[copperx]

Can AMD Ryzen and Threadripper run Linux without crashing? What about compiling large source code bases? There were some scary bugs reported on Linux when Ryzen came out.

And that's not even covering motherboard incompatibilities with Linux (e.g. sleep/shutdown not working, WiFi/Bluetooth broken, etc.)

Have those problems been fixed definitively? Or should one stick to Intel for Linux at the moment?

[mih]

Longtime Linux user who switched to Ryzen 1500x recently from an old Core i7 (2011 model). As far as the processor goes, I have faced no problems w.r.t stability. Paired with an ASRock motherboard, there are no problems with other functionality such as suspend/resume either. Occasionally the Desktop compositor hits a snag freezing my machine and requiring a forced reboot, but I would fault the NVidia drivers for this.

Also, since I use the Arch distro, installing packages from the AUR requires compiling stuff. So far ffmpeg has been among the packages with large source code base that I compile regularly and I've never had issues. I would like to compile the kernel too, but I'm unsure as to whether the difference will be noticeable for my daily usage. On my old machine, the Zen-kernel did improve responsiveness, but on my current one, I'm sticking to the LTS kernel.

Word is that the 2nd generation of Ryzen a.k.a Raven ridge are more stable and worth it if you can afford them (watch out for motherboard compatibility though).

[chx]

I can't resist crosslink my post from two days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17656645

I for myself couldn't suffer a machine where I occasionally need to reset , destroying flow.

[copperx]

I read your post twice and you didn't mention rebooting. Were you rebooting because of docking?

Most of your gripes come from running Linux on a laptop machine. If you are a person who likes to work on powerful desk workstations, Linux behaves great on those. Granted, some things, such as multifunction printers (which are mostly software-driven) don't have support. You do have to be careful when selecting hardware, unfortunately.

[chx]

No, I just found your off-the-cuff comment absolutely typical of the desktop Linux situation: it's totally stable except when it freezes so hard you need to find a reset button.

[jhasse]

> Can AMD Ryzen and Threadripper run Linux without crashing?

Yes, of course!

> What about compiling large source code bases? There were some scary bugs reported on Linux when Ryzen came out.

Are you referring to this? https://www.extremetech.com/computing/254750-amd-replaces-ry...

The later revisions of Ryzen 1000 CPUs have been fixed, you could RMA your CPU if it was affected (I did this myself, AMD's support was excellent). Ryzen 2000 CPUs aren't affected.

> Have those problems been fixed definitively? Or should one stick to Intel for Linux at the moment?

I've never heard of any motherboard incompatibilities. The WiFi chips in some of those AMD motherboards are actually from Intel btw.

I'm running an AMD Ryzen workstation with Linux for over a year now and it works perfectly.

[ben-schaaf]

From what I remember those crashes were hardware defects that caused issues under load on any platform. Ryzen 2 hasn't had this issue and my 1600X worked beautifully out of the box on Ubuntu 18.04 except for the lack of sensors.

[copperx]

So your software has no idea whether the hardware is overheating?