Test build for recent AMD video cards

[BarryK]

There have been reports of a black screen for EasyOS booted on recent AMD hardware. It seems that the screen goes black when the kernel KMS GPU module loads.

There are two ATI/AMD kernel modules, radeon.ko and amdgpu.ko. The former is for older ATI/AMD video cards, and it works fine on a couple of AMD video cards that I own.

The radeon module might not work with recent AMD GPus, and the amdgpu module is required. One problem is that the radeon module might load and prevent the amdgpu module from working -- this can be fixed by blacklisting the radeon module. However, I have compiled the 5.15.16 kernel without the radeon module, to avoid the potential conflict.

A potential problem that can cause the black screen is missing firmware. This is in /lib/firmware/amdgpu. Forum member hundido has sent me the firmware from pop!_os, and I have used it in this build.

So, if you have a PC with "recent" AMD video hardware, give this a go. Link provided here:

https://bkhome.org/news/202203/easyos-3 ... -gpus.html

Well, here is the direct link:

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64 ... d64.img.gz

https://distro.ibiblio.org/easyos/amd64 ... d5sums.txt

If you still get a black screen, then the likely culprit is that the 'mesa' package is too old. Maybe also some xorg packages will need to be updated. This will be the next step, if there is still failure with this 3.4.1.1 test release.

[BarryK]

Good news. Holden has been testing releases of EasyOS, reporting by emails. His AMD Ryzen 5 5600g PC getting a black screen -- until now. This latest build works. It looks like it was a matter of missing firmware.

[hundido]

Great news! I'm writing from my new computer now. No black screen. Thank you so much for the work you've done on this.

[hundido]

One thing about this build:
I tried to open Internet>Seamonkey in container, and Firefox opened.
Also, is there a way to verify something that I think is opened in a container is indeed in a container?

[BarryK]

One thing about this build:
I tried to open Internet>Seamonkey in container, and Firefox opened.

Oh, not good, will check it out.

Somehow I didn't see your post and built Easy 3.4.2, then discovered a problem, Xephyr server missing:

https://bkhome.org/news/202203/xephyr-n ... ssing.html

Right, so two bugs to work on!

[BarryK]

Also, is there a way to verify something that I think is opened in a container is indeed in a container?

In the Dunfell desktop in a container, at the top-level there is a file /INSIDE_dunfell

For any container, there is this file /INSIDE_<name of container>