Hello everyone!

I'm a Computing Science student, brazilian native. I'm here to present myself and tell how I came to become a Linux apprentice.

A couple days ago I decided to install this OS and learn to handle it. After a little bit of research, I was told that the two newbie-friendliest distributions of Linux were Linux Mint and Ubuntu. I chose Mint just because I thought its interface was more attractive, though I can't tell for sure, since I haven't tested Ubuntu yet (just watched a few youtube videos).

So, here I am with Mint 17.2 on my machine (AMD FX-8350, Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3-Rev 5.0, 8GB DDR3 1600MHz, Sapphire R9 280X, 650W Thermaltake PSU - just for the records) , dual boot with Windows 10 (not gonna give up on it anytime soon... gamer). In the course of these two days, I've already managed to lose all data on my disk and also screw up with AMD drivers for Linux, rendering me unable to access the Mint's GUI. Ok, all my fault, as I'm green as possible.

First problem came when trying to install Mint. I downloaded the SO image and used Linux Live USB Creator 2.9.4 to create a bootable pen drive. I could run the OS from there, but couldn't install it to my HD, as whenever I tried, it's installer wouldn't see my HD partitions (I had one for the Windows OS and another for data, plus a little one that Windows installation creates, I'm not sure what it is for), instead it would only see my entire HD as one empty space. Did some research, and found out the problem was my partition table format (?). Although it was using MBR, it had some GPT residues (at least that's what I understood). So I downloaded GParted, and tried to turn it all to GPT, as it's the newer standard. That didn't go too well...

Jump to the next day, HDD properly partitioned, I managed to install Mint and Win 10 again. Now I have three primary partitions (System-Windows10, System-Linux, Linux-Swap) and one extended partition, where I created two logical partitions (Data and /Home). If anyone has any comments about this structure (pros and cons), I would appreciate it.

Next step I took was to install "drivers" to Linux. I use the "" because I still don't know how the middlefield between hardware and software is done in Linux (shame on me). So, first thing I went after were my video drivers. Went to AMD website, downloaded AMD Catalyst 15.9 Proprietary Linux Graphics Driver. There began my problems. There are four files for download in that page (I selected Ubuntu 64-bit, since, from what I know, Mint is based upon Ubuntu, right?). So I downloaded them all, and ran them like I would do in Windows (stupid?), just double clicking. Except I didn't run one of them, namely AMD Catalyst™ 15.9 Proprietary Ubuntu 14.04 x86_64 Minimal Video Driver for Graphics Accelerators (Non-X Support).

Well, after that, I installed Steam (I was curious about which games would run on Linux and how they would run) and, at the same time, had Mint to update all it's files through it's embedded updater. Once I tried to run Steam, the OS froze, and when I rebooted my machine, I found out that the AMD Driver had caused some sort of conflict with something that I didn't even know it existed and still don't know what it is for: X.Org server. Bottom line: no access to GUI, only console. Tried to manually uninstall the AMD Driver I had just installed, but couldn't restore the GUI. Since I still didn't have anything important installed in this Linux OS (actually, I installed it mostly for studying purposes, and because I'm really interested in getting to know how it works and what can it do), it was just easier to delete the whole system and reinstall it.

Well, now here I am, the day after all these misadventures, asking for advices from those who have already been where I am now.

Let's get to the present moment:

This is a fresh install of Mint, only ran Mint updater and installed Opera (personal preference). Thing is, I have both a monitor and a TV connected to my video card, the first one is connected via a Display Port cable and the second is connected via HDMI. Both of them have speakers, and here lies the problem: though I can get Mint to only display image through the monitor, I can't make it output the sound through it, instead it outputs it to the TV. Probably a simple config, but I still haven't found the way. If someone knows how it's done, please let me know.

Also, I would like to install the AMD Drivers from AMD website instead of using the one provided in the App Manager (my Mint OS is installed in brazilian portuguese, so maybe that isn't exactly the name it's found in other system languages), since it's really outdated.

Well... I guess that's all for now. I'll appreciate any input given. I expect to be able to contribute to these forums as my experience grows, but for now, I can only watch =)

P.S.: Sorry for bad english, not my native language. If you can't understand something I wrote due to language issues (wrong syntaxes or whatever), let me know and I'll try to make myself clearer.

Thanks, everyone!

Hi Andre...

I don't have an answer for you but wanted to welcome you anyway.

Regards...

Thank you =).

I've posted this saturday afternoon, it just appeared now for me (monday, 3 am).

Now that I see... what a wall of text =P

For one thing, you shouldn't need to use the AMD drivers, at least at first. The in-kernel drivers are sufficient, unless you are getting low framerates in games. The Linux kernel already contains some open-source drivers for your graphics card, which get almost as good performance as AMD's proprietary drivers. No use going through the hassle if you don't need to.

If you do, I would recommend using Mint's packaged drivers as they are tested with your Mint release and it makes package management easier. They are the same thing, just packaged correctly for Mint.

Drivers in general are pre-packaged in the Linux kernel.

For sound, try these (the first one first):
http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1051
http://www.linuxmint.com/rel_olivia.php
Reboot after trying the first one. If no sound plays, then let us know, and then we'll see about the second one.

@oldtechaa

Thanks for the info. I still haven't tried games on Linux, so I wouldn't know how they behave.

About "Mint packaged drivers", are you talking about the ones that you get through the App Manager in Mint?

About the sound, I read both links, but didn't follow the steps on the first one for two reasons:

1. It doesn't reflect my problem, exactly. I can get audio from the TV, which is connected to the HDMI port of my GPU. I just can't tell Mint to output the sound to my monitor, connected to my GPU's DisplayPort.

2. I got a bit scared from the most recent comment (made by luciferBastard), stating that he can't get his GPU to work.


On the second link, it also doesn't reflect my problem, since I can get audio from HDMI, and I couldn't figure out what these commands do:

I'm willing to follow the instructions you point, I just want to make sure that you understood that my problem isn't NO SOUND at all, but only not being able to select my monitor as sound output device. If, after reading this, you still think I should do that, let me know, I'll give it a try and say if it worked.

Thanks!

You'll want kernel 4.0, in which the radeon driver enables DisplayPort audio. That is, if you want to stick with the open-source driver. If you used the proprietary driver, you wouldn't need to, but then you'd miss out on all the goodies in the new kernel, and you wouldn't get the experience of upgrading your kernel.

What are you gonna do? It's entirely up to you.

The article in which I got information for this is:
http://www.pcsteps.com/858-kernel-up...x-mint-ubuntu/
You can look over the instructions in the first section, and see if that sounds like something you'd like to do.

Edit: Forgot about the App Manager/Mint Packaged question: Yes, that is what I mean. You should find some "AMD" or "Radeon" drivers on there.

@oldtechaa

Thanks a lot. I guess I'll go with the kernel upgrade. I'll let you (and whoever may be interested) know how it went, when I'm done with it.

Appreciate you took your time to help me and being kind to explain. Thanks again.

EDIT: oldtechaa, thanks a lot. I followed the instructions on the page you linked and upgraded my kernel to 4.0, now sound works properly.