Linux 5.5-rc7 Kernel Released

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux 5.5-rc7 Kernel Released

The seventh weekly release candidate to Linux 5.5 is now available for testing...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-5.5-rc7-Released

[anarki2]

20.04 can't come soon enough, currently I'm forced to use a mix of 18.04 and some 20.04 kernel packages (5.4 as of now) via some lovely apt pinning mess, since the 3990X + Aorus B450 Pro are complete cr@p on 5.3 (that's the latest available via hwe-edge). Hard freezes like every half hour. The best part is that every time this happens it results in one of 2 things: a) it resets BIOS settings b) bluetooth is gone until I power cycle the PSU. Quite ridiculous.

Dunno what's up with this system, but it does the same even on Windows 10 1909, unless you stumble upon the latest B450 chipstet drivers directly from AMD. No, Windows Update won't install them, the Gigabyte support page does not have them. Only amd.com.

Software wise, this Zen 2 rollout sure is a mess. It's been 6 months, but we still need various quirks to make it work.

[anarki2]

(I can't edit my prev comment) I also read A LOT of random complaint threads about these. The workarounds are even more staggering, like disable all CPU scaling in UEFI. Or disable PSU whatever states, I can't even remember all this random cr@p. Like we live in the year 2020 but CPU scaling still is a challenge?

Then again, that's exactly the reason why I already gave up on AMD once many many years ago. Software support has ALWAYS been horrendous. You think Intel is bad? Just wait till you try AMD... The only comforting thing is that this one I didn't pay the bill for, it's a company workstation, so I'm actually getting paid to make this mess work.

[ktecho]

Then again, that's exactly the reason why I already gave up on AMD once many many years ago. Software support has ALWAYS been horrendous. You think Intel is bad? Just wait till you try AMD... The only comforting thing is that this one I didn't pay the bill for, it's a company workstation, so I'm actually getting paid to make this mess work.

Yeah, it's a pitty when you read all that criticism about Intel in this forums. It seems like Intel does everything wrong and if you buy AMD your computer starts to fly. Then, in the real life people needs to wait for 1 or 2 years after buying an AMD system until it's stable enough to use all that amount of cores for everyday tasks.

15 years back when I was at the university I had an AMD card and they promised to release a new driver each two months. "Now we're getting serious about Linux". "Oh wow!" I thought. "Now I'm going to be able to play without problems and unstable patches by the community!" But then you waited for two months and the changelog was reading "Update to make it work with kernel 3.1.4".

Don't get me wrong: I want AMD to succeed, as they're contributing a lot to open source and Linux. But they're not betting enough money as to support new products. How comes you have to wait one year+ to have a driver in the kernel to read CPU temperatures when it's just a bunch of lines of code? At least with Intel you can be confident that when you buy it it will work and drivers for CPU and GPU will be stable from day 1. Yes, for sure they have mitigations that make it no so powerful than advertised, but hey, I can plug it and it works. And that's what business value, not "OMFG!1!! it has 700 cores!!!" but then you have to wait until you can use it.

[NotMine999]

20.04 can't come soon enough, currently I'm forced to use a mix of 18.04 and some 20.04 kernel packages (5.4 as of now) via some lovely apt pinning mess, since the 3990X + Aorus B450 Pro are complete cr@p on 5.3 (that's the latest available via hwe-edge). Hard freezes like every half hour. The best part is that every time this happens it results in one of 2 things: a) it resets BIOS settings b) bluetooth is gone until I power cycle the PSU. Quite ridiculous.

Dunno what's up with this system, but it does the same even on Windows 10 1909, unless you stumble upon the latest B450 chipstet drivers directly from AMD. No, Windows Update won't install them, the Gigabyte support page does not have them. Only amd.com.

Software wise, this Zen 2 rollout sure is a mess. It's been 6 months, but we still need various quirks to make it work.

When you want to run leading edge hardware with Linux you have to be prepared to accept these issues that you are complaining about. Or you can follow a "more positive path" and contribute to the Linux development efforts to improve support for your hardware.

With all due honesty, Linux has been this way for decades when it comes to hardware support because some vendors make a stronger effort than others at integrating their hardware into Linux, while other vendors are not quite up to speed, and a few vendors simply don't care that much to make that effort.

As for Windoze having issues with your hardware choices, well, that's Windoze for you.

Not to mention Windoze is generally "off topic" in these forums. There are other forums on the Internet for Windoze issues.

[ms178]

(I can't edit my prev comment) I also read A LOT of random complaint threads about these. The workarounds are even more staggering, like disable all CPU scaling in UEFI. Or disable PSU whatever states, I can't even remember all this random cr@p. Like we live in the year 2020 but CPU scaling still is a challenge?

Then again, that's exactly the reason why I already gave up on AMD once many many years ago. Software support has ALWAYS been horrendous. You think Intel is bad? Just wait till you try AMD... The only comforting thing is that this one I didn't pay the bill for, it's a company workstation, so I'm actually getting paid to make this mess work.

First, there is no 3990X for the B450 platform, so do you mean the 3950X? Maybe it is just that your motherboard isn't up to the task to handle the high-end CPU properly. There was a Youtuber who showed that his 3700X didn't work properly in Gigabyte boards but in others and which might have been a voltage related issue with their auto settings, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-K-Qnyu6sA

[cbxbiker61]

Yeah, it's a pitty when you read all that criticism about Intel in this forums. It seems like Intel does everything wrong and if you buy AMD your computer starts to fly. Then, in the real life people needs to wait for 1 or 2 years after buying an AMD system until it's stable enough to use all that amount of cores for everyday tasks.

My brother's Ryzen 1700 was installed a couple of months after they were released. At that time you had to be very selective with memory choices. It's been busy using all of those cores for transcoding without problems ever since.

15 years back when I was at the university I had an AMD card and they promised to release a new driver each two months. "Now we're getting serious about Linux". "Oh wow!" I thought. "Now I'm going to be able to play without problems and unstable patches by the community!" But then you waited for two months and the changelog was reading "Update to make it work with kernel 3.1.4".

15 years ago is a long time ago... not relevant to today. Lisa Su's AMD is an entirely different company.

Don't get me wrong: I want AMD to succeed, as they're contributing a lot to open source and Linux. But they're not betting enough money as to support new products. How comes you have to wait one year+ to have a driver in the kernel to read CPU temperatures when it's just a bunch of lines of code? At least with Intel you can be confident that when you buy it it will work and drivers for CPU and GPU will be stable from day 1. Yes, for sure they have mitigations that make it no so powerful than advertised, but hey, I can plug it and it works. And that's what business value, not "OMFG!1!! it has 700 cores!!!" but then you have to wait until you can use it.

[/QUOTE]

As AMD continues to succeed they will add developer resources. Developer resources are best added in a gradual fashion and not just hiring hundreds of raw recruits all at the same time.

Intel has been stagnant for years which minimizes the amount of new code that has to be written. AMD is changing their architecture very rapidly, which means more new code has to be written.

Keep in mind the patches for Intel vulnerabilities only fix the "known" issues. Who truly knows the impact of the exploits that in the wild, but not yet patched by the "good guys". Wake me up when Intel has a new architecture that fixes the underlying design issues.

[anarki2]

First, there is no 3990X for the B450 platform, so do you mean the 3950X? Maybe it is just that your motherboard isn't up to the task to handle the high-end CPU properly. There was a Youtuber who showed that his 3700X didn't work properly in Gigabyte boards but in others and which might have been a voltage related issue with their auto settings, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-K-Qnyu6sA

I meant 3900X, whatever.

It works perfectly fine on 5.4, it fails consistently on 5.3. How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that it's a hardware issue then? Elementary logic.

[ktecho]

15 years ago is a long time ago... not relevant to today. Lisa Su's AMD is an entirely different company.

As AMD continues to succeed they will add developer resources. Developer resources are best added in a gradual fashion and not just hiring hundreds of raw recruits all at the same time.

If you have failed to deliver for years, maybe you have to show that you're serious enough by putting resources enough to accomplish the task. You just have to see the forum comments where people shows they need to use a specific mobo or a specific RAM brand because if you don't do it, it's not going to be stable.

Keep in mind the patches for Intel vulnerabilities only fix the "known" issues. Who truly knows the impact of the exploits that in the wild, but not yet patched by the "good guys". Wake me up when Intel has a new architecture that fixes the underlying design issues.

Yeah, we don't know all the Intel vulnerabilities, but we know all the AMD ones, right?

Oh, and talking about small changes to already existing architectures, how was the name of that Radeon card that was basically an overclocked RX580 but that went to maket untested and unsupported? Was it RX590?

In the end you need stuff to work. I read each benchmark that Michael does when a new Ryzen or Threadripper goes to market because I like how powerful they are. But last year I needed to build a PC and I went for a 8700k as I needed to start working on it. Didn't have the time to skim through forums for RAM sticks that work with a specific mobo.

[Rallos Zek]

Yeah, it's a pitty when you read all that criticism about Intel in this forums. It seems like Intel does everything wrong and if you buy AMD your computer starts to fly. Then, in the real life people needs to wait for 1 or 2 years after buying an AMD system until it's stable enough to use all that amount of cores for everyday tasks.

15 years back when I was at the university I had an AMD card and they promised to release a new driver each two months. "Now we're getting serious about Linux". "Oh wow!" I thought. "Now I'm going to be able to play without problems and unstable patches by the community!" But then you waited for two months and the changelog was reading "Update to make it work with kernel 3.1.4".

Don't get me wrong: I want AMD to succeed, as they're contributing a lot to open source and Linux. But they're not betting enough money as to support new products. How comes you have to wait one year+ to have a driver in the kernel to read CPU temperatures when it's just a bunch of lines of code? At least with Intel you can be confident that when you buy it it will work and drivers for CPU and GPU will be stable from day 1. Yes, for sure they have mitigations that make it no so powerful than advertised, but hey, I can plug it and it works. And that's what business value, not "OMFG!1!! it has 700 cores!!!" but then you have to wait until you can use it.

AMD wasn't making GPU's 15 years ago