Ryzen 5 2400G Working Flawlessly on Mint 19.1

[mattlach]

Thanks for your input!

Your solutions seems quite more elegant than mine, but I won't trade at this point. Instead of adding kernels to the update manager or to my source lists, I'm simply using Ukuu (Ubuntu Kernel Update Utility). Instead of going all the way to 4.18, I stuck to 4.17.19-041719-generic from Ukuu, for the time being.

The only moment I notice any hangs right now are random Firefox hiccups. For example, just today, I logged into winehq's appdb and as soon as I tried moving my screen with the successful login notice there, everything froze (I wonder why).

Some friends suggested a good "bulletproof -- never EVER freeze again" solution is to put two boot options in /etc/default/grub or by using grub-customizer

pcie_aspm=off idle=nomwait

I haven't tried them because the "failure rate" of my system is already acceptable, but you may want to take note of that somewhere (like I did) to maybe save you some further trouble.

I like it because I automatically get the newest version of the cosmic kernel in the package manager when it is available, so I don't have to go hunting for it, but I can definitely understand not wanting to mess with ot, once you have it working :p

[Byke]

Yeah... always having the newest and greatest may sound like the best idea, but some recent benchmarks, just for illustration, showed that kernel 4.18.x had a slight regression on graphical performance compared to 4.17.x on AMD cards.

I also feel like Linux Mint's core updates are very breakable with these more up-to-date cores.

Like... how this command outputs this mess (a few 4.17 stuff and a lot of 4.15 stuff from LM)

Code: Select all

apt list linux-* --installed
Listing... Done
linux-base/bionic,bionic,now 4.5ubuntu1 all [installed]
linux-firmware/now 1.174 all [installed,local]
linux-headers-4.15.0-20/bionic,bionic,now 4.15.0-20.21 all [installed]
linux-headers-4.15.0-20-generic/bionic,now 4.15.0-20.21 amd64 [installed]
linux-headers-4.17.19-041719/now 4.17.19-041719.201808240919 all [installed,local]
linux-headers-4.17.19-041719-generic/now 4.17.19-041719.201808240919 amd64 [installed,local]
linux-image-4.15.0-20-generic/bionic,now 4.15.0-20.21 amd64 [installed]
linux-image-unsigned-4.17.19-041719-generic/now 4.17.19-041719.201808240919 amd64 [installed,local]
linux-kernel-generic/tara,tara,now 4.15.0-20 all [installed]
linux-libc-dev/bionic-updates,bionic-security,now 4.15.0-34.37 amd64 [installed]
linux-modules-4.15.0-20-generic/bionic,now 4.15.0-20.21 amd64 [installed]
linux-modules-4.17.19-041719-generic/now 4.17.19-041719.201808240919 amd64 [installed,local]
linux-modules-extra-4.15.0-20-generic/bionic,now 4.15.0-20.21 amd64 [installed]
linux-sound-base/bionic,bionic,now 1.0.25+dfsg-0ubuntu5 all [installed]

Unless updating the source lists as you mentioned helps standardizing all of this. But it still should make the update manager slightly unstable (thank you Timeshift)

[simonsaysthis]

Thanks so much for this thread. It's good to know that there are solutions

I am also using the cheapy ASUS A320M-k
with Ryzen 1600x & Radeon RX570

I haven't been able to get LM19 or Ubuntu 18.04 for that matter to work acceptably with default Kernel.

The issues:

- random hard freezes (Cinnamon)
- sound over HDMI distortions or no sound at all (LM)
- freeze upon the attempt to reboot or shut-down (Kubuntu)
- lock-up after being idle for few hours
- erratic rendering performance

I am convinced 4.15 is not recent enough for AMD systems so I either have to stick with Fedora for now or try your solution with Ukuu

EDIT: my concern with manual Kernel updates is that there is a trade-off between proprietary graphics drivers and latest Kernel. Both together can end off in disaster

[Byke]

Thanks so much for this thread. It's good to know that there are solutions

I am also using the cheapy ASUS A320M-k
with Ryzen 1600x & Radeon RX570

I haven't been able to get LM19 or Ubuntu 18.04 for that matter to work acceptably with default Kernel.

The issues:

- random hard freezes (Cinnamon)
- sound over HDMI distortions or no sound at all (LM)
- freeze upon the attempt to reboot or shut-down (Kubuntu)
- lock-up after being idle for few hours
- erratic rendering performance

I am convinced 4.15 is not recent enough for AMD systems so I either have to stick with Fedora for now or try your solution with Ukuu

Thanks for coming by. The solution mentioned by mattlach also seems reasonable to solve the problem. You add some Ubuntu 18.04 kernel repositories and update using the given update manager from Linux Mint.

4.15 seems, indeed, inappropriate, because it doesn't contain some recent solutions present in 4.17.6 and later. If you don't want to change your kernel, try adding the boot option solution I mentioned earlier. It may completely solve your problem without requiring adding kernels from external sources.

EDIT: but if you DO require an updated graphics stack, I would strongly recommend trying padoka PPA and the latest stable 4.17.x kernel. Apparenlty 4.18.x had a small regression for AMD cards.

[mattlach]

Thanks so much for this thread. It's good to know that there are solutions

I am also using the cheapy ASUS A320M-k
with Ryzen 1600x & Radeon RX570

I haven't been able to get LM19 or Ubuntu 18.04 for that matter to work acceptably with default Kernel.

The issues:

- random hard freezes (Cinnamon)
- sound over HDMI distortions or no sound at all (LM)
- freeze upon the attempt to reboot or shut-down (Kubuntu)
- lock-up after being idle for few hours
- erratic rendering performance

I am convinced 4.15 is not recent enough for AMD systems so I either have to stick with Fedora for now or try your solution with Ukuu

You are certainly right. The 4.15 kernel does not have mature enough AMD Raven Ridge support.

OP has had some luck with 4.17, but for me, the only way I got the hard freezes to stop was by moving not just to the 4.18 kernel, but to the Ubuntu cosmic-proposed 4.18.0-8 kernel, as I described here. The mainline 4.18 kernel was still freezing for me, but since installing the cosmic-proposed 4.18-0-8, this has has not happened again. From the change log going from 4.18.0-7 to 4.18.0.8, I can't quite figure out what might be the reason for the improvement, but if it works, it works, right? :p

You could either add the cosmic proposed repository as noted in my post above (be sure to add the priority string, otherwise your system will pull in all of the beta packages destined for Ubuntu Cosmic and that would likely be bad), or just manually go to the cosmic-proposed repository, grab the .deb for the kernel and manually install it.

[mattlach]

EDIT: but if you DO require an updated graphics stack, I would strongly recommend trying padoka PPA and the latest stable 4.17.x kernel. Apparenlty 4.18.x had a small regression for AMD cards.

What regression have you noted with the 4.18 kernel?

[simonsaysthis]

My challenge is that I use Mint as that reliable daily driver. Having to change the Kernel unless its from the Ubuntu HW enablement stack defeats the purpose of using Mint. Anyways, can't blame Mint devs for hardware support. I will wait patiently for LM 19.1 In the meantime, I am using Fedora Cinnamon with 4.18.7 Everything works flawlessly!

[Byke]

EDIT: but if you DO require an updated graphics stack, I would strongly recommend trying padoka PPA and the latest stable 4.17.x kernel. Apparenlty 4.18.x had a small regression for AMD cards.

What regression have you noted with the 4.18 kernel?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... dgpu&num=1 this article goes through it. Nothing too serious.

My challenge is that I use Mint as that reliable daily driver. Having to change the Kernel unless its from the Ubuntu HW enablement stack defeats the purpose of using Mint. Anyways, can't blame Mint devs for hardware support. I will wait patiently for LM 19.1 In the meantime, I am using Fedora Cinnamon with 4.18.7 Everything works flawlessly!

Since you're just beginning to use your system and your doing the initial setups, I think your option is great. In my case, I already had a few things running here and there, so I didn't want to migrate if I could solve things by simply installing and using Ukuu. I'll keep that distro in mind for future reference ^^

[mattlach]

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page= ... dgpu&num=1 this article goes through it. Nothing too serious.

Ah, yes. That's mostly irrelevant. It's just 3D rendering performance, which most people don't use Linux for anyway, and if they do they probably need a bigger discrete GPU anyway, rather than the relatively wimpy one in an APU.

After all the Vega 11 in the 2400G is only equivalent to approximately a Geforce GT 1030, which isn't exactly anything anyone would buy for games or any other GPU based work. It's good basic desktop graphics though.

I thought this was related to something important like crashing/freezing during desktop use :p

[rev667]

Followed this thread with interest.
I recently built a new PC for myself which I enjoyed doing but when it came to installing the operating systems it all went a bit wrong.
Ryzen 5 2400G cpu
MSI B350 Gaming Pro mainboard
16Gb 3200 ram
SSD drive for OS and 1Tb HDD for stuff
Took a bios update to ensure Ryzen and memory support.
Installed Win10 (for work related stuff, actually impressed, looks nice)
Made space for LM, created a UEFI bootable USB LM19 using the old PC (another difficult task for me, my fault)
Installed and had issues, help from here and google, eventually got grub in the right place, had to add a line to the win10 bootloader and finally got a software rendered desktop.
Added repo for ukuu and added that, updated to latest stable generic ubuntu 4.18.8
Added repo for MESA and updated that to 18.3
Had lots of issues during this procedure, MESA got updated today and so far the bootup and shutdown problems have gone!
I don't game on linux, but do use Freecad/Draftsight and so far so good.
Moving from a core2duo machine, this is a revelation, power to desktop in 7-8 seconds! instead of 7-8 minutes lol
To those thinking of using a Ryzen 5 2400G might want to wait till the kernel/graphics catch up.

Rev

[mattlach]

To those thinking of using a Ryzen 5 2400G might want to wait till the kernel/graphics catch up.

Yeah, as much as I love Linux, that's part of the problem.

New hardware never works right, and by the time the up to date packages and kernels have made their way through to being included in regular distributions, the hardware is practically old enough to where it once would have been considered near obsolete, but due to the slowing down of computer advances, product cycles are so much longer these days, and computer hardware lasts for comparatively ever, so I guess we put up with the slow software compatibility so much easier :p

Back when I was in college, GPU's lasted 6 months to a year, CPU's about a year, and if you were lucky you could keep your motherboard across two or more CPU cycles.

Now my main desktop is a 7 year old x79 system and shows no indication of being obsolete. How things have changed.

[Byke]

Added repo for ukuu and added that, updated to latest stable generic ubuntu 4.18.8
Added repo for MESA and updated that to 18.3
Had lots of issues during this procedure, MESA got updated today and so far the bootup and shutdown problems have gone!
I don't game on linux, but do use Freecad/Draftsight and so far so good.
Moving from a core2duo machine, this is a revelation, power to desktop in 7-8 seconds! instead of 7-8 minutes lol
To those thinking of using a Ryzen 5 2400G might want to wait till the kernel/graphics catch up.

Rev

I'm glad this discussion is being helpful!
I think the best procedure you could have taken would be to do things step by step and only update when necessary. The newest kernels (4.17.x or 4.18.x) are must-haves to not have your system break, but updated Mesa drivers are questionable, especially since PPAs add additional packages that may bug how linux mint treats things.

Always remember the power of snapshots. Timeshift has saved me through a lot of trouble from buggy updates and stuff. The GUI is really helpful and the command line version (when I completely broke everything) did the job right as well!

[simonsaysthis]

So I am still on the look-out for a long-term, reliable distro. And I would really like this to be Mint 19. Seeing I have quite a few sound, display and ACPI issues, I am going to test a couple of the solutions mentioned here.

To begin I have just added the pcie_aspm=off idle=nomwait options to grub. Will report back if I see any differences. If this doesn't offer a significant improvement will install the cosmic Kernel from the stable repository once its no longer proposed. This should be very soon.

There is of course also the hope for LM 19.1 which I presume will also offer the 4.18 Kernel as an optional update.

I definitely don't want to do any fiddling with Mesa. Been there, done that back when Skylake came out and that's been a disaster for me.

[Byke]

So I am still on the look-out for a long-term, reliable distro. And I would really like this to be Mint 19. Seeing I have quite a few sound, display and ACPI issues, I am going to test a couple of the solutions mentioned here.

To begin I have just added the pcie_aspm=off idle=nomwait options to grub. Will report back if I see any differences. If this doesn't offer a significant improvement will install the cosmic Kernel from the stable repository once its no longer proposed. This should be very soon.

There is of course also the hope for LM 19.1 which I presume will also offer the 4.18 Kernel as an optional update.

I definitely don't want to do any fiddling with Mesa. Been there, done that back when Skylake came out and that's been a disaster for me.

My hope has been with Fedora. I haven't tested it, so I thought it would be THE option to get kernels 4.17/18 and get decent long-term Raven Ridge support. Since you've mentioned Fedora Cinnamon earlier and now you're coming back to Mint 19, it makes me believe things didn't go so well. Would you elaborate on that, please?

Mesa updates only feel necessary in certain "non-linux" gaming things, like gaming with Wine/DXVK. And even then, The default Mesa seems decent enough (people have been gaming on Ubuntu with their latest stable drivers with few problems, apparently).

Your reports are surely welcome ^-^

[simonsaysthis]

My hope has been with Fedora. I haven't tested it, so I thought it would be THE option to get kernels 4.17/18 and get decent long-term Raven Ridge support. Since you've mentioned Fedora Cinnamon earlier and now you're coming back to Mint 19, it makes me believe things didn't go so well. Would you elaborate on that, please?

Mesa updates only feel necessary in certain "non-linux" gaming things, like gaming with Wine/DXVK. And even then, The default Mesa seems decent enough (people have been gaming on Ubuntu with their latest stable drivers with few problems, apparently).

Your reports are surely welcome ^-^

I currently have two hard drives in my build. On the smaller SSD, I am running Fedora 29 Beta with Kernel 4.18.10. It feels good to run at least something that doesn't have any glaring issues. Everything works. Same applies to Fedora 28 which is currently at the same Kernel too.

That said, I still enjoy the Ubuntu ecosystem with Mint and its applications. Still looking for a distro with good Steam compatibility and good support for non-free graphics drivers. That's why I wanted to try Mint one more time. But if I can't get it to work with the default Kernel that for me defeats the purpose. It's also a pity that you can't install AMD's Radeon drivers easily without fooling the installer to think you running Ubuntu instead of Mint. Mint has always been my No 1 go-to distro but maybe for my hardware choices, I have to accept that this isn't the case any longer.

I also looked at Opensuse Leap 15 but that's been a disaster - especially since they only ship with Kernel 4.12.

Let's hope our trouble will end when there is LM 19.1

[kissinger]

I read most of this thread. It's so disappointing that Mint 19 (and I assume Ubuntu 18.04) still don't support Ryzen 5 2400G out of the box without tweaking. I was considering the Ryzen 5 2400G for a new build, but will have to either look for a more stable hardware, or wait...

[mattlach]

I read most of this thread. It's so disappointing that Mint 19 (and I assume Ubuntu 18.04) still don't support Ryzen 5 2400G out of the box without tweaking. I was considering the Ryzen 5 2400G for a new build, but will have to either look for a more stable hardware, or wait...

Yeah, what's even more depressing is that many forum members and developers are downputting in this regard, referring to the 2400G as new, exotic and/or "bleeding edge" hardware, and saying it is to be expected. It came out in February. It is now October. That is 8 months. Maybe I'm just a little old school in this regard, but I remember a time when computer performance doubled every 9 months, and if you were running on a year old machine it was practically obsolete. (It wasn't THAT long ago) By this measure, the 2400G is 2/3rds of its way to retirement already, and still doesn't have adequate support.

It is very disappointing that it does not work, and more disappointing still that developers seem to think we should all be using practically obsolete hardware.

I can understand the need for a couple of month lag time after launch due to the fact that hardware vendors don't provide their own drivers under linux, and that the kernel team is in some cases reverse engineering things, but things have to be better than this.

Computers are no longer capital investments. They are consumer devices only designed to last for a short period of time, and as it currently stands Linux development isn't fast enough to provide adequate support during their limited service life.

[Byke]

I think we have to look at these problems the other way around. Instead of saying Linux (or any way you wanna call it) doesn't support this or that piece of hardware, we have to be impressed such mainly community-driven project is able to support about 20 years of hardware and software from various sources.

Yes, Linux Mint 19 doesn't support Raven Ridge processors by default, but think about how many other parts it has offered continued support for long-term users. As I don't see any profit intents within the development of LM19, I see no real drive to always offer "competitive" features.

Besides, two things are derived from that thought.
1 - a subgroup of users who want to make a "bleeding edge LM" are able to do so, by branching into another community-driven project
2 - the many degrees of freedom provided by FOSS aid users get their own flavored Linux Mint based systems, even if official support is unavailable.

That said, I'm on kernel 4.18.14, easily updated via Ubuntu Kernel Update Utility. Kernels 12 through 14 have had small mentions of AMDGPU/Raven Ridge improvements ("hang fixes"). Knowing that someone out there is making my life better with no direct interaction makes me extremely grateful for the system build I have at the moment.

[kissinger]

I think we have to look at these problems the other way around. Instead of saying Linux (or any way you wanna call it) doesn't support this or that piece of hardware, we have to be impressed such mainly community-driven project is able to support about 20 years of hardware and software from various sources.

Yes, Linux Mint 19 doesn't support Raven Ridge processors by default, but think about how many other parts it has offered continued support for long-term users. As I don't see any profit intents within the development of LM19, I see no real drive to always offer "competitive" features.

Besides, two things are derived from that thought.
1 - a subgroup of users who want to make a "bleeding edge LM" are able to do so, by branching into another community-driven project
2 - the many degrees of freedom provided by FOSS aid users get their own flavored Linux Mint based systems, even if official support is unavailable.

That said, I'm on kernel 4.18.14, easily updated via Ubuntu Kernel Update Utility. Kernels 12 through 14 have had small mentions of AMDGPU/Raven Ridge improvements ("hang fixes"). Knowing that someone out there is making my life better with no direct interaction makes me extremely grateful for the system build I have at the moment.

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful for what the community has done and is doing for Linux. In the past I would have been up to the challenge but these days I have other kind of technical projects that I need to spend my time on. Windows isn't and option. It's a shame, for my needs the 2400G would have been perfect. I don't need high end graphics and don't play games, but do some graphics intensive work inwhich the APU would have been perfect.

Can anyone suggest a Ryzen 5 and sub $100 GPU combination that will just work? My old Phenom II X4 955 is starting to experience some hardware problems. Other than bad SATA ports on my motherboard still does the job.

[Byke]

Is there any problem in updating your kernel to, for example, the version I mentioned? It would be the only necessary step to stop hanging.

There's also the mentioned boot options to stop hanging that shall work with the default 4.15.x kernel.

Then, if you're really not into intensive graphics (like gaming), why not try Intel processors? Since you're going for a 2400G, optimal multitasking performance also doesn't seem to be an issue.