5 ms·

I'm also using a RX 480 on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine. We only got free-sync support very recently, and there is no overclocking/fan control or GUI of any kind. A

I'm also using a RX 480 on my Ubuntu 16.04 machine. We only got free-sync support very recently, and there is no overclocking/fan control or GUI of any kind. Also, as far as I understand the open source driver is only included with Linux Kernels 4.7+ while Ubuntu 16.04 is on 4.4 (16.10 is on 4.8). So if you want to use the open source driver you have to pick your distribution carefully.

aidenn0 10y ago
I don't use Ubuntu, so I'm curious; is there a reason someone wouldn't upgrade from 16.04 if 16.10 is out and has drivers they need?
- wjnc 10y ago
  16.04 is a LTS-version (long term support) while .10 is not - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
- vetinari 10y ago
  16.04 is long-term support, 16.10 is not. The difference is, that 16.10 will be supported for 9 months, while 16.04 for 5 years. If you like reinstalling every few months, the non-LTS release is fine. Most people don't, so they prefer the LTS release.
  - paulmd 10y ago
    Slightly OT but why is the .10 release always the short-term release and .04 the LTS? You would intuitively think higher number => more stable and that you would avoid major breaking changes on a minor release number, but they do exactly the opposite.
    - toss1941 10y ago
      LTS releases are in April where non-LTS come out in October. Doesn't explain your question exactly, but at least that's what the numbers mean.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      LTS release comes every two years; but it is not the last release ever. See this: https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life
    - daveguy 10y ago
      To put it a little more explicitly. Ubuntu names their releases for the YY.MM of release 16.04 was released in the year 2016 (16) in April (04). So those are date based releases rather than semantic versioning (semantic is x.y.z with x major, y minor, z patch). They release a LTS version every two years in April: 12.04, 14.04, 16.04 and the next will be in 2018, 18.04. They do add a "patch" version after that, but the YY.MM are the major releases. 16.04 is an older version than 16.10, but it will be supported with patches for a longer period of time (major versions of individual software packages will stay the same).
  - digikata 10y ago
    No reinstalling needed, you can just do a dist-update to the next distro release whenever it's out. There are reasons to favor the LTS release, but I don't really see that as one of them.
    - vetinari 10y ago
      Provided nothing breaks, then yes, do-release-upgrade can do the job. (dist-update does not upgrade to a new release in Ubuntu). I have a bad experience with this, especially upgrading one LTS to another LTS. Clean install was much more reliable.
      - digikata 10y ago
        I have never had a problem on a release upgrade. It's one of the reasons to like Debian based distros IMHO. I suppose that may in part be because I typically waited for a while after a new major platform release to move the the next release.
        vetinari 10y ago
        The 10.04 to 12.04 upgrade has broken audio on my xbmc (now Kodi) box. Audio is pretty fundamental thing on a such box. I've spend a day trying to fix it, until I threw in a towel and reinstalled it from scratch. The 12.04 o 14.04 upgrade was also broken. I don't remember details, it booted, but the dependencies went weird. I wasn't trying to fix it anymore, just straight reinstalled from scratch. I haven't upgraded it to 16.04 yet. I will try, what will happen, once Kodi stops supporting 14.04.
        slgeorge 10y ago
        You should use the upgrade system provided by Ubuntu ('update-manager'), it knows more about the changes than the standard 'dist-upgrade'. You can also run it to test what changes it will make. Second, if you are using PPA's you are much more likely to have problems. There's no way to test all the inter-relations between packages that are outside the central archive. If you have packages that have upgraded fundamental packages in Ubuntu's Main archive then it's likely to break. I mention this because you're talking about multi-media. In general, it's best to remove PPA software before you launch the upgrade, in fact it's a good opportunity to remove anything from the system that you don't really need: for example for my 16.04 upgrade I removed the C++ environment as I'm not using it.
- jmiserez 10y ago
  Lots of third party code is tested only on the latest LTS version, so using LTS often makes everything easier.
digikata 10y ago
I loaded Ubuntu 16.10 into my build for just that purpose, though really it wouldn't be difficult to bump the 16.04 kernel up to 4.8+. There are also 16.04 and 16.10 ppas with different levels of mesa driver that are built and tested ahead of the main repositories (stable and nightly). If you're not interested in being that close to the bleeding edge I understand, so some of the improvements at the front-edge are maybe 6-12 months out from wider distribution.

aidenn0 10y ago

I don't use Ubuntu, so I'm curious; is there a reason someone wouldn't upgrade from 16.04 if 16.10 is out and has drivers they need?

wjnc 10y ago
16.04 is a LTS-version (long term support) while .10 is not - https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS
vetinari 10y ago
16.04 is long-term support, 16.10 is not. The difference is, that 16.10 will be supported for 9 months, while 16.04 for 5 years. If you like reinstalling every few months, the non-LTS release is fine. Most people don't, so they prefer the LTS release.
- paulmd 10y ago
  Slightly OT but why is the .10 release always the short-term release and .04 the LTS? You would intuitively think higher number => more stable and that you would avoid major breaking changes on a minor release number, but they do exactly the opposite.
  - toss1941 10y ago
    LTS releases are in April where non-LTS come out in October. Doesn't explain your question exactly, but at least that's what the numbers mean.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    LTS release comes every two years; but it is not the last release ever. See this: https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life https://www.ubuntu.com/info/release-end-of-life
  - daveguy 10y ago
    To put it a little more explicitly. Ubuntu names their releases for the YY.MM of release 16.04 was released in the year 2016 (16) in April (04). So those are date based releases rather than semantic versioning (semantic is x.y.z with x major, y minor, z patch). They release a LTS version every two years in April: 12.04, 14.04, 16.04 and the next will be in 2018, 18.04. They do add a "patch" version after that, but the YY.MM are the major releases. 16.04 is an older version than 16.10, but it will be supported with patches for a longer period of time (major versions of individual software packages will stay the same).
- digikata 10y ago
  No reinstalling needed, you can just do a dist-update to the next distro release whenever it's out. There are reasons to favor the LTS release, but I don't really see that as one of them.
  - vetinari 10y ago
    Provided nothing breaks, then yes, do-release-upgrade can do the job. (dist-update does not upgrade to a new release in Ubuntu). I have a bad experience with this, especially upgrading one LTS to another LTS. Clean install was much more reliable.
    - digikata 10y ago
      I have never had a problem on a release upgrade. It's one of the reasons to like Debian based distros IMHO. I suppose that may in part be because I typically waited for a while after a new major platform release to move the the next release.
      - vetinari 10y ago
        The 10.04 to 12.04 upgrade has broken audio on my xbmc (now Kodi) box. Audio is pretty fundamental thing on a such box. I've spend a day trying to fix it, until I threw in a towel and reinstalled it from scratch. The 12.04 o 14.04 upgrade was also broken. I don't remember details, it booted, but the dependencies went weird. I wasn't trying to fix it anymore, just straight reinstalled from scratch. I haven't upgraded it to 16.04 yet. I will try, what will happen, once Kodi stops supporting 14.04.
        slgeorge 10y ago
        You should use the upgrade system provided by Ubuntu ('update-manager'), it knows more about the changes than the standard 'dist-upgrade'. You can also run it to test what changes it will make. Second, if you are using PPA's you are much more likely to have problems. There's no way to test all the inter-relations between packages that are outside the central archive. If you have packages that have upgraded fundamental packages in Ubuntu's Main archive then it's likely to break. I mention this because you're talking about multi-media. In general, it's best to remove PPA software before you launch the upgrade, in fact it's a good opportunity to remove anything from the system that you don't really need: for example for my 16.04 upgrade I removed the C++ environment as I'm not using it.
jmiserez 10y ago
Lots of third party code is tested only on the latest LTS version, so using LTS often makes everything easier.

digikata 10y ago

I loaded Ubuntu 16.10 into my build for just that purpose, though really it wouldn't be difficult to bump the 16.04 kernel up to 4.8+. There are also 16.04 and 16.10 ppas with different levels of mesa driver that are built and tested ahead of the main repositories (stable and nightly). If you're not interested in being that close to the bleeding edge I understand, so some of the improvements at the front-edge are maybe 6-12 months out from wider distribution.