Linux Installation Shenanigans

[Inimuk]

TL;DR: Ubuntu 16.10 (any variant) cleanly installs and works fine OOB. After update, weird graphical glitches render it unusable.

I've installed Linux Ubuntu Mint and Ubuntu Studio 16.10 on two separate computers, but one has an ongoing issue. I quite like the Mint edition over Studio (the latter somewhat dumbs down things in terms of Settings and what's listed under Software - and Repos aren't even listed in Studio, which is helpful considering there are at least 4 installed by default).

First install on a Lenovo tablet, went peachy (even typing this on it right now). Second installation was done on an Asus all-in-one computer. i7 4770 and an AMD 8800 (equal to a R7 275X - it is a desktop GPU thrown in there despite AMD driver detecting it as "mGPU"). Those are desktop parts thrown inside an AIO so it's a pretty decent system.

It's set to update during installation but that isn't a full update in of itself. After reboot, still have to hit Software Update -> Updates. It does its thing and requires a restart. Restarts, decrypts drive, and here at the login screen as soon as I hit anything in the dialog box it starts shaking. Login, screen is doing some weird flashing whenever anything big (program or even system menu) is moved or drawn on screen.

These are clean installs on SHAsum verified images (checked pre/post install) with nothing wrong with them before or after.

What can I do to make this thing stable again? I don't really want to go back to Win10.

 

[ible]

when i first got linux working on my lenovo i had to do an "acpi_osi=Linux" in the GRUB boot parameters, otherwise it'd boot to a black screen, but i'm not sure if you'll need to do something like that.

 

[comradekingu]

So you are using AMDGPU drivers?

 

[Inimuk]

So you are using AMDGPU drivers?

On initial install, GPU/driver info looks like this (3 commands to make sure all info is there lol)

$ sudo lshw -numeric -C display



*-display

description: VGA compatible controller

product: Venus XTX [Radeon HD 8890M / R9 M275X/M375X] [1002:6820]

vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] [1002]

physical id: 0

bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0

version: 00

width: 64 bits

clock: 33MHz

capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom

configuration: driver=radeon latency=0

resources: irq:29 memory:90000000-9fffffff memory:de800000-de83ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff



$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL



OpenGL vendor string: X.Org

OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAPE VERDE (DRM 2.46.0 / 4.8.0-22-lowlatency, LLVM 3.8.1)

OpenGL core profile version string: 4.1 (Core Profile) Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.10

OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)

OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL core profile extensions:

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

OpenGL context flags: (none)

OpenGL extensions:

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00

OpenGL ES profile extensions:



$ inxi -Gxx



Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Venus XTX [Radeon HD 8890M / R9 M275X/M375X]

bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:6820

Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)

Resolution: 2560x1440@59.95hz

GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAPE VERDE (DRM 2.46.0 / 4.8.0-22-lowlatency, LLVM 3.8.1)

GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3 Direct Rendering: Yes

After updates (and problems start):

$ sudo lshw -numeric -C display



*-display

description: VGA compatible controller

product: Venus XTX [Radeon HD 8890M / R9 M275X/M375X] [1002:6820]

vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] [1002]

physical id: 0

bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0

version: 00

width: 64 bits

clock: 33MHz

capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom

configuration: driver=radeon latency=0

resources: irq:29 memory:90000000-9fffffff memory:de800000-de83ffff ioport:e000(size=256) memory:c0000-dffff



$ glxinfo | grep OpenGL



OpenGL vendor string: X.Org

OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAPE VERDE (DRM 2.46.0 / 4.8.0-34-lowlatency, LLVM 3.8.1)

OpenGL core profile version string: 4.1 (Core Profile) Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.10

OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)

OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL core profile extensions:

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30

OpenGL context flags: (none)

OpenGL extensions:

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3

OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.00

OpenGL ES profile extensions:



$ inxi -Gxx



Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Venus XTX [Radeon HD 8890M / R9 M275X/M375X]

bus-ID: 01:00.0 chip-ID: 1002:6820

Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)

Resolution: 2560x1440@59.95hz

GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD CAPE VERDE (DRM 2.46.0 / 4.8.0-34-lowlatency, LLVM 3.8.1)

GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.3 Direct Rendering: Yes

 

[sulu]

Mint is broken by design. They use Ubuntu/Debian repos in binary form without recompiling from source, withhold some packages from updates (e.g. the kernel) and they introduce their own packages that conflict with packages from Ubuntu/Debian.
The combination of this is bound to break sooner or later and is inherently insecure in terms of vulnerabilities.
They do a brilliant job on UI design though. Mint is like a shiny used car where you shouldn't look under the hood.

I haven't looked at Ubuntu Studio for a long time, so I don't know what's going on there. I suggest you try some official *buntu flavour and see if your problem appears there too.

 

[Grench]

Have you tried LMDE? Linux Mint Debian Edition. Minty interface, Debian core, no Ubuntu weirdness.

I did that for a while - then simply went to Debian XFCE. I prefer my DE simple and out of the way.

 

[Inimuk]

I've given up on the possibility of Linux for that computer. But my tablet rocks with Ubuntu Studio 16,10.

I run Crossover to play most windows games (and have to redo .Net or whatever borks during install). Though 20 of GoG library support Linux.

Running Ubuntu Studio on it and my other desktop will get the same install soon.
I can no longer take the Windows 10 bloat and the cat and mouse game of disabling telemetry and random restarts without warning.

 

[khalismur]

Try Manjaro XFCE. Very solid, I've installed on many PCs of friends and family without issues. Works also out-of-the-box with PRIME notebooks (nVidia / intel GPU switching). IMHO, quite ahead of Ubuntu.

 

[PowerGod]

WARNING, the following could be seen as dumb and I will be spitted in the face for this... anyway

Spoiler

I wanted to make dual-boot a PC that came with Win 8, but because of UEFI stupidity after many different trials I found out that only one OS was accepted...
so.. because Windows is my main entertaining system for games, I opted for the last lamest solution... a virtual machine...

I was expecting poor performances and all by linux there, but instead IT RUNS GREAT !!
A little background anyway is needed, my PC has 16 GB RAM (4 given to the VM) and I activated VT-X from the bios, so the VM have direct access to different hardware functions.
The VM runs on VirtualBox with 3D graphic functions activated (I can use Compiz for the desktop environment without any kind of slowdown).
Also, even using a NAT as a virtual network, there's the possibility to forward service ports to the main OS, so to make accessible directly things like SSH and all...

 

[levi]

Good to know. I guess if you're running a non-fat partition for it, once the VM has started you're free of any windows penalties for starting new processes.

 

[second exodous]

I had a graphical problem on my System76 notebook when I used Linux Mint, fought it until I found out it was a bug with multiple monitors that was sticking around since the last LTS release of Ubuntu, what Linux Mint uses. I finally just installed Ubuntu 16.10 after trying a lot of its derivatives and have to say that Unity has grown up a lot since I last used it. I like Linux Mint simply for the Desktop Environment, Cinnamon, and even tried a Arch mix with it, can't remember the name, worked great but it was a pain installing simple things like VLC and a few other programs.

Basically, this is Linux right now, most distros are a derivative of either Ubuntu or Debian, and you need to know what release each one is using. Say the latest Ubuntu 16.10 isn't working on your hardware, chances are none of the Ubuntu derivatives that use 16.10 will work. It saves a lot of time when you know what the distro uses for a base. If you want bleeding edge stuff then you might find yourself either A: doing a lot of distro hopping because the one you use breaks something on your hardware with it's current release and you have to try something else for this release cycle or B: learn to fix things, which isn't bad, back in the day I could get Gentoo working like butter on all my hardware but I just don't have the time to research and troubleshoot.

So now I default to Linux Mint because I really like Cinnamon but move away from it when it doesn't work on my hardware. If I didn't like to experiment with different Desktop Environments I would probably be a Windows user as it doesn't change for so long. I probably wouldn't use Windows anyway, I don't play enough games to make it worth all the keys, headache of reinstalling, slowdowns, and worm/viruses.

Anyway, I would just start with an Ubuntu derivative for now and go to the Ubuntu forums and ask questions there. 99.9% of the people there are really nice and no matter what flavor of Ubuntu you're using they will help.

 

[PowerGod]

Good to know. I guess if you're running a non-fat partition for it, once the VM has started you're free of any windows penalties for starting new processes.

Could be... I don't know how to do statistics about that... anyway, if I start Vivaldi browser at the same time on both systems it opens faster on the VM, like 2/3 seconds faster.

There's only a thing on VirtualBox that I can't activate, but I don't know exactly where it will be used, it's the "2D accelleration" that is supported only on Windows guests...

 

[levi]

I guess that accelerates windows graphics libraries (I forget the name now), but hasn't been coded to cope with xwindowing calls, wayland API calls or framebuffer accesses. No great loss really.