I haven’t bought a full desktop computer for 30 years - I just buy components and upgrade stuff as required. I didn’t have any trouble getting my Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT / 6900 XT from Amazon - it wasn’t cheap - $500+ - but - people are spending THOUSANDS on GPUs for gaming (mostly NVidia) - and the Open Source drivers for Radeon are as good, if not better, than the proprietary ones - so don’t have to mess about replacing nouveau with NVidia proprietary drivers.
My GPU has 3 x Display Port and 1 x HDMI - I only use 2 of the DP ports - and have the HDMI “reserved” for my display pen tablet… Just worked out of the box on Pop!_OS (need vendor drivers for the display tablet - I bought it 'cause the vendor [XP-Pen] specifically have Linux drivers).
I used to use a Targus USB BT dongle in my desktop PC - but had heaps of issues with it - the main BT device I use is a mouse - but also sometimes BT Headphones… I ended up buying a PCIe combo WiFi and BT card (from a local supplier) - and it was an Intel chipset and it just works - I NEVER get BT dropouts since.
Had a heap of WiFi and BT issues on my AMD ThinkPad - it had a RealTek or Broadcom chipset - so I bought a mini-PCIe (laptop form factor) replacement of Amazon for $20 - and it also has Intel chipset and “just works”.
That used to be the case 10+ years ago - not so much these days… I can remember thinking something like (on Linux) “When BT works, it feels like black magic, when it doesn’t work it feels like Bad Juju” - I can remember running “bluetoothctl” from the CLI to force it to pair to a mouse (using a Targus USB BT dongle). I haven’t needed to use “bluetoothctl” for a few years now…
Yeah , you can buy the AMD cards, no problem. Scorptek is a good source in oz.
Nobody seems to want to sell PC’s with AMD cards… you might get a desktop with a custom build… dont know how you get a laptop?
It has almost got to the point where “nvidia card” has become part of the language as a general term for graphics card
There are AMD (Ryzen) ThinkPads with Vega graphics (i.e. the CPU is also the APU/GPU). My AMD ThinkPad (E495) has AMD GPU (i.e. Vega8 on the same die as the CPU).
The SteamDeck also has AMD GPU (Vega8 on the APU) - this is the same driver set for dedicated Radeon GPU… I believe - i.e. fully open source.
Here’s “inxi -Fxz” synopsis for the GPU in my ThinkPad :
I think there are quite a few AMD powered laptops with AMD GPU, most of them are using the AMD APU built into the CPU die… But there are ones with Radeon PCIe… not many I agree…
i.e. not all Ryzen have built in GPU - my desktop machine doesn’t - it’s a stock Ryzen 7 (3700x)…
HP sold me my last machine with an AMD processor and GPU. Most of their machines are available with AMD hardware or Intel/Nvidia. But you’re stuck with Windows.
We are talking mainly about AMD addon graphics cards.
Apparently some AMD cpu’s do have built in graphics ( like some intel cpu’s) ,… see what @daniel.m.tripp says above …but there is no builtin nvidia graphics, afaik, if it says nvidia graphics it should always be an addon card.
Yes, in most cases you dont need to know… because Linux automatically loads the drivers for whatever graphics hardware is present. Not sure what Win does?
A lot of those Pc’s you are dealing with would have intel graphics built into the cpu. Those are never a problem.
No. AMD GPUs run on Linux without any issues. I had a Nvidia 720GT card which could not deliver the actual resolution which the card supported with the Nvidia recommended driver. Yes, that was an old GPU but it shouldn’t have a problem if Nvidia would release its proper driver as it does on Windows. Then I replaced it with an AMD Sapphire RX550 DDR5 4GB, not a high end card but it started working out of the box and didn’t give me any headache since. Only Davinci Resolve has an issue of detecting it on Linux, but I got Kdenlive instead which is far better than Resolve FREE version, in my opinion and it is using my GPU without any problem.
You should enquire about the hardware specs before installing any OS or you could open the case and detach the heatsink before proceeding (you have to keep the thermal gel with you though) if it is a new PC. In case of a running PC, you know what to do to check the specs.
I just boot to the usb with the lmde on it if it boots straight then i install, if not i used to try pac version or compatible mode but not needed to do that for several years.
Never had a problem with any hardware or resilution but dont have many clients who are so in to graphics perhaps 3 or 4 but never had and complaints and they were users coming from apple to linux on mac machines that could not run new version of os and also moved from photoshop to gimp.
You were lucky.
There is a whole range of older nvidia cards that Linux will no longer work with, because nvidia refused to update their linux drivers.
What happened was there was a kernel change which altered the interface for kernel modules. Every supplier of linux drivers, except nvidia, simply updated their drivers. Nvidia cancelled linux support for many of their older cards.
I was caught up in that. I replaced my old nvidia card with an AMD card. It should not have been necessary. I will not buy nvidia in my next purchase.
What characterizes Linux culture is a love and use of open source software. Not by all necessity FLOSS, but definitely OSS.
Just take a look at most Linux distributions. They include massive amounts of open source software, but rarely, if ever, shareware (software which requires a key to unlock all features.
Just look at the repositories of your distribution: can you name me 10 shareware applications which is in included the repositories?
I ask for shareware and not commercial software, because commercial software is not freely distributed contrary to most shareware.
Another aspect of the Linux community is that a big portion of the community tends to be knowledgeable. Help is often freely given and frequently given without an expectation of reward.
Finally, regarding the developers of the software, they actually care about it. Most of the time, they’re using the software they’re contributing to themselves. This means there’s an actual need to guarantee its quality.
I agree with that… FOSS users are knowledgable… and to a certain extent they need to at least to be capable of finding technical information.
I suppose if you are doing something for no financial reward, you have to care about it. I think most of it is intellectual satisfaction… the joy of solving a problem.
The rewards from helping are that in the process the helper often learns something.
Very few of us are intellectual giants who can master a topic without bouncing it off other people and getting feedback.
I also appreciate the fact that many companies do allow their developers to maintain their ‘hobby FOSS thing” when working. It’s something we easily forget or even can’t see. Some companies have some info on their sites for this but not all. Linux is so important to these companies that they are giving back.
