I use the MX Linux distribution (Debian-based) as my dual-boot. Recently, I’ve started building a new PC, the crux of which will be a Radeon RX 7900xtx GPU. Since it showed up before everything else, I crammed it into my current PC to replace a GTX970 to test and play around.
After some fun with the Dell BIOS not giving me any video out, I got it running great in Windows. However, when booting into MX Linux, the system simply hangs on a flashing cursor forever. If I press the power button, it shows the normal shutdown text of stopping services and shuts down fine, so I know it’s not a hard crash, just a silent hang.
I’m assuming this is related to the NVidia drivers being embedded in the kernel or something and it just can’t figure out how to initialize the Radeon card? I was using the NVidia proprietary drivers on my GTX970 before, installed through the MX Linux repos.
Any advice or guides you might have to get this install working again would be great! It would be no great loss if I had to reinstall it since I’ll be moving to a totally new PC anyway, but I’d like to try and save this install anyway.
When does it hang? If it’s after you log into your user, you could try to instead when on the login screen open a shell by pressing Ctrl + Alt + F2, uninstall Nvidia drivers and install mesa drivers. Or maybe at least investigate further.
yeah it hangs way before the login screen. It basically hangs immediately after exiting GRUB and goes directly to a flashing cursor.
elltee explained it above.. MX Linux’s stable distribution is on kernel 5.10 and I need kernel 6.x (part of their advanced hardware support release) to get AMD RDNA3 drivers. So I’ll most likely be doing a full reinstall unless you know how to replace kernels in place.