MX Linux on Newer Hardware (AHS)

[Dugrath]

I just had a question, as I have only been running MXLinux now on my laptop for like 2 weeks (its been great btw). How is the AHS for newer laptops and PC with new hardware? In the future I plan on building a PC and if I'm going to spend the money I'd like it to be for the most part updated with newer components so that I do not have to worry about upgrading it for a number of years. Has anyone recently built a newer PC and ran MXLinux on it, or newer laptops? I was looking at the zephyrus g14 for a laptop perhaps to use one day (long battery life and powerful machine). This is all theoretical of course for laptops, as my thinkpad I think will be working just fine for a number of years. I still have Manjaro as my main partition, but I think that's going to change soon as I have had no need for it since I got all the programs I use running great on MX.

Anyway if you could just give some feedback on your experience with MX on newer hardware, laptops etc. I saw in the Hardware/Config section there was a post from 2017 that was taking information for laptops and netbooks that were working properly on MX. Is there a wiki or something where these things are recorded to know compatibility?

Thanks!

[uncle mark]

Someone who knows what they're talking about will chime in I'm sure, but for a custom build it might be smart to post your prospective parts list and see what kind of response you get. I have to believe the only concerns might be for a cutting edge CPU and graphics.

[Mauser]

When you install MX Linux it usually just works. When I built my new desktop computer from scratch, the only issue I had was getting MX Linux to install it on a RAID 10. I ended up installing openSuse and then I was only then able to install MX Linux. For some reason I couldn't get Gparted the RAID 10. Installing openSuse was able to detect the RAID. I had other issues but was I had to use a newer kernel and find the correct settings to have my computer run stable as I found Ryzen CPUs are finicky to BIOS settings. I upgraded the graphics card but had a issue with getting the fans to run which was resolved by help here on this forum. From what I have seen, the most GPU issues are Nvidia but you will not have issues with all Nvidia GPUs as they can happen regardless of brand. Based on my experience with MX Linux hardware support seems to be better than average for Linux. I would like to add when everything is working it tends to stay working on MX Linux.

[Dugrath]

Someone who knows what they're talking about will chime in I'm sure, but for a custom build it might be smart to post your prospective parts list and see what kind of response you get. I have to believe the only concerns might be for a cutting edge CPU and graphics.

This makes sense, I'll likely do this when the time comes to make sure. Can't hurt at the very least.

When you install MX Linux it usually just works. When I built my new desktop computer from scratch, the only issue I had was getting MX Linux to install it on a RAID 10. I ended up installing openSuse and then I was only then able to install MX Linux. For some reason I couldn't get Gparted the RAID 10. Installing openSuse was able to detect the RAID. I had other issues but was I had to use a newer kernel and find the correct settings to have my computer run stable as I found Ryzen CPUs are finicky to BIOS settings. I upgraded the graphics card but had a issue with getting the fans to run which was resolved by help here on this forum. From what I have seen, the most GPU issues are Nvidia but you will not have issues with all Nvidia GPUs as they can happen regardless of brand. Based on my experience with MX Linux hardware support seems to be better than average for Linux. I would like to add when everything is working it tends to stay working on MX Linux.

Thanks for the reply. That's helpful. Ill definitely take this into account for when I come up with a build. This is part of the reason why I was considering staying with Manjaro as it usually has the latest drivers+support. I imagine getting fixes wouldnt be too difficult though in here as the community and forum seem pretty responsive.

[Friedrich]

Has anyone recently built a newer PC and ran MXLinux on it, or newer laptops? I was looking at the zephyrus g14 for a laptop perhaps to use one day (long battery life and powerful machine).

I recently installed MX-KDE (AHS) alongside Manjaro and win10 on a comparably new HP 455 G7, AMD Renoir 4500u and had no trouble with installation. Apart from that which I induced myself as a GPT/UEFI first timer: Wrong GPT/UEFI and Bios settings.
It took me a while to sort that out, but thats not to blame on MX.
The HP has no dedicated Nvidia-graphics like the zephyrus g14 though, so your experience might differ.

https://forum.manjaro.org/t/impossible- ... u/26755/17

[asqwerth]

I think if you are looking at hardware (CPU, graphics card, network card, especially) that was just released within 6 months of your new computer build, you should check here with the experts (not me).

The newer the hardware is, the higher the possibility that even the latest Linux kernels or packages upstream have not got the necessary updates/drivers.

[Paul..]

I just built a new desktop with moderately high-end graphics...installed the AHS version...works great. Here's the Quick System Info dump...
Shortened version: Asus PRIME X570-PRO motherboard, AMD Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT Graphics card

Code: Select all

System:    Host: <filter> Kernel: 5.6.0-2-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 8.3.0 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.6.0-2-amd64 
           root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 tk: Gtk 3.24.5 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm4 dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-19.2_ahs_x64 patito feo May 31  2020 base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: ASUSTeK model: PRIME X570-PRO v: Rev X.0x serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends v: 1407 date: 04/02/2020 
CPU:       Topology: 8-Core model: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 
           family: 17 (23) model-id: 71 (113) stepping: N/A microcode: 8701013 
           L2 cache: 4096 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
           bogomips: 114987 
           Speed: 2196 MHz min/max: 2200/3600 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2195 
           2: 2196 3: 2195 4: 2195 5: 2196 6: 2196 7: 2196 8: 2196 9: 2195 10: 2195 11: 2196 
           12: 2196 13: 2196 14: 2196 15: 2195 16: 2195 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected 
           Type: l1tf status: Not affected 
           Type: mds status: Not affected 
           Type: meltdown status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass 
           mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Full AMD retpoline, IBPB: conditional, STIBP: conditional, RSB filling 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: AMD Navi 10 vendor: ASUSTeK driver: amdgpu v: kernel bus ID: 09:00.0 
           chip ID: 1002:731f 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: amdgpu resolution: 2560x1440~144Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT (NAVI10 DRM 3.36.0 5.6.0-2-amd64 LLVM 10.0.0) 
           v: 4.6 Mesa 20.1.5 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: AMD Navi 10 HDMI Audio driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 09:00.1 
           chip ID: 1002:ab38 
           Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: ASUSTeK driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 0b:00.4 chip ID: 1022:1487 
           Device-3: C-Media type: USB driver: hid-generic,snd-usb-audio,usbhid bus ID: 3-1:2 
           chip ID: 0d8c:0012 serial: <filter> 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.6.0-2-amd64 
Network:   Device-1: Intel I211 Gigabit Network vendor: ASUSTeK driver: igb v: 5.6.0-k 
           port: f000 bus ID: 03:00.0 chip ID: 8086:1539 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 931.52 GiB used: 192.12 GiB (20.6%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB block size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 4B6Q scheme: GPT 
           ID-2: /dev/sdb vendor: Samsung model: SSD 860 EVO 500GB size: 465.76 GiB block size: 
           physical: 512 B logical: 512 B speed: 6.0 Gb/s serial: <filter> rev: 1B6Q scheme: GPT 
Partition: ID-1: / raw size: 229.99 GiB size: 225.38 GiB (98.00%) used: 23.55 GiB (10.5%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda2 
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 16.60 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap swappiness: 15 (default 60) 
           cache pressure: 100 (default) dev: /dev/sda4 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 58.1 C mobo: N/A gpu: amdgpu temp: 60 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: amdgpu fan: 0 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mirrors.rit.edu/mxlinux/mx-packages/mx/repo/ buster main non-free
           2: deb http://mirrors.rit.edu/mxlinux/mx-packages/mx/repo/ buster ahs
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/various.list 
Info:      Processes: 346 Uptime: 4h 33m Memory: 15.61 GiB used: 2.63 GiB (16.9%) Init: SysVinit 
           v: 2.93 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 Shell: quick-system-in 
           running in: quick-system-in inxi: 3.0.36 

[shrinker09]

I bought a new (cheap, but still new) laptop for the purpose of playing around and trying a few different light Linux distros, and nothing would work. Mint kept shutting down, Sparky wouldn't work right, MX wouldn't shut down. Someone here suggested a spin version of MX that a member here had created (Steve?) so I tried that and the laptop runs perfectly. I think I was told that the spin was for newer hardware. I don't remember, I was a little panicked and desperate at the time. LOL!

I looked up my old post, and what was recommended was this:

"Stevo's AHS respin and see if it works any better. viewtopic.php?p=551710#p551710 "

[SwampRabbit]

Steve’s respin was done before we had updated monthly snapshots of AHS. That respin is outdated now OOTB.

If you download the latest monthly snapshot of AHS you should have everything in that respin and newer.

Here is the link to the September 2020 one
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-lin ... o/download

[andyprough]

Steve’s respin was done before we had updated monthly snapshots of AHS. That respin is outdated now OOTB.

If you download the latest monthly snapshot of AHS you should have everything in that respin and newer.

Here is the link to the September 2020 one
https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-lin ... o/download

Hey Josh, I've sent you messages on PM and on Slack - if you could answer one of them it would help me a lot. Thanks.