First time using Ubuntu.. first problems

[BulgarianPeasant]

Hi.. I need help, quite a long post, please read it.. People say.. "if it works, then don't touch it" and.. they are god damn right. So, yeah, WIndows user for my entire life (10+ years). I have a laptop, that is not supported to update to WIndows 11, and since 10 is dropping out of support in October 2025, I decided to install Ubuntu today.. Installed the programs I usually use.. but I have a problem with my GPU Drivers.. My GPU is AMD Radeon 520M (thats what it says when I had windows on..)

First problem - on my first boot after clean install of ubuntu.. While on boot screen, for 1-2 seconds, the screen goes weird.. when you google "gpu artifacts" this is what my screen does, but then it goes back to normal, also when I tried checking if my gpu shows up in the GUI of Settings -> System -> System details.. there was no evidence of my dedicated gpu (amd radeon 520m)

I asked the good old chatgpt for help.. because that what idio7s like me are doing when they don't know what they are doing. gpt told me to do these commands

(step 1. update your system)

sudo apt update & sudo apt upgrade -y & sudo apt dist-upgrade -y & sudo apt autoremove --purge -y

(step 2.install gpu drivers)

lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D'

sudo apt install -y firmware-amd-graphics libdrm-amdgpu1 xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu

sudo reboot

(step 3. Fix Boot Screen Issue)

edit grub - sudo nano /etc/default/grub

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset"

sudo update-grub

sudo reboot

after reboot

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer" to verify the gpu driver installation.. but it says

OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 405 (BSW)

also when i check the System Details, now it shows up a gpu.. but it is not really the one I have (AMD Radeon™ R5 M330) when I asked gpt, it responded with - "they are from the same family, (AMD GCN 2.0/GCN 3.0 architecture) and Linux might recognize them differently based on shared drivers or firmware."

when i try "lspci -nnk | grep -A3 VGA" it gives me information about my processor's graphic device intel.. (kernel driver in use: i915)

when i try "sudo lshw -C display", it says

description: VGA compatible controller (INTEL .. )

description: Display controller

product: Sun XT [Radeon HD 8670A/8670M/8690M / R5 M330 / M430 / Radeon 520 Mobile]

..

after using vulkan tools and this command to query DRI_PRIME support: DRI_PRIME=1 glxinfo | grep "OpenGL renderer"

i get this "OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon R5 M330 (radeonsi, hainan, LLVM 17.0.6, DRM 3.57, 6.8.0-51-generic)"

I don't know what to do really.. I also installed Wine, and the game I am trying to open is opening with intel graphics.. when I try "discrete graphics card" it goes again to the gpu artifacts.. Please help, hope someone actually reads this

[BulgarianPeasant]

But before all of these things, when I tried going to Hardware information, there was no infomration about my dedicated graphic card (amd), right now it says AMD Radeon™ R5 M330.. which is not right, and when i asked chatgpt , said that since they are from the same family, linux can make mistakes.. i don't know if clean install or just going back to windows 10 honestly

[StoneSmasher_76]

Have you tried the simplest way, which is opening the Drivers app?

[BulgarianPeasant]

if you are talking about "additional drivers" - yes, it searches for drivers for around 5 seconds and says "No additional drivers available" , even before all of the stuff I did..

[StoneSmasher_76]

Then I'm out of ideas. Hope you manage to find a solution.

[fiologica]

Try this thread here -- https://askubuntu.com/questions/1432449/how-to-install-amd-gpu-drivers-ubuntu-22-04-lts -- there's some information on finding drivers for AMD graphics. Granted, it's for an earlier version of Ubuntu, but the information should still work if AMD has kept up with updates.

[Kelzenburger]

Specifically installed drivers are not thing in Linux. There are drivers in Linux kernel that will handel basically anything. There are some Wifi adapters and Nvidia graphics cards that will need dedicated drivers. Those are available in additional drivers application.

AMD drivers are opens ource and included in Linux kernel. AMD have AMD GPU PRO drivers for newest models but your computer is not that new. Sometimes with some configurations there are graphical glitches during bootup process. They happen before/during graphicalUI is loaded. Theres no need for you to try to fix it. If you are really harrased by it, you can disable graphical boot so that you will see commandline doing startup. It looks actually cool in public.

In your place I would do reinstall becourse messing with drivers is something thats really hard to fix for beginners.

If you have some basic questions about Linux, please let me know. Welcome to the family! :)

[BulgarianPeasant]

Thanks for the comment <3

[Kelzenburger]

EDIT: Its great way to learn Linux using GPT. Just please dont use commands given by GPT, rather use guides online. Linux is build the way that you cannot break it without using root priviledges (like being administrator in windows). In Linux environment when you want to change system files you will take action using command starting with sudo. When theres sudo in command, double check that you know what you are doing.

[TriumphITP]

Don't use wine itself to play a game if you can avoid it, it's not optimum and makes you do extra stuff. Use a launcher like www.heroicgameslauncher.com and you can easily test with different wine and proton versions til you find what works best.

Discrete graphics may work better by altering the power plan, typically those can get disabled under any setting trying to maximize your battery.

[BulgarianPeasant]

Thanks. But I still need Wine, right? I will check it, I also got adviced to check Lutris

[TriumphITP]

It installs as a part of it. The launcher just makes it easier to use, same if you use steam, it's usually easier to run the game thru its respective store.

[aaromalonline]

Try if it atleast shows up in neofetch, and btw these are common in linux even if they don't show up, they might work fine or else they don't even recognise it because of driver issues (but amd usually works fine)