New Desktop Machine
Last week, i decided to buy a new desktop machine for my home as my old desktop is now getting rusty and it's hard to keep up with all the requirements i need. Also it's a good time to switch to x86_64 architecture as my old desktop has been staying at x86 for a long time. I always follow -current development, so i never upgraded my system since the first time i install Slackware on that machine (i believe it was Slackware 13.0). It has been serving me over a great 8 years since 2009 looking from the result of this command:
tune2fs -l /dev/sda8 | grep created
Filesystem created: Tue Oct 6 03:29:23 2009
So i decided to buy a non-branded PC, but rather i built one myself so i get to pick which parts i'm going to use and finally i decided to take this part:
The installation of Windows 10 went smooth and i quickly upgrade it to latest Fall Creator update (build 1709) in no time alongside with installation of other applications that i need in Windows environment. I also had time to update my BIOS to the latest version with the utility provided by the vendor. Since i was able to work with UEFI on my laptop, i decided to try again on my new machine and it seems to be a bad decision as i had trouble with it when installing Slackware.
For Slackware installation, i tried to use the -current snapshot per December 4 which already reverted back to Linux Kernel 4.9.66, but i had an infinite loop of IRQ handle messages during initial boot that prevents me to go further. Next i tried to boot using Slackware 14.2 DVD which surprisingly work well so i ended up installing Slackware 14.2 x86_64 before i switched to Slackware64 Current using a local repository i had on my old desktop. I had another issue during boot loader selection as it didn't install elilo even though i have /boot/efi partition detected so i decided to use grub just like what i did with my laptop but i left out Windows since it wasn't detected. When i rebooted, it ended with the same failure as the initial installation. It turns out that Linux Kernel 4.9.x didn't play nice with my Ryzen, so i tried to boot again with my Slackware DVD and this time, i chroot into my root partition and upgrade the kernel to use the latest 4.14.x kernel from testing/. Surprisingly, it worked fine (there's a kernel oops at the beginning about AMD GPIO handler, but it worked fine after that) so i ended up using Linux Kernel 4.14.x for my desktop. I also installed latest NVidia driver and it is working out of the box with 4.14.x.
I started to configure my Slackware so that it can be used just like my previous desktop configuration and so far it is working great. I didn't install too many applications yet on this new system as -current is really a moving target and things changed in fast pace (the icu4c, poppler, and ical upgrade are good example how it can break many things easily). I still need to fix those things on my old desktop (it's compiling Qt5 at this time)
In the end, i still got some issues to solve:
- GRUB is using a low resolution.
I tried to modify the values in /etc/default/grub, but still it won't work well. vbeinfo doesn't give me a recommended values that i can use. I can live with it though, since GRUB is only displayed like for 10s max before it boots to Linux.
- GRUB is not detecting Windows Boot Manager
I can still boot to Windows by pressing F12 to boot to Windows Boot Manager directly, but i would rather see the Windows option on GRUB instead of pressing F12 during initial boot.
- Configuring for VGA Switch
At this moment, i'm working with 2 machines but with 1 monitor. I already ordered a VGA switch to solve this issue, and it's still on delivery. Hopefully i can fix this issue by this week so i don't have to switch cables anymore.
It seems my motherboard has a bug which is reported here. This prevents me to boot properly under 4.9.x and i have to upgrade to 4.14.x in order to boot.
tune2fs -l /dev/sda8 | grep created
Filesystem created: Tue Oct 6 03:29:23 2009
So i decided to buy a non-branded PC, but rather i built one myself so i get to pick which parts i'm going to use and finally i decided to take this part:
- AMD Ryzen 1600x
- GA-AB350M-Gaming 3
- 32 GB DDR4 RAM Elite Plus
- NVidia GTX 1050
- 4 TB WD Blue HDD
- 240 GB SSD
- Hyper 212 LED Cooler Master Heat Sink
The installation of Windows 10 went smooth and i quickly upgrade it to latest Fall Creator update (build 1709) in no time alongside with installation of other applications that i need in Windows environment. I also had time to update my BIOS to the latest version with the utility provided by the vendor. Since i was able to work with UEFI on my laptop, i decided to try again on my new machine and it seems to be a bad decision as i had trouble with it when installing Slackware.
For Slackware installation, i tried to use the -current snapshot per December 4 which already reverted back to Linux Kernel 4.9.66, but i had an infinite loop of IRQ handle messages during initial boot that prevents me to go further. Next i tried to boot using Slackware 14.2 DVD which surprisingly work well so i ended up installing Slackware 14.2 x86_64 before i switched to Slackware64 Current using a local repository i had on my old desktop. I had another issue during boot loader selection as it didn't install elilo even though i have /boot/efi partition detected so i decided to use grub just like what i did with my laptop but i left out Windows since it wasn't detected. When i rebooted, it ended with the same failure as the initial installation. It turns out that Linux Kernel 4.9.x didn't play nice with my Ryzen, so i tried to boot again with my Slackware DVD and this time, i chroot into my root partition and upgrade the kernel to use the latest 4.14.x kernel from testing/. Surprisingly, it worked fine (there's a kernel oops at the beginning about AMD GPIO handler, but it worked fine after that) so i ended up using Linux Kernel 4.14.x for my desktop. I also installed latest NVidia driver and it is working out of the box with 4.14.x.
I started to configure my Slackware so that it can be used just like my previous desktop configuration and so far it is working great. I didn't install too many applications yet on this new system as -current is really a moving target and things changed in fast pace (the icu4c, poppler, and ical upgrade are good example how it can break many things easily). I still need to fix those things on my old desktop (it's compiling Qt5 at this time)
In the end, i still got some issues to solve:
- GRUB is using a low resolution.
I tried to modify the values in /etc/default/grub, but still it won't work well. vbeinfo doesn't give me a recommended values that i can use. I can live with it though, since GRUB is only displayed like for 10s max before it boots to Linux.
- GRUB is not detecting Windows Boot Manager
I can still boot to Windows by pressing F12 to boot to Windows Boot Manager directly, but i would rather see the Windows option on GRUB instead of pressing F12 during initial boot.
- Configuring for VGA Switch
At this moment, i'm working with 2 machines but with 1 monitor. I already ordered a VGA switch to solve this issue, and it's still on delivery. Hopefully i can fix this issue by this week so i don't have to switch cables anymore.
It seems my motherboard has a bug which is reported here. This prevents me to boot properly under 4.9.x and i have to upgrade to 4.14.x in order to boot.