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RX 580 Forced Into Software Rendering Mode
PublicNuisance Sep 23, 2017
I just recently picked up an RX 580 and have been having an issue. If I install any kernel that is 4.11, 4.12 or 4.13 it is forced into software rendering mode after restarting. If I stick to any kernel 4.10 or lower it is fine. Obviously I would prefer to use a newer kernel. Could anybody tell me how to fix this ? I have never run into this issue before. Here is my system specs:

AMD FX-9590, 16GB DDR3-2133, MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X, Mesa 17.2.1, Samsung 850 Evo 250GB, Linux Mint 18.2 64, Kernel 4.10.17
Shmerl Sep 24, 2017
Do you have needed GPU firmware installed? Mint might be behind with it.

See if anything from here is missing in your firmware-amd-graphics package (that would be some of the polaris*.bin).

dpkg -L firmware-amd-graphics
PublicNuisance Sep 25, 2017
Quoting: ShmerlDo you have needed GPU firmware installed? Mint might be behind with it.

See if anything from here is missing in your firmware-amd-graphics package (that would be some of the polaris*.bin).

dpkg -L firmware-amd-graphics

I used dpkg -L firmware-amd-graphics in Terminal and got back:

"dpkg-query: package 'firmware-amd-graphics' is not installed"

I have narrowed it down to an issue with Mint as I tried Solus and Antergos and both worked fine with newer kernels.
Shmerl Sep 25, 2017
Quoting: PublicNuisance"dpkg-query: package 'firmware-amd-graphics' is not installed"

Well, that's the first thing you should fix. Did installing help it? Or there are still firmwares missing?
PublicNuisance Sep 25, 2017
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: PublicNuisance"dpkg-query: package 'firmware-amd-graphics' is not installed"

Well, that's the first thing you should fix. Did installing help it? Or there are still firmwares missing?

I tried installing it through terminal using "sudo apt-get install firmware-amd-graphics" and that returned

"Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package firmware-amd-graphics is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source

E: Package 'firmware-amd-graphics' has no installation candidate"
Shmerl Sep 25, 2017
Quoting: PublicNuisanceE: Package 'firmware-amd-graphics' has no installation candidate"

Something is seriously messed up with your Mint installation then (may be some repo is missing?). While you are figuring it out (try asking on Mint forums), you can just download one from here.

Either install it with dpkg -i, or better manually extract all *.bin files to /lib/firmware/radeon

And then, run:

sudo update-initramfs -u
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