Why Does 14.04 Hate AMD?

[O. Sinclair]

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On 04/11/2014 20:54, Clay Weber wrote:
> On Tuesday, November 04, 2014 07:25:08 AM Billie Walsh wrote: 
> <snipped>
>> 
>> Something you said just jumped out at me.
>> 
>> You disable the GPU [ Graphics Processor Unit ] as unnecessary?
>> 
>> I'm no genius but I do know that the GPU is responsible for
>> putting the stuff on the screen. That's kind of like poking your
>> eyes out and wondering why you can't see anything.
>> 
>> Also, the AMD with Intel GPU bothers me. Did you replace the
>> graphics with an Intel based graphics card or is it onboard Intel
>> chip set with an AMD CPU installed?
> 
> No, it is so-called "hybrid" graphics, where there are two gpus on
> a computer, laptops mainly, one for low power, battery conserving
> use and the other for high performance, switchable as required
> (probably simply and automatically in Windows, I presume?)
> 

yes it is a hybrid with 2 gpu, 1 is intel and 1 is AMD. It is SUPPOSED
to work as you describe but some time after 12.04 the proprietary AMD
(fglrx) software never finds the HD5450 card. The problem is known and
has been discussed on Ubuntuforums but no solution has been found.

If I use the open source Radeon driver the laptop damn near overheats
and I can forget battery life.In all honesty it seems to have improved
in later kernels but as I am not into gaming I prefer to simply switch
off the AMD and use the Intel rather than having 2 gpu running without
any to me noticeable advantage.Just to irritate me the vgaswitcheroo
does not seem to work in kernels newer than 3.12.x, instead it only
switches off the AMD gpu when on battery.

If I could I would switch it off in BIOS but this idiotic BIOS goes
back to "hybrid" on next reboot...and yes it works in the small
windows 7 partition I keep for "just in case".

Am not sure they even manufacture these hybrids any longer and had I
been aware of this headache I would have bought something else.

For me it is like this with linux and graphics: if you don't care
about gaming simply go Intel. If you are into gaming from what I
understand Nvidia is still the preferred choice when using proprietary
drivers and AMD if you wish to use open source



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