All Linux installs black screen?

Bobmunkhouse

Bobmunkhouse

Bobmunkhouse

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Hi all

I have an old pc with a Intel i7 3770k and and AMD R9 390 as windows 10 will soon be out of support I'm trying to install a Linux os but I have tried Ubuntu, Bazzite, Linux mint but all of them do the same thing once you get to a certain point in install where interfere is full gui it just black screens.... I managed to install and run Ubuntu in compatibility mode with software display rendering and tried doing all updates but when I try and boot in normal mode I get black screen again....

So it seems it's issue with GPU drivers which I have tried to install in Ubuntu but does not seem to make a difference... I also disabled built in igpu just in case that was issue but no luck....any ideas on anything I can do? I really want GPU to work as wanted to try some Linux steam gaming....

Thanks for any advice
 
Bobmunkhouse said:
Have got a cursor once or twice for a bit but then goes fully black...it like once hardware acceleration kicks in the picture just goes...
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Hmm. Hard to tell from that. I don't know if it is a hardware issue or something else.

Have you tried removing the GPU and just using the integrated GPU on its own?
 
Cromulent said:
Hmm. Hard to tell from that. I don't know if it is a hardware issue or something else.

Have you tried removing the GPU and just using the integrated GPU on its own?
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Not yet but I guess trying the igpu is good idea to see what happens just to confirm if it's gpu.... I will try it and update in week, thanks.
 
Uefi motherboard (and Linux bootloader) but no uefi bios on the video card maybe?
 
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Bobmunkhouse said:
Hmmm not sure...any way to check or fix?
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I think there's a parameter you can add to grub (to force non-uefi) but you'd need someone with more Linux experience than me.

(It might not even be related to UEFI at all, but it's a fair guess as that era of motherboard was when UEFI was brand new, and not all GPUs from that time were uefi compatible out of the box)

(Windows was probably less fussy or running in a compatibility mode if upgraded from an old install etc, Linux tends to want to do things "correctly")
 
Armageus said:
I think there's a parameter you can add to grub (to force non-uefi) but you'd need someone with more Linux experience than me.

(It might not even be related to UEFI at all, but it's a fair guess as that era of motherboard was when UEFI was brand new, and not all GPUs from that time were uefi compatible out of the box)

(Windows was probably less fussy or running in a compatibility mode if upgraded from an old install etc, Linux tends to want to do things "correctly")
Click to expand...

Ok, the GPU is newer then the motherboard so maybe I should check MB bios settings and have a play....it is really odd.
 
Did some googling and the MB is a Gigabyte Z77X-D3H and GPU is a Powercolor Radeon R9 390 and both support UEFI bios but I will have a check of my settings to see what's what...
 
It may be that your installs are loading the radeon driver instead of amdgpu, although why the black screen I’m not sure.

I think the GPU is technically a Sea Islands model so it may not be loading amdgpu driver even though it is experimentally supported.

Arch wiki has a page that talks about this in section 2.2.

Edit: Also if you have another monitor or TV it may be worth trying that, just in case something odd relating to display is going on.
 
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Ok an update, the onboard GPU works fine, if I set it to the default in bios then Ubuntu boots without issues and shows it as graphics adapter....but as soon as you switch back to the dedicated R9 390 then Ubuntu just goes to black screen after initial loading screen....

I tried installing the 390 drivers from AMD's website but not really sure what I'm doing with Linux... download a tiny 14kb file and it opened in app centre and added a repository but no idea if that's installed...

It's a shame as the 390 is still capable of some light gaming and wanted to try Steam on Linux....

Any other ideas?
 
Bobmunkhouse said:
Ok an update, the onboard GPU works fine, if I set it to the default in bios then Ubuntu boots without issues and shows it as graphics adapter....but as soon as you switch back to the dedicated R9 390 then Ubuntu just goes to black screen after initial loading screen....

I tried installing the 390 drivers from AMD's website but not really sure what I'm doing with Linux... download a tiny 14kb file and it opened in app centre and added a repository but no idea if that's installed...

It's a shame as the 390 is still capable of some light gaming and wanted to try Steam on Linux....

Any other ideas?
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AMD GPUs have open source drivers in the kernel. You could perhaps try a distro that comes with a newer kernel to get the latest drivers.

In terms of the drivers you have downloaded it is probably a script you need to run from the terminal with root.

Out of interest what version of Ubuntu is it?
 
Cromulent said:
AMD GPUs have open source drivers in the kernel. You could perhaps try a distro that comes with a newer kernel to get the latest drivers.

In terms of the drivers you have downloaded it is probably a script you need to run from the terminal with root.

Out of interest what version of Ubuntu is it?
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I'm using ubuntu 24.04.2 but the issue is the same in all Linux flavours I have tried have had same issues...as I say I have not tried Linux before so not sure what I'm doing....will have to Google commands for terminal installation process....seems people have stuck with Windows for a reason...
 
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