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Yes, I wrestled with this for a good hunk of the weekend. I managed to get Xubuntu 17.04's live media to boot in recovery mode with acpi=off and iommu=soft, but GRUB2 reliably failed to install. Thus, even getting into a barebones install and patching things in situ wasn't really possible. I've resorted to running Windows 10 Pro x64 on it for now, and will revisit this after Halloween... Bright side, I may get caught up a bit on my gaming backlog.

If the issue is GRUB installation, you might be able to install that system onto another box with the options you need set and move it to the Ryzen system.

Vhalidictes wrote:

If the issue is GRUB installation, you might be able to install that system onto another box with the options you need set and move it to the Ryzen system.

That's true. It'd be a bit of a pain - I'd have to shlep two drives over since I run the OS off an SSD and keep /home on a secondary HDD - and once I'd shoveled the files on, I'd still be faced with troubleshooting afterward. But I appreciate the suggestion, and will likely resort to that in the next couple of weeks. Thanks!

synthtel2 wrote:

SMT is extremely difficult to get right, and this being AMD's first SMT design, I'll give it a free pass (as far as their reputation).

Its Intel I'm more willing to give a free pass on. I may not like their product segmentation nonsense, but outside of very rare issues (TSX for example) their stuff (in my own experience of course) just darn works

srg86 wrote:

synthtel2 wrote:

SMT is extremely difficult to get right, and this being AMD's first SMT design, I'll give it a free pass (as far as their reputation).

Its Intel I'm more willing to give a free pass on. I may not like their product segmentation nonsense, but outside of very rare issues (TSX for example) their stuff (in my own experience of course) just darn works

The last time I ran Linux on AMD hardware I had no trouble other than with Ubuntu. But that was with Socket A.

Most of my Linux installation headaches have been related to GPU drivers or EFI. I will say that Intel's IGPs seem to be well-supported (so if you're in that boat you have decent odds of avoiding a trip to GPU driver hell), but aside from that I'd say it has been a wash.

whm1974 wrote:

The last time I ran Linux on AMD hardware I had no trouble other than with Ubuntu. But that was with Socket A.

Ubuntu has only been through the whole alphabet since then.

On a semi-related Linux and Ryzen note, Ryzen 5 works fine and dandy with ESXi. I had heard of PSOD's with Ryzen 7 and its 16 threads, but either people just suck at installing hardware and software, or Ryzen 5 has no issues at 12 threads. Possibly still both. Unsurprisingly, Windows and Ubuntu VMs work as expected, as well as various other flavors of Linux and BSD.

I would just like to add my experience with Linux, Ryzen R7 1800X, and ASUS PRIME X370-PRO.

I had no issue installing Ubuntu 16.04. It install the first time, just like one would expect. With the initial BIOS revision the boot times were very long. I didn't time it, but it seem to take like 50 or 60 seconds to reach the GRUB screen. However, Ubuntu booted just fine. I had read that Kernels older (like 4.8 in 16.04) would crash on Ryzen. So, updated it to 16.10.

I upgraded the BIOS each time it came out. After updating the BIOS based on AGESA 1.0.0.4a, the machine booted much faster. However, I still had rather slow memory frequencies at this point.

When I upgraded to the BIOS based on AGESA 1.0.0.6a the thing became unstable and would just lock up randomly. I made two changes in the BIOS and not it seems stable. Hasn't locked up for about 3 weeks. For the SDRAM I picked the D.O.C.P option and then I upped the SDRam voltage by +0.05 volts. The memory is running faster (I believe it at 2955).

I am pretty happy. Has not been bad for a brand new platform. I have had just as rough experiences in the past with new Intel platforms.

srg86 wrote:

Its Intel I'm more willing to give a free pass on. I may not like their product segmentation nonsense, but outside of very rare issues (TSX for example) their stuff (in my own experience of course) just darn works

Not what I meant by free pass. I meant if any manufacturer is introducing something this different from all their previous stuff (or adding known minefields like SMT), I'll less likely think that any bugs found in that first generation reflect any fundamental quality problems in the company. I'm rarely an early adopter, so that may color my views on that a bit.

Intel still seems to have a decent lead in platform quality, but AFAICT the CPUs themselves have been comparably reliable for a long time now. Both manufacturers regularly have to fix very serious bugs, but they're at least good enough at it that end users rarely get bitten.

^ That's ^ leaving my own experiences out of it due to being too anecdotal. My own experience, other than those TSX-related segfaults, includes that 4690K's death. It was almost certainly the motherboard's fault (my G3258 in the same board is now dying too, thankfully in a different manner), but the 4690K did a lot more than just crash on its way out. I never did figure out how to fix the font rendering until I reloaded the system. I really, really don't like CPUs that get things wrong instead of crashing, and this wasn't just rounding errors.

Centos is hard to install on actual hardware. I had trouble installing Centos 7 on Dell C2D laptop as well as Thinkpad T420s until I disabled nVidia GPU. I love Centos on the server but it doesn't play well on desktops. Good to know about Ryzen on Linux.

Utwig wrote:

Centos is hard to install on actual hardware. I had trouble installing Centos 7 on Dell C2D laptop as well as Thinkpad T420s until I disabled nVidia GPU. I love Centos on the server but it doesn't play well on desktops. Good to know about Ryzen on Linux.

Centos (and RHEL) really are designed to be server OSes from the ground up. It is not too surprising that the desktop experience is, shall we say, sub-optimal. Support for laptops with dual GPUs has also been spotty for Linux in general, so you were doubly handicapped.

If you need Centos on your desktop/laptop (say, because you are doing development that targets a Centos server), you're probably better off running it in a VM.

Completely off topic: Looked you up since I didn't recall seeing your user name before. Your previous post was in 2007! See you again in another 10 years?

Yan wrote:

I bought a Ryzen CPU intending to use it for both Windows 7 and Linux. Foolishly (for I should know better), I didn't check first whether my distribution supported Ryzen.

I knew I'd have problems installing Windows 7. When trying my installation DVD, neither the keyboard nor the mouse worked, so I couldn't progress. Fortunately, my motherboard manufacturer (Gigabyte) prepared a patch for a boot USB drive, and after applying the patch, installation was no problem.

I also knew that Microsoft deliberately broke Windows update on Windows 7 with Ryzen (this sounds like an abuse of a dominant position to me), but I also knew there was a patch for that also.

Linux was a much bigger problem. I couldn't get Grub to install properly, even though I literally wrote the book (well, a book) on installing Grub. Finally I discovered my problem: my version of Linux didn't support Ryzen.

I'm using CentOS 6, and I'd be more than willing to accept the clear message that I should switch to CentOS 7, but apparently that also doesn't work.

Phoronix tried seven distributions with Ryzen, and CentOS was the only one that didn't work. I've always been curious about Debian; now may be the right time to try it.

1. Concerning having issues installing Win 7. That is why you have a p/2 mouse on hand. I had NO issues installing my win7 Software on my Biostar x370 mobo because of this and was able to update the USB drivers for the MB while Win7 was open.
2. Concerning Linux. Running Zorin 12.2 and it was the easiest of the 3 OS's I am running on my Rig. Windows 10 still sucks for gaming and will be working on gutting the bastard out and reducing what Micro$haft want to see out of my Comp.

I was so scary surprised on just how easy and fast Zorin was on my computer. It reminded me of my Puppy Linux days which I am still fond of.

Utwig wrote:

Centos is hard to install on actual hardware. I had trouble installing Centos 7 on Dell C2D laptop as well as Thinkpad T420s until I disabled nVidia GPU. I love Centos on the server but it doesn't play well on desktops. Good to know about Ryzen on Linux.

RHEL/CentOS don't have the most up to date graphics stack, and that is a pain point for them. Aside from that, they work as well as anything else as far as hardware goes. Actually better then some since RH backports drivers to their stable kernels.

If you want more recent software, run Fedora.

Running both Win 7 and Zorin 12.2 Linux on my Ryzen 1800X computer. Had to do a little bit of tweaking on Win 7 but no real biggie and Zorin was a very smooth installation.

adamlongwalker, the OP posted approaching a year ago. And found a solution shortly thereafter. It's a dead horse.