Upgrading Ubuntu 22.04's Kernel & Mesa For Better AMD RDNA2 Performance

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Upgrading Ubuntu 22.04's Kernel & Mesa For Better AMD RDNA2 Performance

While Ubuntu 22.04 LTS was just released over one month ago, it is shipping on the Linux 5.15 kernel that was already two stable series behind at release time but chosen as the default due to its long-term support status. Ubuntu 22.04 also shipped with Mesa 22.0 as the latest stable version albeit the open-source OpenGL/Vulkan graphics drivers are quick to advance. So if you've been thinking about upgrading Mesa or the Linux kernel on your Ubuntu 22.04 system for better Linux gaming performance, here are some benchmarks looking at such performance impact for AMD RDNA2 / Radeon RX 6000 series graphics.

https://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=31165

[yossarianuk]

Again demonstrating why desktop distro's should be at least part rolling..

It would be good for a benchmark between standard Ubuntu 22.04 and PopOS 22.04 (as pop has rolling kernel/mesa/gpu drivers), for intel/AMD GPU users i'm pretty sure PopOS will be ahead

[cytomax55]

Ubuntu was my first distro and I recommend it to all people EXCEPT gamers or people with relatively new hardware like < 1 year old....
For those people I recommend something easy like Manjaro but I'm sure there are other simple rolling releases out there

[skeevy420]

Ubuntu was my first distro and I recommend it to all people EXCEPT gamers or people with relatively new hardware like < 1 year old....
For those people I recommend something easy like Manjaro but I'm sure there are other simple rolling releases out there

My first distros were over 20 years ago so they're not that relevant these days, but that's a fair assessment and those are what I'd recommend due to being more familiar with Pacman and Apt over Dnf. That said, I'm a KDE person and OpenSUSE Tumbleweed offers, IMHO, the most synergistic KDE/Qt desktop since, IIRC, most all their system apps are in Qt and not GTK like Ubuntu or Manjaro.

My first ever flashed distribution sort of exists -- Red Hat. This was way before Fedora, RHEL, Cent, etc. Late 90s Red Hat. My first dip in the water that wasn't Windows or DOS was a mangled trainwreck for my noob self.

[dada]

apt install linux-image-unsigned-5.17.0-1006-oem and Oibaf PPA and Ubuntu 22.04 rocks for gamers. Pretty neat.

[skeevy420]

Again demonstrating why desktop distro's should be at least part rolling..

It would be good for a benchmark between standard Ubuntu 22.04 and PopOS 22.04 (as pop has rolling kernel/mesa/gpu drivers), for intel/AMD GPU users i'm pretty sure PopOS will be ahead

Hopefully PopOS will pickup the Open NVIDIA driver so those folks can get in on the action. Funny, not a GNOME fan but I love every screenshot I see of PopOS. Tiling desktops bring out my inner nerd.

[JMB9]

I used RDNA 1 Navi 10 when it was only half a year old - RDNA 2 is mature - also its drivers.
So this test does not show how important a rolling desktop really is.
So when RDNA 3 gets available - it would be fun to see what can be done in an LTS GNU/Linux ...
and this may look like "freeze periodically - crashes - won't work" as I had to experience it.
But no problem with PPAs.

But using dev and git trees is really extreme - even gamer want to rely on the experience
(and writing a bug report for such a system is not reasonable).
So Mesa 22.1.0 and Linux 5.18.0 or 5.18.1 would be a much better choice for testing.
But again, due to bad timing this is nothing which is critical - and of cause even more
interesting if a new architecture is introduced.

By the way - concerning unstable SW - any problems with Ubuntu 22.04 LTS due to systemd
and killing important processes due to freeing RAM (called out of memory [OOM] sevice ...
nice joke)? Was astonished to read this end of May ... 1st April is long gone.
Maybe no one is testing their flagship product at canonical - and why is such a service even
available for systemd?
* https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/systemd/+bug/1972159
Maybe someone can give example where this may be helpful ... don't see any use on the desktop.
Even with 16 GB RAM this service is no help but a threat.

I am just curious why I have not read this here on Phoronix ... was a note on DistroWatch Weekly
(30th May release).
I have not tested 22.04 LTS yet after the many problems with installer and FF provided by snap ...
But direct FF from Mozilla works for me as I tested with my old Kubuntu distro.
And after first testing with given release base I will go directly to 5.18.x and 20.1.x (and some
other PPAs) - as both are stable and mature in a few weeks and also some basic programs are
quite old ... it is not limited to kernel and mesa - this is just most pessuring when using new hardware.

So just installing and using *ubuntu LTS is a thing of the past ... and while bug reports are not addressed,
this won't change in near future.

[CochainComplex]

I really recommend everyone using PopOS over Ubuntu especially if gaming is top priority and/or Nvidia based Laptop is the device of concern.

For gaming it has all the necessary most recent albeit stable kernel and drivers but still the overall compatibility to Ubuntu.
Their Nvidia flavour works nicely with iGPU/dGPU switching scenarios.

Especially beginners can just copy paste 99.5% of the howtos written for Ubuntu.

But you have to like gnome.
Additional benefit NO SNAPS by default. In weired case you still want to have them you can install them easily by installing snap via apt.

BTW its also a very excellent distro for production/work too. Rock solid and very snappy.

[CochainComplex]

Hopefully PopOS will pickup the Open NVIDIA driver so those folks can get in on the action. Funny, not a GNOME fan but I love every screenshot I see of PopOS. Tiling desktops bring out my inner nerd.

This would be a perfect amalgamation with their system76-power service. And maybe could mean that it will not be necessary to provide 2 different isos ( intel/amd or nvidia) anymore

[ping-wu]

Debian Unstable ("Sid") actually is a very good rolling Linux release. Although it is labeled with a misnomer "unstable", because its package versions often are more up-to-date (thus the label "unstable"), it is sometimes more stable than the "stable" version, which usually does not allow version upgrade. For example, I need to regularly use ibus-libpinyin for inputting Chinese characters, and Debian Sid/Bookworm is more stable than Bullseye at least in this regard.

Of course you need to be a reasonably experienced Linux user to use Debian Sid, but I believe most of us in this forum are well beyond this level.