Confirmation before purchasing

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ZioRiP
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Confirmation before purchasing

Post by ZioRiP »

Hi all,
Sorry for the very noob question.
I am buying a computer to install Mint.
Last time I tried with my computer I had major issues with the graphic card and I wasn't keen to go through the necessary steps to make it work as it involved editing the BIOS.
I am trying to have a computer that won't require technical skills to work, or at least not that technical.
I was wondering if any of you can tell me whether this hardware configuration would work smoothly and all the devices will be recognized with no issues (last time, the graphic card was AMD and didn't work).

Thanks in advance :)

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Last edited by LockBot on Fri Jul 28, 2023 10:00 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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gittiest personITW
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by gittiest personITW »

Save yourself about 50% and buy a model from a year or so ago. The newer the hardware, the more likely you'll have to wait for the kernel to catch up with you.
Unless you are doing very heavy duty gaming or video editing - that system is overkill for Mint.

It's nice to have the latest stuff, but the latest stuff enables people to run Windows smoothly. With Mint, it is quite a lot less needy.
rene
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by rene »

... and adding to that more general answer just above, no, those specific components are far too new to have them working (well) out of the box on current Mint 21.1.

I.e., note that Mint is a not a so-called "rolling" distribution but bases of the stable (in that case) Ubuntu 22.04 LTS, i.e., a system released now 9 months ago (and you can see how that will be more for e.g. Mint 21.3) and where Ubuntu 22.04 LTS is itself not a rolling distribution and bases off of an at some point "frozen" Debian base.

I expect that your 7950X is too new for the default kernel series and will guarantee that the 7900XT graphics card will be. That said, AMD graphics are a good choice on Linux since getting them to work involves no other than installing a newer kernel series (*). Mint will also at some future stage release a so-called "edge" edition of Mint 21.x for this purpose but as far as I'm aware it doesn't exist yet.

That's particularly nice hardware though if you're not too scared of installing a new kernel series manually, and it appears that Ubuntu/Mint has kernel series 6.0 available simply from sudo apt-get install linux-oem-22.04b (see https://packages.ubuntu.com/jammy/linux-oem-22.04b). You may need to (or may not need to) boot the installer in a sort of fall-back mode wrt those graphics, but while I agree with previous poster that it's rather overkill for a Linux system and that you'd be saving yourself some issues if you go with something a little less hyper -- that's still damn nice hardware....

(*) while rereading... let me add a caveat to that, since the 7xxx AMD graphics are só new at the time of writing that you may in fact need to also upgrade Mesa and X11 drivers and then it gets to be more involved fairly quickly. So well, yeah, maybe only do this if you're willing to potentially screw around a bit -- but still damn nice hardware :?
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by SMG »

ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 5:58 am I am buying a computer to install Mint.
Last time I tried with my computer I had major issues with the graphic card and I wasn't keen to go through the necessary steps to make it work as it involved editing the BIOS.
Welcome to the forum, ZioRiP.

Going to the BIOS to change settings is simple compared to what you would need to do to get the hardware you posted to work somewhat properly. See the special sections for that hardware in the Tips for Troubleshooting Graphics Issues (including external monitors not working) which is pinned to the top of the Graphics Cards & Monitors forum. You would need a newer kernel, PPA mesa, newer firmware, and modifying a file to get your cursor to appear.
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rene
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by rene »

SMG wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 11:46 am You would need a newer kernel, PPA mesa, newer firmware, and modifying a file to get your cursor to appear.
... but still damn nice hardware :shock:
ZioRiP
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by ZioRiP »

Thanks all,
Yes, I think the hardware could not get any better.
When I had to disable that BIOS feature on my computer, it wasn't that easy, it would not let me and I had to rewrite something with some script... that made me feel very uncomfortable..

Yes, I would like to do a lot of video editing and 3D with blender along with video compositing, my current configuration (I think I have changed the graphic card since my last attempt) is this:

AMD Ryzen 7 3700x 8Core, 3593 Mhz
Asus Prime B450-Plus
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 TI

I may try again... I am looking for a system that won't turn into a hobby and I have heard really good things about Mint :)
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by SMG »

ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:12 pmWhen I had to disable that BIOS feature on my computer, it wasn't that easy, it would not let me and I had to rewrite something with some script...
:shock: I have never heard of anyone having to do that with Linux Mint. Usually, disabling Secure Boot is just a matter of changing it from Enabled to Disabled.
ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:12 pmYes, I would like to do a lot of video editing and 3D with blender along with video compositing
Having helped several people with the combination in your initial post, many software applications are not yet up to speed to be able to use that hardware on Linux-based distros. Steam just finally within the past day or so is sort of able to use it.

Additionally, I'm not sure if AMD GPUs can render in Blender like Nvidia GPUs can. That is an issue both with the Blender code and the AMD drivers. You might want to check the Blender forums to check the current state of that situation before switching to an AMD GPU.
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rene
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by rene »

A 3700X/3060Ti is, while performant, a quite lower tier from that initial 7950X/7900XT.

For video-editing / 3D-modeling I believe you will find that Linux is not the right choice and that you will eventually want to use Windows after all -- and in that case I'd agree with an Nvidia video-card due to generally better supported hardware acceleration on Nvidia in Windows programs in that genre. "Generally" I say due to not in fact having personal experience there, and I do believe that lately AMD has been catching up there as well, but still in Windows. In Linux things probably suck on either as much as they have done always so there it probably won't matter much, but well, see above; I wouldn't be sure you'd want to shop without an eye on in fact having it be a Windows system after all.

I am -- quite decidedly so -- not a fan of Nvidia closed, proprietary crap on Linux but would then suggest an Nvidia card indeed in that genre of purpose you want it for (but note that your ininitial 7900XT would be closer to a 3080 or 3090).

As to the CPU side of things there's a generation in between 3000 and 7000 with the 5000 series; might also be worth contemplating?

[EDIT] Nice relative performance charts at e.g. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/r ... 0-xt.c3912
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by OunceofCommonSense »

ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 5:58 am Hi all,
Sorry for the very noob question.
I am buying a computer to install Mint.
Last time I tried with my computer I had major issues with the graphic card and I wasn't keen to go through the necessary steps to make it work as it involved editing the BIOS.
I am trying to have a computer that won't require technical skills to work, or at least not that technical.
I was wondering if any of you can tell me whether this hardware configuration would work smoothly and all the devices will be recognized with no issues (last time, the graphic card was AMD and didn't work).

Thanks in advance :)

Image
Image
I can't verify your configuration will work however I am running a ryzen 7600x with Corsair Vengeance DDRR RAM ,2Samsung 980 Pro M2 drives and a Gigabyte B650M motherboard and it is working fine. Similar but clearly not the same configuration. That said I had some issues that took time to resolve. FFor example you may have to upgrade Mesa through a PPA and use a 6.0 kernel to get audio. It took sometime and a number of threads on Mint forums to sort through it. YMMV
Last edited by OunceofCommonSense on Sat Jan 28, 2023 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
MB: Gigabyte model: B650M AORUS ELITE AX Memory: Corsair Low Profile Vengeance 32.00 GB. CPU Ryzen7600x Platform: x86_64 Distribution: Linux Mint 21.2
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by DisturbedDragon »

I run Mint and Fedora on the hardware in my signature. It all works, very well I might add. You decide from there.
AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T | MSI MPG x570 Gaming Plus | 2TB Mushkin Pilot-E NVMe | 1TB Crucial P1 NVMe | 2x 2TB Inland Gen4 NVMe | 32GB Trident Z DDR4 3600 | Nvidia RTX4090 | Fedora 39 Cinnamon | Linux Mint 21.3 Cinnamon | Kernel 5.15.x lowlatency
ZioRiP
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by ZioRiP »

SMG wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:28 pm
ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:12 pmWhen I had to disable that BIOS feature on my computer, it wasn't that easy, it would not let me and I had to rewrite something with some script...
:shock: I have never heard of anyone having to do that with Linux Mint. Usually, disabling Secure Boot is just a matter of changing it from Enabled to Disabled.
ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:12 pmYes, I would like to do a lot of video editing and 3D with blender along with video compositing
Having helped several people with the combination in your initial post, many software applications are not yet up to speed to be able to use that hardware on Linux-based distros. Steam just finally within the past day or so is sort of able to use it.

Additionally, I'm not sure if AMD GPUs can render in Blender like Nvidia GPUs can. That is an issue both with the Blender code and the AMD drivers. You might want to check the Blender forums to check the current state of that situation before switching to an AMD GPU.
Thanks, do you think these will go smoothly?
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x 8Core, 3593 Mhz
Asus Prime B450-Plus
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 TI
ZioRiP
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by ZioRiP »

rene wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 12:47 pm A 3700X/3060Ti is, while performant, a quite lower tier from that initial 7950X/7900XT.

For video-editing / 3D-modeling I believe you will find that Linux is not the right choice and that you will eventually want to use Windows after all -- and in that case I'd agree with an Nvidia video-card due to generally better supported hardware acceleration on Nvidia in Windows programs in that genre. "Generally" I say due to not in fact having personal experience there, and I do believe that lately AMD has been catching up there as well, but still in Windows. In Linux things probably suck on either as much as they have done always so there it probably won't matter much, but well, see above; I wouldn't be sure you'd want to shop without an eye on in fact having it be a Windows system after all.

I am -- quite decidedly so -- not a fan of Nvidia closed, proprietary crap on Linux but would then suggest an Nvidia card indeed in that genre of purpose you want it for (but note that your ininitial 7900XT would be closer to a 3080 or 3090).

As to the CPU side of things there's a generation in between 3000 and 7000 with the 5000 series; might also be worth contemplating?

[EDIT] Nice relative performance charts at e.g. https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/r ... 0-xt.c3912
Thanks, I must admit that I just want to separate from both Microsoft and Apple because they are part of the WEF and I don't want to support any partner of the WEF
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by SMG »

ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 4:17 pmThanks, do you think these will go smoothly?
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x 8Core, 3593 Mhz
Asus Prime B450-Plus
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 TI
I'm not sure I understand your question. If you are asking whether I think those specs will work on Linux Mint, then the answer is yes.

Maybe you do not have signatures turned on so I will post what DisturbedDragon indicated works for them on both Linux Mint and Fedora. Here is their current signature information:

AMD Ryzen 9 5950X 16C/32T | MSI MPG x570 Gaming Plus | 2TB Mushkin Pilot-E NVMe | 1TB Crucial P1 NVMe | 2TB Inland UG PCIe 4 NVMe | 32GB Trident Z DDR4 3600 | Nvidia RTX4090 | Fedora 35 Cinnamon | Linux Mint 20.3 Cinnamon | Kernel 5.15.x lowlatency
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rene
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Re: Confirmation before purchasing

Post by rene »

ZioRiP wrote: Sat Jan 28, 2023 4:19 pm Thanks, I must admit that I just want to separate from both Microsoft and Apple because they are part of the WEF and I don't want to support any partner of the WEF
No, I don 't think that's your reason at all. In fact believe that all this WEF-stuff is just a great big conspiracy to lure us into a false sense of purpose and direction in a distressingly random world where there is in fact none.

I'm on to you.
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