The Final Zone project

GNOME extension Screen Autorotate available

2023-04-09T13:40:00.001-07:00

While waiting for a bug fix affecting majority of 2-in-1 laptops running on GNOME Wayland session, gnome-shell-extension-screen-autorotate is now available in Fedora repository and EPEL 9. Give a try on your device Possibly this extension will get added on the incoming Fedora Design Suite 39 as default for the owners of convertible laptops.

Wayland support coming to Blender for Fedora 37

2022-11-17T23:20:00.000-08:00

As mentioned on Phoronix' article, Blender received Wayland support on Blender 3.3.1 for Fedora 37 as an update in preparation of the incoming version 3.4 next month. The update has a dependency of libdecor, a client-side decoration for Wayland in addition of DBus for the cursor theme. Currently, the window decoration may have yet to use the system theme but remains functional as intended.

Old bug affecting all HP laptops resolved

2019-12-17T21:17:00.001-08:00

With Hans' help, an old bug related to ACPI impacting majority of HP laptops running on any Linux distribution is finally resolved on both kernel 5.4.2 and 5.3.15. Some models may have an odd issue on boot like

hp_wmi: query 0xd returned error 0x5

due to a too small buffer passing in for HPWMI_FEATURE2_QUERY. A fix is on the way for the next update and a test kernel from scratch-build is available (make sure to download first as the scratch build gets erased in a few days).

HP Envy x360 15 2500u - One year later

2019-11-06T19:38:00.001-08:00

A year passed since owning HP Envy x360 15 2500u now running mainly on Fedora Design Suite now on its 31 release. The Design Suite is based on Fedora Workstation running on Gnome Wayland by default.

The touchscreen works as intended and feel more responsive. Tweaking Firefox 70.0 However, due to a bug related to the GTK toolkit, using a stylus can cause crash on some applications. The fix is available and will be a matter of the time of an update . Sometimes, the touchscreen failed to work due to an issue related to ACPI only HP can address. The current workaround is to reboot the laptop.

The LED Mute button works as intended with the help of a veteran SuSE developer. The quality of audio is adequate with seemly minimal loss for a laptop once over-amplification is applied via Tweak application.

At the time of writing, the majority of Ryzen APU powered laptop has yet to get the gyroscope function needed to auto-rotate the screen and other features like disabling keyboard on tablet mode. AMD is working on a driver currently under review and the time of availability is to be announced soon.

The facial recognition is sketchy with only a tool named howdy, a Windows Hello™ style facial authentication for Linux, configurable via text editor or terminal. At this time, no automated process to detect camera is available yet. The system is functional and need more work to get properly integrated.

As a laptop, the HP Envy x360 is excellent choice for open source developers and users. For artists, graphic designers, the tablet mode is incomplete with the missing orientation sensor driver. Once that kink get ironed out, future blog will come.

Fedora Design Suite 31 available

2019-10-31T22:37:00.002-07:00

As announced on Fedora Magazine, Design Suite 31 is now available for users like graphic artists and photographers among them.
Notable update is the availability of Blender 2.80 featuring a revamped user interface. Other applications are mostly improved stability.

Users with touch screen devices will notice an improved performance from the Fedora Workstation from which Design Suite is based. Due to a bug related to desktop environment (Gnome Shell running on Wayland), using a stylus can cause applications to crash so the workaround is to run on Gnome on Xorg until the fix lands on a future update.

Full details published on the wiki section.

Fixing LED Mute button on HP Envy x360

2019-08-25T11:29:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Takashi Iwai, sounds linux contributor from SUSE, restoring the functionality of LED mute button is set via /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

options snd-hda-intel model=,hp-mute-led-mic3

Note the comma as the HP Envy x360 Ryzen series have two sounds controllers. The patch for the Linux kernel is already submitted and awaits for review.

HP, Linux and ACPI

2019-07-14T10:35:00.001-07:00

Majority of HP hardware running on Linux and even Microsoft reported an issue related to a non-standard compliant ACPI. Notable message below repeats at least three times on the boot:


4.876549] ACPI BIOS Error (bug): AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT, Field [D128] at bit offset/length 128/1024 exceeds size of target Buffer (160 bits) (20190215/dsopcode-198)

[ 4.876555] ACPI Error: Aborting method \HWMC due to previous error (AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT) (20190215/psparse-529)

[    4.876562] ACPI Error: Aborting method \_SB.WMID.WMAA due to previous error (AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT) (20190215/psparse-529)

The bug is a known for years from which Linux kernel team are unable to fix without the help of vendor i.e. HP. Here is a compilation of reports:

The good news is some errors seems harmless. Unfortunately, such errors displayed the quirks approach used by vendors to support Microsoft Windows system thus doing bad practice. One of case how such action lead to an issue to even the officially supported operating system on HP hardware.

The ideal will be for HP to provide a BIOS fix for their affected hardware and officially support the Linux ecosystem much like their Printing department. Linux Vendor Firmware Service will be a good start and so far Dell is the leader in that department. American Megatrends Inc, the company developing BIOS/UEFI for HP made the process easier so it is a matter to fully enable the support.

Running ROCm on AMD Raven Ridge Mobile

2018-12-29T12:15:00.001-08:00

The HP Envy x360 Convertible powered with Ryzen 2500U turned out an impressive laptop for Fedora 29 despite some issues like lack of accelerometer driver for Linux kernel and some ACPI related problems seemly affecting majority of HP laptops.

AMD recently released ROCm 2.0 enabling the support of Raven Ridge Mobile for the first time. The installation has to be clean (remove beignet and pocl) and requires additional dependency not found on Fedora repository, pth located on COPR. Once completed and rebooted, rocminfo should runs as follow:

/opt/rocm/bin/rocminfo
=====================
HSA System Attributes
=====================
Runtime Version:         1.1
System Timestamp Freq.: 1000.000000MHz
Sig. Max Wait Duration: 18446744073709551615 (number of timestamp)
Machine Model:           LARGE
System Endianness:       LITTLE

==========
HSA Agents
==========
*******
Agent 1
*******
Name:                    AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
Vendor Name:             CPU
Feature:                 None specified
Profile:                 FULL_PROFILE
Float Round Mode:        NEAR
Max Queue Number:        0
Queue Min Size:          0
Queue Max Size:          0
Queue Type:              MULTI
Node:                    0
Device Type:             CPU
Cache Info:
    L1:                      32KB
Chip ID:                 5597
Cacheline Size:          64
Max Clock Frequency (MHz):2000
BDFID:                   768
Compute Unit:            8
Features:                None
Pool Info:
    Pool 1
      Segment:                 GLOBAL; FLAGS: KERNARG, FINE GRAINED
      Size:                    16776832KB
      Allocatable:             TRUE
      Alloc Granule:           4KB
      Alloc Alignment:         4KB
      Acessible by all:        TRUE
ISA Info:
    N/A
*******
Agent 2
*******
Name:                    gfx902
Vendor Name:             AMD
Feature:                 KERNEL_DISPATCH
Profile:                 FULL_PROFILE
Float Round Mode:        NEAR
Max Queue Number:        128
Queue Min Size:          4096
Queue Max Size:          131072
Queue Type:              MULTI
Node:                    0
Device Type:             GPU
Cache Info:
    L1:                      16KB
Chip ID:                 5597
Cacheline Size:          64
Max Clock Frequency (MHz):1100
BDFID:                   768
Compute Unit:            11
Features:                KERNEL_DISPATCH
Fast F16 Operation:      FALSE
Wavefront Size:          64
Workgroup Max Size:      1024
Workgroup Max Size Per Dimension:
    Dim[0]:                  67109888
    Dim[1]:                  50332672
    Dim[2]:                  0
Grid Max Size:           4294967295
Waves Per CU:            160
Max Work-item Per CU:    10240
Grid Max Size per Dimension:
    Dim[0]:                  4294967295
    Dim[1]:                  4294967295
    Dim[2]:                  4294967295
Max number Of fbarriers Per Workgroup:32
Pool Info:
    Pool 1
      Segment:                 GROUP
      Size:                    64KB
      Allocatable:             FALSE
      Alloc Granule:           0KB
      Alloc Alignment:         0KB
      Acessible by all:        FALSE
ISA Info:
    ISA 1
      Name:                    amdgcn-amd-amdhsa--gfx902+xnack
      Machine Models:          HSA_MACHINE_MODEL_LARGE
      Profiles:                HSA_PROFILE_BASE
      Default Rounding Mode:   NEAR
      Default Rounding Mode:   NEAR
      Fast f16:                TRUE
      Workgroup Max Dimension:
        Dim[0]:                  67109888
        Dim[1]:                  1024
        Dim[2]:                  16777217
      Workgroup Max Size:      1024
      Grid Max Dimension:
        x                        4294967295
        y                        4294967295
        z                        4294967295
      Grid Max Size:           4294967295
      FBarrier Max Size:       32
*** Done ***

Interesting attention is the number of compute units for Vega8 (gfx902): 11 instead of 8 suggesting that Vega8 is nothing more than a cut-down Vega11.

ROCm OpenCL is also installed as seen below

/opt/rocm/opencl/bin/x86_64/clinfo
Number of platforms:                1
Platform Profile:                FULL_PROFILE
Platform Version:                OpenCL 2.1 AMD-APP (2783.0)
Platform Name:                AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
Platform Vendor:                Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Platform Extensions:                cl_khr_icd cl_amd_event_callback cl_amd_offline_devices

Platform Name:                AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing
Number of devices:                1
Device Type:                    CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU
Vendor ID:                    1002h
Board name:                    AMD Ryzen 5 2500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx
Device Topology:                PCI[ B#3, D#0, F#0 ]
Max compute units:                11
Max work items dimensions:            3
    Max work items[0]:                1024
    Max work items[1]:                1024
    Max work items[2]:                1024
Max work group size:                256
Preferred vector width char:            4
Preferred vector width short:            2
Preferred vector width int:            1
Preferred vector width long:            1
Preferred vector width float:            1
Preferred vector width double:        1
Native vector width char:            4
Native vector width short:            2
Native vector width int:            1
Native vector width long:            1
Native vector width float:            1
Native vector width double:            1
Max clock frequency:                1100Mhz
Address bits:                    64
Max memory allocation:            6256727654
Image support:                Yes
Max number of images read arguments:        128
Max number of images write arguments:        8
Max image 2D width:                16384
Max image 2D height:                16384
Max image 3D width:                2048
Max image 3D height:                2048
Max image 3D depth:                2048
Max samplers within kernel:            5597
Max size of kernel argument:            1024
Alignment (bits) of base address:        1024
Minimum alignment (bytes) for any datatype:    128
Single precision floating point capability
    Denorms:                    Yes
    Quiet NaNs:                    Yes
    Round to nearest even:            Yes
    Round to zero:                Yes
    Round to +ve and infinity:            Yes
    IEEE754-2008 fused multiply-add:        Yes
Cache type:                    Read/Write
Cache line size:                64
Cache size:                    16384
Global memory size:                7360856064
Constant buffer size:                6256727654
Max number of constant args:            8
Local memory type:                Scratchpad
Local memory size:                65536
Max pipe arguments:                16
Max pipe active reservations:            16
Max pipe packet size:                1961760358
Max global variable size:            6256727654
Max global variable preferred total size:    7360856064
Max read/write image args:            64
Max on device events:                1024
Queue on device max size:            8388608
Max on device queues:                1
Queue on device preferred size:        262144
SVM capabilities:
    Coarse grain buffer:            Yes
    Fine grain buffer:                Yes
    Fine grain system:                Yes
    Atomics:                    No
Preferred platform atomic alignment:        0
Preferred global atomic alignment:        0
Preferred local atomic alignment:        0
Kernel Preferred work group size multiple:    64
Error correction support:            0
Unified memory for Host and Device:        1
Profiling timer resolution:            1
Device endianess:                Little
Available:                    Yes
Compiler available:                Yes
Execution capabilities:
    Execute OpenCL kernels:            Yes
    Execute native function:            No
Queue on Host properties:
    Out-of-Order:                No
    Profiling :                    Yes
Queue on Device properties:
    Out-of-Order:                Yes
    Profiling :                    Yes
Platform ID:                    0x7f3b9d3b9ed0
Name:                        gfx902-xnack
Vendor:                    Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Device OpenCL C version:            OpenCL C 2.0
Driver version:                2783.0 (HSA1.1,LC)
Profile:                    FULL_PROFILE
Version:                    OpenCL 1.2
Extensions:                    cl_khr_fp64 cl_khr_global_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_global_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_base_atomics cl_khr_local_int32_extended_atomics cl_khr_int64_base_atomics cl_khr_int64_extended_atomics cl_khr_3d_image_writes cl_khr_byte_addressable_store cl_khr_fp16 cl_khr_gl_sharing cl_amd_device_attribute_query cl_amd_media_ops cl_amd_media_ops2 cl_khr_subgroups cl_khr_depth_images cl_amd_copy_buffer_p2p cl_amd_assembly_program

Notice again the number of compute units.

In term of applications, Blender will detect and use ROCm OpenCL. Unfortunately, the use of GPU Compute is very slow for rendering. Darktable, Gimp and Libre Office are able to use it as well.

Improving HP Envy x360 convertible on Linux: the missing accelerometer driver

2018-12-18T22:36:00.000-08:00

If you own an HP laptop equipped with AMD processor, you may find out the auto-rotation will not work as intended. It turned out that sensor is missing a driver not currently available on Linux kernel using the lspci -nn command from the terminal

03:00.7 Non-VGA unclassified device [0000]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device [1022:15e4]

That driver in question is AMD Sensor Fusion HUB. Unfortunately, researching it turned out harder even on AMD own website. Bug is already filed without answer yet from one of AMD representative.

Enable stylus settings on HP Envy x360 Convertible

2018-11-25T21:45:00.001-08:00

Thanks to the tips from Peter Hutterer, the author of libinput and libwacom, enabling the configuration of the stylus for the HP Envy x360 Convertible is very simple. Create a table file i.e. elan-264c.tablet in this example using this template and look at the dmesg output like:


[    3.014612] input: ELAN0732:00 04F3:264C Pen as /devices/platform/AMDI0010:00/i2c-0/i2c-ELAN0732:00/0018:04F3:264C.0001/input/input15

Now the name is found as an ELAN device, include the following information


# ELAN touchscreen/pen sensor present in the HP Envy x360 Convertible 15-cp0XXX

[Device]
Name=ELAN 264C
DeviceMatch=i2c:04f3:264c
Class=ISDV4
Width=14
Height=8
IntegratedIn=Display;System

[Features]
Stylus=true
Touch=true
Buttons=0

Copy the new created file to /usr/share/libwacom/ path. Gnome Shell will automatically detect the new tablet file and display the new information. Below is the result:

Stylus configuration

Tablet information with calibration and display adjustement

Testing the stylus input

I pulled the new file to upstream who immediately accepted it. For user owning an HP touchscreen devices, expect your distribution to provide the updated linuxwacom package.

Since owning that 2-in-1 laptop, with the help of upstream, we have resolved the touchscreen issue and now the configuration of the stylus. Next challenge will be the Windows Hello like authentication currently available in the COPR repository for testing and contacting both upstream and GNOME team.

Touchscreen and stylus now working on HP Envy x360

2018-11-24T23:27:00.001-08:00

The Fedora version on kernel 4.19.3 includes a patch allowing both stylus and touchscreen to properly run on AMD processor based HP touchscreen thanks to the combined effort from Hans, Lukas and Marc for finding the root cause and testing the fix.

A few scary moment on HP Envy x360 15-cp0xxx Ryzen 2500U was a conflicting IRQ handling due to possibly booting on Windows 10 used to get all feature parity to Linx counterpart i.e. Fedora 29 in this case. Fortunately, power off somewhat did the trick. Since then, both stylus and touchscreen run without a hitch.

A minor issue was the Gnome Settings does not display information of both devices due to the missing data from Elan driver thus meaning no configuration possible like assigning buttons and no possible way to test touchscreen. Additionally, Gnome Shell assumed the battery still at 1% capacity and the bug is filed for that reason.

Detected Stylus displayed with incorrect battery status

Nevertheless, the stylus with some configurating runs smooth on applications like Gimp and Inkscape. For the touchscreen, Firefox for Linux lack proper onscreen keyboard. That will be continued...

Detailing the installation of AMD OpenCL rpm for Fedora

2018-11-19T21:16:00.000-08:00

Revisiting the previous blog and freshly reinstalling Fedora Design Suite due to a busted boot, I look at the official guideline from AMD Driver for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.2 and write a way to improve the process of installing on Fedora 29 in this example.

Extracting the tarball contains the following:

amdgpu-install
amdgpu-pro-install symlink to amdgpu
doc folder
repodata folder
RPMS folder containing rpm package

Executing the command ./amdgpu-install -opencl=pal --headless sadly failed on Fedora on that line:

./amdgpu-install -y --opencl=pal --headless
Last metadata expiration check: 0:30:51 ago on Mon 19 Nov 2018 07:13:43 PM PST.
No match for argument: amdgpu

Upon closer look, the script failed to created a temporary repository on /var/opt/amdgpu-pro-local probably explaining why amdgpu metapackage name failed to display. Someone should investigate and provide a fix. At least, we find out Fedora support is available but unofficial.

Due to its design, Gnome Software only allows one click package per installation, not by selection, so terminal remains the logical option.

Learning the new version on AMD Radeon 18.40 driver no longer needs dkms for installing OpenCL, the process is much easier without requiring kernel-devel package. The following dependencies are now:

amdgpu-core (core metapackage)
amdgpu-pro-core (metapackage of amdgpu-pro)
clinfo-amdgpu-pro
libopencl-amdgpu-pro
opencl-amdgpu-pro-icd

Installing amdgpu-core alone causes dnf to complain about support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.5 due the script extracted from rpmrebuild -p -e command:

if [ $(rpm --eval 0%%{?rhel}) != "07" ] ; then
        >&2 echo "ERROR: This package can only be installed on EL7."
        exit 1
fi

Selecting all above dependencies overrides it and completes the installation despite a failure of a scriptlet from amdgpu-core. OpenCL now available will be automatically detected by applications like Blender, Darktable,LibreOffice and Gimp.

We learned it is possible to install AMD version of OpenCL on Fedora. We also learn it is possible to retrace the spec file using rpmrebuild -e -p command. Additionally, we also find out the open source amdpgu and the pro version can coexist.

All test done on HP Envy x360 Ryzen 2500U with integrated Vega8 using Vega56 driver for CentOS 7.5 from the official AMD website.

Using AMD RX Vega driver OpenCL on Fedora 29

2018-11-13T21:18:00.000-08:00

The Raven Ridge APU is very capable processor to handle OpenCL inside some applications like Blender, Darktable and Gimp. Unfortunately, the current implementation from Mesa, clover, stuck to 1.3, is not supported. AMD released their driver 18.40 with OpenCL2.0+ targeting only Red Hat Enterprise Linux/Cent OS 6.10 and 7.5 in addition of Ubuntu LTS. The good new is the former rpm format can be used on Fedora.

The graphical part of Raven Ridge is Vega 8, basically a cut-down of Vega56 or Vega64 meaning choosing either driver for RX Vega.
The instruction is provided for extracting the rpm files but here is
some requirements for OpenCL:

kernel-devel (provided by Fedora repository)
amdgpu-dkms
dkms
libopencl-amdgpu-pro
opencl-amdgpu-pro-icd

Once done, applications needing OpenCL will automatically detect the driver located on /opt/amdgpu/lib64. Blender will list as unknown AMD GPU and Darktable will enable it.

OpenCL from official AMD driver enabled on Darktable

Raven Ridge Vega8 listed as unknown AMD GPU detected

There is a ROCm version but it currently does not support the graphical side of Raven Ridge at this time. It will be great that someone will finally write a srpm for Fedora.

HP Envy x360 Convertible Ryzen 2500u update

2018-11-08T18:39:00.002-08:00

Nearly one month later, HP Envy x360 Convertible 15 powered by Ryzen 2500U is running smoother on kernel 4.19.0 with someissues:

The LED for the mute button failed to work suggesting a possible ACPI issue.
An unfortunate oversight from HP for not including a led for Num Lock button.
The touchscreen function failed due to ACPI bug related to a mis-configuration of tables. Sadly, it affects all HP Envy touchscreen series equipped with AMD processors. Workaround made by an Arch user exists and no upstream Linux maintainers has picked up yet for clean up and improvment. The side effect would be an unfortunate false impression HP touchscreen with AMD processors is horrible.
The gyroscope needed to automatically rotate the screen depending of the position is broken possibly due to ACPI bug.

On the positive side, I was impressed by the modular adaptability of HP Envy x360 upgrade wise thanks to the excellent HP documentation. The board can be replaced with the powerful version of Ryzen 7 APU. Adding memory turned out very easy once the procedure is fully followed. Currently the upgrade has 16 GB RAM and a SSD 1TB storage drastically improving the overall performance. Granted the hardware is not mean for heavy 3D gaming but is powerful enough for visual editing and some 3D rendering.

The hardware overall is very capable 2-in-1 Linux machine once issues are ironed out hopefully as soon as possible. The users as community provided a suggestion, the ball is on the upstream maintainers/vendors themselves improving the solution so testers can verify.

Fedora 29 Design Suite Lab available

2018-10-31T17:39:00.002-07:00

Fedora 29 Design Suite is available for downloading with latest stable release applications including Gimp 2.10.6 among the features.
On the bad news side, Blender 2.79b on Fedora 29 has broken user interface due to compatibility issue related to python 3.7. Workaround will be installing from the flathub directory.

Next release will be interesting considering the structural change for the incoming Fedora 30 with the advent of flatpak packages.

Running HP Envy x360 Ryzen 2500U with SSD

2018-10-22T21:29:00.001-07:00

Replacing the 1TB 7200rpm HDD with a well reviewed Samsung 860 EVO 1TB HDD turned out a drastic improvement in term of speed caught me by surprise.

Noticeable effect was the nearly five seconds boot straight to the login screen and the response time of opening and closing applications. Envy x360 Ryzen 5 feels snappy now.

On a side note, Windows 10 has a nice app called Windows Hello to authenticate with face similar to facial recognition founds on Android device. A similar open source application called howdy is available but not packaged for Fedora yet.

Retiring ASUS X550ZE and greeting HP Envy x360 Ryzen 5

2018-10-18T23:02:00.001-07:00

My ASUS X550ZE reached its end of life due to hardware power issue after getting a lot of abuse. From that experience, I have learned a lot about dual Radeon graphic processors working in the open source world and I followed AMD graphic development since then.

Enter HP Envy x360 Convertible 15-cp0xxx Ryzen 5 marking the return to tablet PC. I originally intended to buy the Ryzen 7 version for more performance but the specification is very similar with only a sightly more powerful graphic processor as the difference on Ryzen 5. The model uses a 1 TB hard disk drive with 8 GB DDR4 RAM and I plan to upgrade to a 1TB solid state drive (Samsung Evo version looks suitable).

Installation

Installing Fedora 29 Beta Design Suite was very smooth after shrinking the partition of Windows 10 and keeping Secure Boot enabled by default.

Post installation

Some revealing issues:

Touchscreen and stylus mode is broken due to acpi bug preventing proper detection.
AMD Raven, the name of the APU, works fine but occasionally glitched on log out and reboot. At this time of writing, mesa version is 18.2.2.
Battery usage is adequate but has yet to take advantage on improvements currently for Intel based hardware. Running powertop sightly increased the time of battery usage.

The remaining details is on https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Luya/Laptops/HP_Envy_x360

1000 downloads of Scribus unstable in COPR Fedora 28

2018-08-25T00:12:00.001-07:00

What a surprise to see 1000 download of Fedora 28 repository for Scribus Unstable! Thanks a million.

Scribus 1.5.4 available in COPR repository

2018-05-01T21:14:00.002-07:00

For users finding Scribus 1.4.7 lacking in features notably the complex text layout for Asian languages, Scribus 1.5.4 is available via COPR repository from Fedora 26 (soon reaching end of life) to Rawhide.
Additionally, a snapshot for the future 1.6.0 (currently 1.5.5) is also available for improving the experience to upstream.

Vulkan now fully functional on ASUS X550ZE

2018-04-15T12:18:00.004-07:00


South Island (Hainan) and Sea Island (Kaveri) functional with RADV

Running Fedora 28 Design Suite post beta shows a nice surprise: Vulkan with RADV is fully functional on both South Island (Hainan) and Sea Island (Kaveri) cards on ASUS X550ZE laptop. amdgpu driver is needed to enable the feat in combination of boot parameter (cik.amdgpu_support=1 cik.radeon_support=0 si.amdgpu_support=1 si.radeon_support=0)

Vulkan smoketest running on RADV

Some minor issues need be to addressed like occasional glitches. Otherwise the performance is stable enough for dail use.

Running Sapphire Radeon RX 560 on Fedora 27 beta (follow up)

2017-10-08T22:45:00.003-07:00

Following the previous blog and some investigation, it turned out the kernel package from Mystro256 COPR repository based on agd5f kernel branch (one of AMD developers) resolves the blank screen issue. That could trigger a problem for users having a new AMD graphic hardware so perhaps a warning should be written on the release. Perhaps having one of contributors be part of kernel team bringing these improvement until those patches arrive to the mainline kernel for a better user experience.

Past the issue, the desktop experience with Radeon RX 560 was tremendously improved compared to the retired GTX 460 v2. Gnome on Wayland on Fedora runs smooth showing how far the open source amdgpu driver went through compared to previous years. That was also the opportunity to run a vulkan based smoke test demo on RADV, which is a counterpart of glxgears.

Overall the card is excellent once missing software are installed.

Running Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560 4GB on Fedora 27 Beta

2017-10-08T12:08:00.000-07:00

I bought a Sapphire Pulse Radeon RX 560 4GB to replace the broken Nvidia GTX 460 v2 after a long years of service. It is then my first ever dedicated AMD based video-card for a desktop.

The boot sequence on Fedora 27 hit a problem: a plain blank screen suggesting the card is not yet supported. Looking at Phoronix website revealed one of possible requirement missed: LLVM 5.0 which is currently not available to Fedora repository save a failed built. I filed a bug report to address the issue. Hopefully that will land on time for the official release of Fedora 27.

Considering AMD desktop card

2017-10-03T13:53:00.000-07:00

My Nvidia GTX 460 v2 card just died after six years of service after attempting to restore it. It was the last known Nvidia card that could work out of box with open source driver.
I have used Nvidia for a long time but the behaviours from the company prompt me to no longer consider that option. Currently the GPU market is very expensive to afford a good AMD card.
Additionally, the nine years old motherboard needs a replacement as the venerable AMD Phenom II 940X shows its age. The onboard Geforce 8300 is troublesome to run.

For now, I use a laptop until I can afford a powerful custom built desktop this time will full AMD hardware.

Easy way to fix non functional ctrl key

2017-07-18T10:18:00.001-07:00

Ctrl key buttons refused to work on laptop?

Tried pressing Ctrl + Alt + Fn? Mixed result.
Reboot hardware? No dice.
Pressing Ctrl + Left click on Touchpad? Worked

I am not sure what exactly caused the problem as the issue surprisingly affects more models than expected.

Scribus 1.5.3 available on COPR repository

2017-06-05T23:46:00.000-07:00

Scribus 1.5.3 is now available on the new COPR repository while scribus-unstable is now switched to 1.5.4 snapshot.
Highlighted featurese for 1.5.3 are:

The most important change isn't immediately visible, namely a completely rewritten text layout engine, which supports complex scripts like Arabic, Hindi or Thai, as well as providing access to advanced OpenType features, such as ligatures and alternate glyphs.

Scribus now follows the XDG standard for configuration files. Therefore, the Scribus preferences directory has moved from ~/.scribus/ to a new default location: ~/.config/scribus/
The performance of copying and pasting objects in/from/to files with huge color palettes has been vastly improved.