linux Lite gave me these two links with Ryzen info:

M-Bab / linux-kernel-amdgpu-binaries (kernels with AMD gpu updates):
https://github.com/M-Bab/linux-kernel-amdgpu-binaries

Gentoo Ryzen wiki page:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Ryzen

I don't know enough to understand that stuff. But, maybe it would help you (or someone here could explain it to us).

What seems very odd to me is that there's no way (I've found) to get to boot (LiveUSB or installed system) to a safe mode, and manually install the right Mesa driver. (I think there's an "amdgpu" involved too.). I've tried xdriver=vesa, nomodeset, vcard=menu. It seems like there should be a way to drop down to a basic, works-with-anything mode.

[kapansa]

Hey claydoh and az2020,

I found a fix! Well... fixes. Claydoh you were right that the latests Kubuntu 19.10 was worth trying - it has no boot/black screen issues for me on the T495. Everything has been very smooth and functional with 2 exceptions: (1) the screen still flickered when adjusting volume while playing a VLC video (fix: go to Tools -> Preferences -> Video and change Output from 'Automatic' to 'XVideo output (XCB)'), and (2) after suspend I had a black screen. I found the fix to the suspend problem by downgrading to kernel 5.1.16. So now I have a T495 running Linux with no issues on startup nor on suspend and clean 1080p playback!

Now if I could just figure out how to fix the really bad microphone quality compared to Windows, I'd be all set! (but that's for another thread )

Thanks again Claydoh!