First of all, sorry if I am duplicating an existing thread but I searched the forum and could not find an existing thread about this topic.
I am currently running (and have been for the past 2 and some years) Kubuntu 14.04 LTS on a Lenovo laptop which has "hybrid graphics" a.k.a. "switchable graphics" which means that I can either 1) run the integrated Intel graphics alone, with AMD Radeon GPU disabled; or 2) I can run the Intel integrated graphics + AMD GPU together, but I cannot run only the AMD GPU by itself with the Intel graphics disabled, the Radeon is only some sort of "co-accelerator" or whatever they call it.
Getting this to work properly in terms of drivers was a huge pain in the butt. The open-source drivers couldn't handle it (they just couldn't load OpenGL when the Radeon GPU was enabled), no matter which configuration I tried. Getting the proprietary fglrx (AMD Catalyst) drivers to work was also nearly impossible. Finally I found a repo which had some sort of modification for fglrx that allowed hybrid graphics to work properly and finally, after some months, I could use my graphics card. Then an update broke it, but the next update fixed it again. It's been working ever since.
Now, I tried Kubuntu 16.04 (from a LiveCD) and I like it A LOT, I think KDE Plasma 5 is like the slickest Linux interface ever. I wanted to update to 16.04 (yes I know direct updates from 14.04 don't work properly right now, I was going to do a clean install) but then I found out that the fglrx are deprecated and cannot be installed in 16.04!
I see that there are new open source drivers - amdgpu and radeon - that replace fglrx. I've found a bunch of posts on the internet about people being happy with them, but I can't seem to find any examples of these drivers working with the "hybrid graphics".
Has anybody had any experience using 16.04 and such Intel/AMD "hybrid/switchable graphics" with the new open source drivers? Does it actually work?
I'd love to upgrade but the last thing I want to do is break my graphics card functionality...
Thanks a lot for any input.
I am currently running (and have been for the past 2 and some years) Kubuntu 14.04 LTS on a Lenovo laptop which has "hybrid graphics" a.k.a. "switchable graphics" which means that I can either 1) run the integrated Intel graphics alone, with AMD Radeon GPU disabled; or 2) I can run the Intel integrated graphics + AMD GPU together, but I cannot run only the AMD GPU by itself with the Intel graphics disabled, the Radeon is only some sort of "co-accelerator" or whatever they call it.
Getting this to work properly in terms of drivers was a huge pain in the butt. The open-source drivers couldn't handle it (they just couldn't load OpenGL when the Radeon GPU was enabled), no matter which configuration I tried. Getting the proprietary fglrx (AMD Catalyst) drivers to work was also nearly impossible. Finally I found a repo which had some sort of modification for fglrx that allowed hybrid graphics to work properly and finally, after some months, I could use my graphics card. Then an update broke it, but the next update fixed it again. It's been working ever since.
Now, I tried Kubuntu 16.04 (from a LiveCD) and I like it A LOT, I think KDE Plasma 5 is like the slickest Linux interface ever. I wanted to update to 16.04 (yes I know direct updates from 14.04 don't work properly right now, I was going to do a clean install) but then I found out that the fglrx are deprecated and cannot be installed in 16.04!
I see that there are new open source drivers - amdgpu and radeon - that replace fglrx. I've found a bunch of posts on the internet about people being happy with them, but I can't seem to find any examples of these drivers working with the "hybrid graphics".
Has anybody had any experience using 16.04 and such Intel/AMD "hybrid/switchable graphics" with the new open source drivers? Does it actually work?
I'd love to upgrade but the last thing I want to do is break my graphics card functionality...
Thanks a lot for any input.