All Linux installs black screen?

Bobmunkhouse

Bobmunkhouse

Bobmunkhouse

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5 Nov 2005
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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
 
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")
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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...
 
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?
 
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...
 
Cromulent said:
Have you tried to install Windows with the AMD GPU? If it works you know it isn't a hardware issue. If it doesn't you know the GPU is fried. Once you know the hardware is fine we can work on the Linux side of things.
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Yeah GPU is fine I was running windows but wiped it due windows 10 going end of support....
 
Ice Tea said:

I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but as a Linux newbie it seems to me that you’ll be making life difficult for yourself with that old card.

Ubuntu is hard to beat for hardware compatibility and its ability to set itself up automatically. However, the AMD R9 360 ceased receiving support for proprietary drivers as of Ubuntu 16 and transitioned to using the AMD open-source driver. As noted in the Mint link mentioned above, it was suggested to modify the boot command for it to function properly. If you wish to utilise the current AMD proprietary drivers, you'll need to enable the HWE stack on Ubuntu, which also requires using the command line.

A lot of piddling about that you don't normally need to do with Ubuntu.
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Hmmm yeah was trying to get some life out of an old pc.... I guess I can look for a cheap 2nd hand card...it's all very old but did play old games ok...so was planning on setting up just for steam big picture for my son.... Maybe Xbox series S or steam deck is sensible thing really but always like to do the more complicated thing...
 
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