Kernel 5.9 in testing, trouble with Radeon driver

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

Hi all!

Just updated linux kernel to 5.9 as I’m using the testing repo.
In this machine there is Intel and Radeon graphics. The radeon kernel module didn’t cause problems with kernel 5.8 series. But with kernel 5.9 the picture is very distorted at boot.

Blacklisting the radeon kernel module “fixed” it, and now I’m on Intel graphics.

So, I again recommend having also the LTS kernel (or another officially supported kernel), just in case.

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I’m surprised there’s hybrid hardware which is old enough to need the radeon driver. :sweat_smile:

I’m running linux-zen 5.9 on my single-GPU machine with amdgpu and it’s fine so far. :crossed_fingers:

2 Likes
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I also had amdgpu driver package installed, but uninstalling that didn’t help.
So I just blacklisted the radeon kernel module.
This machine is actually not “very” old, only about 2 years. But admittedly this was a cheap model…

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If you uninstalled the amdgpu driver then I guess the kernel would fall back to radeon; there were quite a few updates to amdgpu in 5.9 so it might take a couple of point-releases to smooth things out (but that’s pretty normal).

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5.9.0-zen1-1-zen

 inxi -G
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Renoir driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
           Device-2: Chicony Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.9 driver: amdgpu,ati unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,vesa 
           resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD RENOIR (DRM 3.39.0 5.9.0-zen1-1-zen LLVM 10.0.1) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.2.0

Seems to be running fine here as well. Have not noticed any glitches or hiccups.