installing graphic drivers & choosing distro?

dejoma

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Hi there! I'm new to linux as a main OS, I've played around in kernels a lot but I am facing issues/doubts about graphics drivers and ditsros.

I have a new laptop with a Ryzen 4800u CPU and I simply put on a tutorial on youtube saying 'what to do after a fresh Ubuntu installation' and it mentions:
use a proprietary graphics driver

Why do people do this? Is the performance that much better?
if I open the menu " additional drivers " it is empty (Yes, I have enabled 'proprietary drivers' in the software tab)
If I try to install anything I run into errors..

Turns out there's tons of issues about this but I'm not sure if it\s actually AMD's fault because of a fairly new chip/ubuntu combination or if it's my fault because I'm new to linux! Please help <3

This article talks about the GPU driver..


And about the distro's, what do you recommend? I was thinking Ubuntu untill I get the hang of it, and then doing some more research about other distro's like Mint
 


Why do people do this? Is the performance that much better?

In some cases, for example if you want to do computation directly on the GPU, you will need the proprietary drivers. The performance *can* be improved.

Many on-board graphics don't even have installable proprietary drivers available. They simply aren't needed and don't exist, such as Intel's on-board graphics.

Mostly, I don't worry about it. I seldom bother with the proprietary drivers. If I were a gamer, that'd be different. I am not. I also don't need to use CUDA or anything.

As for recommended distros, I'll share this:

 
I don't install proprietary drivers unless I have to.
When I was running Ubuntu the AMD driver for my GPU was buggy so I removed it and didn't have any issues.

If your Ubuntu system is running well w/o the driver installed and your getting errors it's probably best to leave the system as it is unless your having performance issues.

Since your new to Linux you may want to give Linux Mint a spin.
It's fairly easy to install (about 15 minutes) and the Update Manager is easy to use.

What make and model is your laptop?
 
I have a lenovo yoga slim 7 with ryzen 7 4800u

New to linux as in I've not used it as a main OS. I've used it a bit via command line when I started working with Docker and AWS EC2 instances. I love ubuntu because I just hit the superkey, type my app and boom it's there. And then the terminal for installing or git or even sleep mode for my pc :D
 
I have a lenovo yoga slim 7 with ryzen 7 4800u

New to linux as in I've not used it as a main OS. I've used it a bit via command line when I started working with Docker and AWS EC2 instances. I love ubuntu because I just hit the superkey, type my app and boom it's there. And then the terminal for installing or git or even sleep mode for my pc :D
Is this your laptop?

 
Im running into problem after problem.. I'm pretty sure it's because of my fairly new chip.
One example is it doesn't detect the on-board microphone

But the most annoying one is that it randomly changes brightness and upon restart it's completely dark. I've been able to fix this by using brightness-controller but now I can't change brightness via the FN keys anymore because of the controller... Plus it's weird to me that the native brightness controller goes up and down all the time.. What to do.. what to do..
 
Im running into problem after problem.. I'm pretty sure it's because of my fairly new chip.
One example is it doesn't detect the on-board microphone

But the most annoying one is that it randomly changes brightness and upon restart it's completely dark. I've been able to fix this by using brightness-controller but now I can't change brightness via the FN keys anymore because of the controller... Plus it's weird to me that the native brightness controller goes up and down all the time.. What to do.. what to do..
Sorry to hear your new laptop is giving you distress.
The only thing I can think of (if it works) is to install the highest version of the kernel and see if that helps.

 
You didn't actually identify which distro you are using right now, but sort of indicated you may be using an Ubuntu. If so, it would be useful to know which variant (Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, etc.) and which version(19.10, 20.04, 20.10, etc).

When using a current Linux distro, finding tools to resolve problems is usually much better than randomly selecting kernels. Tools are much more "targeted". My Kubuntu comes with some basic audio management, but when I did have some problems with the audio (input and output), I installed the PulseAudio set of tools which are available straight from the software manager (such as Synaptic or Muon). It is similar to the basic System Settings -> Audio tool, but has many more options for identifying and configuring the hardware.
 
You said in post # 6 your running into problem after problem but only list the issue with the microphone.
What other performance issue's are you having?

What distro are you running and what version?
 

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