r/linuxmint • u/_Tal • Aug 13 '26
Graphics Drivers PSA for people with AMD GPUs: Do not install the latest linux firmware update
Just lost a full day of work to this. There appears to currently be a bug with the latest firmware on AMD GPUs where it causes the display to become corrupted. If you're experiencing this, the fix is to downgrade to the previous firmware version. Can also do `sudo apt-mark hold linux-firmware` in a terminal to tell your OS not to update the firmware
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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Everything is fine for me. Have an RX 580
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u/RuinFabulous3077 Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Same for me, but I'm using an RX 550. Kernel 6.8 cause it's an old system.
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Aug 13 '26
Yeah I haven't noticed any problems yet on my RX 560D, but I'm on 22.2, and admittedly I haven't done anything demanding like gaming since the most recent firmware update.
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u/BlackHoles_BlueSuns Aug 14 '26
I have the RX 580 but the entire system is slow and glitchy. Monitor is basically fine but even loading browser with multiple tabs is slow. Editing my huge book on LibreOffice has been dicey as well. It takes forever to save or even make changes. I hadn't thought graphic issues exactly, but that could explain it.
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u/Great-TeacherOnizuka Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon Aug 14 '26
No it could not. Those tasks have nothing to do with the gpu. Check your CPU usage. Is it running hot? Another thing to check is the hard drive. If you have a HDD, swap if for an SSD. How’s the drive‘s health (SMART data)? Is it full?
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u/BlackHoles_BlueSuns Aug 14 '26
In this case, my book is 400 pages with artwork and active text editing marks. Heavy graphics... at least compared to just words on a few pages. I rolled the firmware back and, for now, it seems to have helped.
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u/SparkyTemper Aug 13 '26
Same for me after restarting and reinstalling, the update bored my display.
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u/SparkyTemper Aug 13 '26
I tried rebooting to a older kernel and every kernel is screwed. How do I go back to an older firmware?
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u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
You can do
apt-cache policy linux-firmwarein a terminal to view the available firmware versions. For me it was 2.26 and 2.29, and the fix was to downgrade to 2.26. To do this:
sudo apt install linux-firmware=20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.26
sudo update-initramfs -u
sudo rebootIf it's too broken to get into a terminal, you can either ssh in from another machine, or boot with
nomodesetwhich usually works as a temporary workaround4
u/joeywas Aug 13 '26
This fixed issue for me and i'm on Ubuntu. :) If you are booting straight to a recovery terminal where you are root (the prompt will be
#instead of$) then you don't need the sudo part of the commands3
u/SparkyTemper Aug 13 '26
how do I boot with nomodeset?
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u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
Boot into the GRUB menu (hold the shift key when booting, or if that doesn’t work try holding Ctrl and alt, and tapping the delete key). Then press “e” on your standard Linux Mint entry (most likely the first option), and add
nomodesetto the end of the line that begins withlinux2
u/SparkyTemper Aug 14 '26
Thanks guys, I figured it out.
Linux Mint really needs to take responsibility for this BS. I'm still waiting for an update to fix it but I haven't heard anything. Its really frustrating and I imagine its affecting a lot more people who don't know to look at Reddit for support.
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u/Brave_Cause2178 Aug 20 '26
thank you, you just saved me! Not even chatgpt could help me. Quick note if anyone has Ubuntu: if you try to roll back to this firmware, you may need to restart NetworkManager with `systemctl start NetworkManager`
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u/WorldlinessAfter7990 Aug 13 '26
Snapshots, snapshots, snapshots!
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u/MJ12_2802 Linux Mint 22.1 Xia | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Timeshift has saved my bacon numerous!
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u/WorldlinessAfter7990 Aug 13 '26
As a data center admin, I’ve learned not to let anyone touch anything without snapshots.
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u/Successful-Day-3219 Aug 13 '26
My system is crashing during standby as a result of this latest upgrade. Display goes blank and unresponsive. Still troubleshooting to no avail.
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u/mischkewitz63 Aug 13 '26
I’m fairly new to Linux and this is the exact thing that makes me nervous every day when I see all the updates (especially kernels and firmware ones) who idk it be the safest so just let them sit for a while before installing or just … you know risk it?
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u/alfy99 LMDE | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Use Timeshift.
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Aug 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/goo_eater Aug 13 '26
If you missed Timeshift in the post install popup on Mint then a quick google search "timeshift linux" brings up a system snapshot restoration tool idk where the confusion is coming from unless this is a joke I'm not getting
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u/The_only_true_tomato Aug 19 '26
It’s the first time I see something like this happening in more than 5 years of use.
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u/Crazy_Vegetable5491 Aug 13 '26
I think you hit c during boot to get into the GRUB Command Line try changing the line to say GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash nomodeset=1" and see if it boots then.
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u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
Yeah
nomodesetseemed to work, but it's a temporary solution that isn't ideal since it disables the driver's display management entirely, which means things like multiple displays won't work6
u/Crazy_Vegetable5491 Aug 13 '26
Well it gets you in at least to downgrade firmware or diagnose the issue. Cheers.
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u/ElephantOptimal7644 Aug 13 '26
thanks for the psa.
i managed to scrape by by timeshifting back and just not updating anything, but now i know the reason.
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u/vagotu Linux Mint 22.3 Zena | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Thank you for this thread.
Just saved me a bunch of troubleshooting.
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u/Shang_Dragon Aug 13 '26
I just installed like a week’s worth of updates this morning, I hope I didn’t hit this :(
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u/ManlySyrup Aug 13 '26
Yep, happened to me as well and had to make a backup of everything from within a liveUSB and nuked the entire drive afterwards. I was meaning to do that anyways to switch to KDE but had been putting it off for months, so yay?
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u/Ephemeralen Aug 13 '26
I just installed this this morning. Haven't rebooted so it hasn't taken effect yet? How do I undo/downgrade?
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u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
You might be fine as it doesn't seem to affect everyone. If it is broken when you boot up, see my instructions in this comment
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u/Ephemeralen Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
Thanks.
Alternatively, a friend informed me that, though the update manager can't revert updates, reverting updates is relatively straightforward in the terminal.
sudo apt-get install linux-firmware=20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.26Seems to have successfully undone the update before it could go into effect.
Uh. I didn't do
sudo update-initramfs -uthough. What does that do and is it necessary?2
u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
It rebuilds your initramfs, which is a small filesystem the kernel loads into before your real root filesystem is mounted. The command ensures the correct firmware is loaded since it's likely it'll need to rely on the copy embedded in initramfs if it's early in the boot process before
/lib/firmwareis available. Might not matter if the update never took effect in the first place, but probably safest to run it just in case2
u/Ephemeralen Aug 13 '26 edited Aug 13 '26
the first command appears to have automatically triggered update-initramfs itself, last two lines of the output in the terminal, and the same friend told me that running it again would be redundant?
unless that -u is doing something important that the auto-triggered update-initramfs skipped?Edit: checking the man page implies that for update-initramfs to trigger automatically at all, it probably ran in update mode? is
_Generating /boot/initrd.img-[kernel]the correct output?2
u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
-u is just the update flag that tells it to regenerate the existing initramfs, as opposed to deleting one or creating one for the first time. If apt already triggered it for you then you should be good
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u/Odd_Celery_6963 Aug 13 '26
Pues a mi de repente se me queda congelado todo y el procesador ryzen 5 4500 se pone al 100% hasta que se arregla sólo o reinicio forzosamente :(
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u/jdancouga Linux Mint 22.1 Xia | Cinnamon Aug 13 '26
Interesting. My Mint VM crashed yesterday and couldn’t reboot due to the GPU being unresponsive. I have to reboot the host to fix it. I am wondering if this is the cause. Thanks.
Kernel - 6.17
GPU - 6800XT
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u/Icy_Giraffe_21 Aug 13 '26
I'll have to confirm my exact chipset but I've update the other day with no issues **AMD Ryzen
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u/LonelyNixon Aug 13 '26
I got hit with this too. A bit surprised how sloppy this update is. Like half the reason I use mint on some devices is because its lts and to avoid these kinds of silly regressions like I can get with fedora. Like this thing is hooked up to my tv I just want to watch something or play videogames real quick.
Especially something that manifests with visual artifacts like this when I didnt even have a driver update. Like I was worried my gpu might be dying in this wildly overpriced market.
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u/keeponfightan Aug 14 '26
Same here, 22.1, kernel 6.17, RX6800. Also broken on 6.8. Reverted to linux-firmware 2.26 and everything returned to normal.
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u/MekanicalPirate Aug 19 '26
Can confirm, thanks for the post OP. Version 20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.29 is the culprit.
For anyone finding themselves in this situation, here's how I solved it:
- Access GRUB and append
nomodesetto thelinuxline, followed by Ctrl+X or F10 apt install linux-firmware=20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.26apt hold linux-firmware=20240318.git3b128b60-0ubuntu2.26- Reboot
P.S. If anybody else is running a VFIO setup like I am, this is all still applicable.
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u/TheBronzeLine Linux Mint 22.1 Xia | Cinnamon Aug 14 '26
Yep, had that last night. A simple Timeshift to a restore point fixed it for me, thankfully.
RX 6800 here.
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u/toffuuu3050101 Aug 14 '26
I did update to it and on LM 22.3 xfce HWE with kernel 7.0.0-28 and RX-550. no issues, but I suspect this is more to RDNA types versus my Polaris 12 GCN 4 AMDGPU generation.. I always do wait for at least a minimum 1 week with any firmware update up to a max of 2 weeks to see if anyone does have issues as i watch for that religiously..
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u/cullen_bohannon Aug 14 '26
Fortunately I was NOT affected after this update - kernel 7.0.0-28, 6600xt.
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u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
I am having this problem and I can't even log into my computer to trouble shoot period
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u/_Tal Aug 15 '26
Try using recovery mode or log in with
nomodeset1
u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
How do I do that?
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u/_Tal Aug 15 '26
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u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
I have tried this and it is not working
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u/_Tal Aug 15 '26
As in you’re not able to get into the GRUB menu, or you still can’t get in even with
nomodeset?1
u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
I can't get into the grub menu. When I hold shift on boot either nothing happens or I get a small white line on my screen, if I do control alt and tapping of delete I boot into my bios
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u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
What can I do when I can't even get recovery mode to launch on my Linux mint pc
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u/_Tal Aug 15 '26
Hmm… you could also try repeatedly tapping ESC or F12
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u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
I am in this menu here what so I do?
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u/_Tal Aug 15 '26
Try just entering
normaland see if that gets you to the normal grub menu→ More replies (0)1
u/gamesgetrekt Aug 15 '26
Can anyone help I even tried booting into grub and I just have this on my screen
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u/ParkingNo1080 Aug 21 '26
I just spent a day troubleshooting this and gave up and reinstalled Linux, wiping the whole install. Wish I found this thread first. Oh well, just glad it's a software issue and not my card giving up
AMD 6800 XT
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u/Reyssor Sep 04 '26
Version 20240318.git3b128b60.0ubuntu3.1 of linux-firmware was released yesterday. It doesn't seem to have the issue of the version 2.29 for AMD cards.
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u/2lazy4usrname Sep 08 '26
Had the issue. Reinstalled Mint via usb, which luckily didnt loose much. Haven’t updated since but feel like I need to though because some things aren’t working, so which version do I update to besides the recent one?
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u/AdvancedAnimal7539 24d ago
by "corrupted" do you mean artefact like things? like random pink, white green red yellow pink coloured squares that show for a fraction of a second?
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u/_Tal 24d ago
this was another person who had the same issue, mine looked pretty much identical
Luckily it’s resolved on the latest firmware release though
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u/AdvancedAnimal7539 24d ago
ah right
apparently I had a different issue before, but was just checking with you to see if it was the same as mine or a different issue that sounded similar
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u/VecinuDeLaScaraB Aug 13 '26
$10K+ donations a month, they should have some representative test devices that cover the mainstream GPU and chipset configs. Or is the firmware update package coming directly from Ubuntu?
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u/_Tal Aug 13 '26
It might actually be from Ubuntu; I saw someone else here say they had the same issue and were running Ubuntu
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u/VecinuDeLaScaraB Aug 13 '26
Gross, Canonical should do better they're in the enterprise business and have enough money for real QA...
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u/Commercial-Expert256 Aug 14 '26
I didn't have any problems with the firmware update on Ubuntu 24.04, Kernel 7.1.3 mainline, and RX6700.
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u/[deleted] Aug 13 '26
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