Hello to all, I'm an happy Slackware 14.2 user since almost 3 years (no more distro-hopping for me, unless forced!)

Now, back to the topic.

I'm in the process of upgrading my now-ancient athlon x3 440 ddr2 gt640 box, trying to not burn all my savings.

That's were AMD, with it's excellent APU becomes relevant.

I'm planning a build with a 2400g or a 3400g as apu.

The question is, how is Slackware 14.2 support regarding them?

I'm already using a custom 4.19.61 kernel, so I suppose the cpu part is covered in both cases, yes?

On the other hand, "stock" MESA is 11.2.2. I've tried to search online, even on the mesa site itself, but with no luck. I just can't get exactly which version is required for which apu.

Lastly, is the switch to current really required or I can get away with a custom kernel+custom mesa? is building a new version of mesa even possible on 14.2?

Thanks to all who will answer my many questions!

You can, but, honestly, I think at this point it's just easier to use current. https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/bui...all-slackware/ I've got a Ryzen, and I switched to current, rather than try to make 14.2 work. I was current-adverse, but it's been pretty smooth sailing at this point in time.

One thing to be aware of is that some Ryzens have an issue with locking up while idle. I don't know if it's still an issue, though, with the 3000 series. Update the BIOS, and either set the power to "typical current idle" in the bios and/or boot with rcu_nocbs=0-(n-1) where (n-1) is the number of cores you have minus one. (Because they start counting at zero. So if you have a 12 core cpu, it's 11. (or 15 for 16.) The stock current kernel comes built with the specific configuration needed to make that fix work. More here: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=196683 I haven't had a lock in about a month, knock wood.

All in all, I've been pretty happy with my Ryzen.

Do you have a Microcenter near you? I got some great deals on parts when my old computer died, if you're buying things all at once. Board, CPU, RAM and a hard drive was about $350. Also helped that my computer died right before Father's Day.

Tanks for the Info Garpu!

No, where I live(Italy) microcenters (and similar stuff) doesn't exist, we have things called Mediaworld and normal pc-builder shops, but no real deals in either of them.

The thing with current, is that, coming from arch linux 4 years ago, I was really pissed of the costant updates (that sometimes killed the whole system if I was to lazy to read the forums before EVERY update!) so the "static" 14.2 was a very good switch!

How's current update schedule? is like arch where almost every day there was updates to make? and are they smooth? while growing older and older I find less and less time to dedicate to the O.S.'s maintenance, I want to DO something with a pc, rather than spend the whole time fixing stuff... it's great for learning of course, but it's not everyone cup (and jumping from gentoo to arch to void and finally to slackware, just to cite the last distro-hops, already filled mine )


Back IT, so current actually support even the new 3400g without problems on the graphic drivers?
I'm asking becouse I read several conflicting threads on variuos forums about them... of course, none of them was about Slackware...

Anyways, the build I've in mind is::

Ryzen 2400g/3400g (depending entirely on linux support, slackware in particular)
MSI B450M-PRO-M2 board
2x8GB Corsair LPX 3200mhz 15cl rams
Crucial 500GB M.2 ssd
Corsair 88r carbide case
Corsair CX550M psu bronze certified
Asus PCE-AC51 wireless card <---- do you know if it has good linux support?

Are those decent enough for a semi-budget build for both linux and (very little if any) windows?

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I hear you. I used arch for about 4 months, then ran screaming back to Slackware. slackware-current does update every day, and while it's not a rolling release, it's for testing. So depending upon where we are in the release cycle, it might be unstable. Right now--a year or so after 14.2 was released--slackware-current is very stable. If there are hiccups, they're usually very minor and fixed quickly. There's the caveat given that third party software (that is, from slackbuilds and such) will likely break and need to be rebuilt, if there's a change.


I'm not entirely sure about the 3400. Mine doesn't have the integrated GPU, and I use an Nvidia card.

Try my solutions posted on my blog regarding Ryzen lockup issue. It was 1st gen Ryzen, but i guess you can use it for newer version of Ryzen as well.

For me, disabling C6 is the final answer i needed besides the above suggestions (which is also included in my blog).

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Good to know... A month and no lockup. Still pretty happy with the new computer, though.

I have experience with Ryzen CPUs and APUs. I'm using 14.2 for my Ryzen CPU (although, I have a 4.19 kernel with it), but I decided to use -current for my APU (2200G for me, since it is just an htpc and I don't need killer performance).

Long story short, I wouldn't run an APU on 14.2. It doesn't support the graphics portion of the chip and would require upgrading the kernel (which you've already done) along with mesa and several other dependencies that are required when upgrading mesa. It's doable, but it's a lot of work. Then you might need to deal with those upgrades again depending on what updates Pat puts out for 14.2.

But, -current is a constantly evolving version. It is the development version for the next stable release of Slackware. Sometimes we'll see multiple updates in a day. Most of the time, the updates are really stable and there's rarely any breakage with any official apps, but it is likely for upgrades to occasionally break 3rd-party programs, including ones built from SBo. Since SBo only actively supports the latest stable release of Slackware, sometimes the scripts don't work on -current. Luckily, forum member ponce (who is also one of the SBo admins) has forked the SBo repo and made adjustments as needed to get programs to build on -current.

All that being said, I, like you, don't like to spend a lot of time with OS maintenance, so I decided to not upgrade my -current install constantly. In fact, I haven't upgraded it since I installed it back in April or May. Yes, this does leave me open to potential security issues, but I got the system running as I liked it and decided to keep it there. If I notice any big enough security issues on the changelog, I may decide to upgrade at that point, and probably just rebuild all the software for my htpc, but otherwise, I'll probably just wait until 15.0 is released and then upgrade at that point.

I do know the 2200G/2400G APUs work well with -current, and I'd imagine they'd work well with the 3400G as well since they're both Vega 11 and mesa/Xorg have had time to get things running with them. -current runs the latest mesa, which should give you decent support.

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Hello to all, sorry for the long delay and thanks for the replies!

Yeah, everyone seems to be so happy about rolling release, and I was too... at the beginning...
Then you realize that it's not you that use the machine, but rather, the system tranformed yourself in some sort of maintenance-man for it!
I'm sure the cpu part would have no problem with a relatively new kernel(4.19 on my 14.2 and on current, as far as I know) rather is the gpu part that I'm worried about.

That may turn useful, thanks for the tip in case.

Yeah, will be more convenient at this point to move to -current, and then to 15 as soon as it get out.

Indeed, that's something I'll like to avoid... but with such a new architecture (vega11 was on the 2400g of just last year) I was expecting something similar.
A non-working SBo is really a bummer for Slackware, however since it's Ponce that is taking care of it, I feel a bit better.

Well I'm also kind of paranoid over security (I know, I know ) so I think I will choose a day of the week to dedicate to maintenance, hoping that it will not thake away too much of my free time, that is getting more and more limited as time move on.


Good to know, 3400g is in fact a SLIGHTLY more powerful 2400g, the cpu architecture is zen+ (not zen2) so if the non-apu ryzens of 2000 series do work, so will this chip.
The Vega part is just a overclocked version of the 2400g one, so if that is supported, excluding some sort of imprevedibile bug in the mobo+bios+cpu+slack combination, there should be no problem.

Last question, do you think that for compiling or other non-streaming non-rendering task I will miss the 2 cores 4 thread that for example a ryzen 2600 (without graphic) would sport?
Above all for compiling (kernel, sbo packages, gentoo for fun etc.)


Anyways thanks again to all, I'll leave here a few interesting things I've found in the meanwhile while searching for infos:

CEMU (windows only WII U emulator) running on linux on the apu 2400g through wine almost 30fps
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rs-dUc7xNOQ

And here the IMPRESSIVE performance of this APU on some of the more recent AAA games on decent (for the most) graphic settings on just 2933hz ram... I've seen all kind of videos of this chip paired with 3400hz or 3200hz (ofcourse, always dual channel mode), but I was not expecting it to work so well with less (and it seems to scale well back to 2666hz)
Really a good job from AMD and a godsend for budget people like me (I plan on upgrading this system once every two or so years)
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxr...BON_cjQ/videos

I have a Ryzen 1800x and the 2200G and there is a stark difference between the two for compiling. kodi on my 1800x compiles in less than 10 minutes, but on my 2200G takes well over an hour. The 2400G/3400G should be better, but I obviously can't compare that with a 2600 since I don't have any of them.

indeed, it's a lot of more time...

However the 2200g is a 4 cores 4 thread cpu, the 3400g (clocked much higher and with better memory controllers) is a 4 cores 8 threads....

About cores and threads, I still don't know which one count more towards compiling.... I mean, given a 6 cores 6 threads vs a 4 cores 8 threads which one will performe better and why?

and between a 4/4 vs a 4/8?

I'm just not capable of finding those answers online...

If gaming and 3d is not your thing how about getting a second hand or new old stock GPU and using that for the graphics side? Something that is definitely supported? Doing that here.

Nah, I like to thinker with things (to a point ) so I think it will be "fun" in its own way (maybe will bring back memories of when I was playing with gentoo soooo long ago (could have been 2003-2004?) trying hard to get my radeon to work with it and playing extremely unsupported games with a very old wine )

A thing that I'm asking myself now (while waiting for the piecies of the new computer to arrive) is if, even without upgrading mesa, would I be able to use my current 14.2 (with kernel 4.19) and use the graphic portion of the apu with the VESA driver (e.g. no acceleration and basic support)

Would it work, at least to get a terminal and a simple X?
I mean, the kernel DO support the chip, and mesa is for acceleration, right? so as a "normal non accellerated gpu" would it work through VESA?

Since my APU is my media center, I didn't want to fork out any extra money for a discrete GPU (and I based the system on using the APU). I just decided to run -current (without upgrading) and all is well with it.

I didn't even attempt to try this. I'm not sure what affects what. It might require you to upgrade the amdgpu driver for X, but I don't know if that would require newer libraries. I did attempt all of this in a VM and I think it would end up being about 10 packages that would need to be upgraded to probably provide full support for the APU. I just haven't put it into practice on my 14.2 system (I have a newer GPU waiting to go in, but I haven't had the time to deal with it all right now).

I wasn't aware Ryzen GPU acceleration/support was available pre-5.x Kernel...