9mo ago

Are there any CPUs that work well with Linux that aren't made by Intel or another company on the BDS list/that supports Israel?

I have a Ryzen 3 1300X at the moment and it's always had this soft lock freezing bug on Linux. I used to dual-boot Windows on this machine and Windows never had the same problem, so I think it is an issue with the Linux kernel (I've also replaced nearly every bit of hardware that I originally built the PC with, except for the CPU and motherboard, so it probably is an issue the kernel has with my CPU, or possibly the motherboard firmware).

I've changed the kernel parameters as suggested by the Arch Wiki. The bug is pretty inconsistent about happening so only time will tell if this solves the issue. But if it doesn't solve the issue, I'd honestly consider just getting a new CPU that doesn't have this issue, as completely freezing up, unable to get to a tty or anything, and only being able to power off by physically holding down the power button, is a pretty major issue, even if it only happens sometimes.

So if I do get a new CPU, or maybe just for when I'm next buying a CPU for reasons unrelated to this bug (been considering an upgrade to something that's better for compiling anyway), are there any good options out there? Intel is investing $25 billion into Israel and the BNC has called for "divestment and exclusion" from it (it's not officially on the BDS consumer boycott list, but I'm still very much not comfortable buying from Intel). But the Arch Wiki article seems to suggest this bug is applicable to Ryzen CPUs in general, or at least it never specifies a particular model or range of models. So maybe I'm limited to non-Ryzen AMD CPUs?

I'm guessing this is one of the situations where two companies have a complete duopoly over the market and there isn't an all-round good solution, but thought I'd ask in case anyone had some useful input.

97 comments

I think if you start with political positions of bigtech companies...
Just buy used

Buy Intel used so that you're not directly contributing?
Other than that or AMD, your only other option is ARM.
- Can you go and buy an ARM CPU and build a desktop system with it?
  
  Check out the Ampere Altra Developer Platform
  
  Yes.
  Not many, but they exist. I think most of them come soldered to the board like laptops.
  
  ltt made a video recently-ish showcasing a multi threaded arm cpu desktop. Not sure how availabe that is to the market though.

I have a Zen 2, Zen 3+ and a Zen 4 system and they all work well very with various Linux distros (Arch, Fedora) and recent kernels.
It's very likely that your bug is specific to early Ryzen CPUs/chipsets. A couple of folks on those reports mentioned their issues went away after a motherboard/BIOS upgrade. So I think you'll be fine if you went for a more recent AMD CPU+mobo.

I've heard that newer Ryzens play nicer with Linux.
- Yeah, my 5800X3D works perfectly; absolutely zero issues. I'm guessing it's making use of the 3DvCache too since I don't notice any performance degredations compared to Windows.
- Yeah First Gen Ryzens definitely had a Linux lock up bug. My x1700 had it all the time and could never fix it.
  
  I experienced that issue, AMD replaced it for free for me. Still rocking that R7 1700 to this day, still going to strong!
  
  Do you know if it's limited to first gen Ryzens? I'm looking into getting a Ryzen 5 5600X and I want to be sure I'm not gonna have the same issue
- I have a 3600X and haven't had any problems under Linux.
  
  Can confirm (but mine is the regular trim rather than the X version).

This is pointless. Your tax dollars are doing MUCH more for Israel than what products you buy. Boycotts are a capitalist distraction from the real systemic issues.
- His point wasn't to find a CPU, it was to make a political post in a tech community.
  
  I agree. We need more of these!
- Buhruh! Why not just stop voting since "your vote is only a drop in the ocean" or "it only legitimises a broken system"?
  Every action towards progress counts. It's better than nothing, which is what people do if you ask them to change the world in one go. Change is gradual, change is slow, change can be achieved by the small actions of many. Not everybody has the time to "tackle the systemic issues" you perceive to be true nor does everybody agree that those are the core issues.
  Belittling action, no matter how small, is discouraging and counterproductive.
  CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
  
  Voting is good because elections can be won by a few votes and ARE won by a few votes consistently. The tiny fraction off the top of your CPU purchase that might end up possibly supporting Israel is doing nothing compared to the hundreds of millions that, may I remind you, you cannot opt out of sending to Israel.
  Changing what products you consoom is literally feel-good liberal shit to make you feel like you're doing something. Talking to representatives and protesting is way more effective, in the sense that one of them does nothing and the other actually does something.
- What if you live in a country that doesn't send any money to Israel? Also, boycotts do work.
- Not when there's an organised boycott, called for by Palestinians. You can do multiple things at once. Not buying something takes 0 hours of your time lol
  
  Not buying something takes 0 hours of your time lol
  It takes so little time you needed to make a post to ask for help lol
- This smells of reductionist "no ethical consumption under capitalism" ideology.
  That just means living in capitalism doesn't exempt you from criticising the system, not that you can't and shouldn't use the mechanism of capitalism to help make life difficult for fascists.
  It might not "fix" the problems but it sure as hell is making Israel pay while our national governments do fuck all.

I have a system with a Ryzen 1700 with the same issue and have found the only reliable way to run it is by installing and enabling the disable-c6-systemd package from the AUR. The other fixes provided in the wiki article you linked are correct but aren't sufficient on my system, the CPU keeps reenabling the C6 state on its own and the disable-c6-systemd package works to counter that. The reason it works on Windows is they've disabled the C6 state by default for the CPU.
- This is amazing to find out now after 7 years:) I actually adjusted voltage manually on my Ryzen R5 1600, and it became 100% reliable, apparently the fix you mention prevent voltage below 1v at idle. I wondered why my CPU wasn't reliable unless I made manual OC with some voltage tweaks?
  I never looked it up, because my OC solved the issue, but I always thought it was a bit weird.
- Ah, thanks. I'm using runit not systemd (although this was happening on systemd when I was on systemd too) but I saw amd-disable-c6 in the AUR so I've installed that now, fingers crossed it works (the fixes in the Arch Wiki article haven't fixed it for me, it just happened again rip)
  Edit: nvm, looks like that package is a systemd service
  
  The package is just a systemd unit to run the command python zenstates --c6-disable so if you install the zenstates-git package and get runit to run that command at startup it would be equivalent.

Ah, that sounds a bit unfortunate. I've run AMD CPUs on Linux desktops with Bulldozer / Piledriver / Ryzen 7, my current laptop is a Ryzen 7 as well, never run into that at all. Hopefully the Arch wiki will sort you out. If not that, the third option would be 'install Linux on an M-series Mac' - don't know how feasible it is at the moment, and paying the 'Mac premium for hardware and software integration and then overwriting the software' doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
- I have has zen2 and zen3 systems and haven't run in to that either. So Zen2+ systems should be mostly fine.
  If you get an M1 or M2 mac it should mostly work. If you need thunderbolt(WIP) or vulkan(WIP) then you will have to wait. Otherwise accelerated desktops work and audio is working now. Honestly if you compare performance to competing systems, they end up pretty similar in pricing.

Well, that brings to light why I had an issue with my 3900x. Couldn't find it on google to save my life, but then it shows up randomly here, lol.
If it means anything, my 7800x3D doesn't have that bug. I've been using it now for about 3 months without issue. So maybe the rest of the 7000 series is good to go?
EDIT: I'd also like to mention that I'm heavily biased against Intel processors for that long line of severe security issues that they had on their processors a few years ago. I don't trust them at all.

I've never had any issues with Ryzen, but I never had first gen. If you don't want Ryzen, and Intel is unethical, maybe you could try a Epyc /s?
Buying used Intel stuff might also be an option. No more money would go to Intel, and using used stuff is good on the e-waste front.

Risc v maybe? Rock 64?
- A few more years until RISC-V is at 1st-gen ryzen levels (though it looks like RISC-V is accelerating every day)

I never managed to fix this bug with my first gen Ryzens. Worth upgrading to something newer for sure.
- Ah. I'm getting this answer a lot actually. I might try a newer Ryzen then if a lot of people are saying the newer Ryzens work
  
  Newer ryzens are better, especially because they get frequent updates to their microcode that fixes a lot of the issues you're experiencing.

Print your own
...in 10 years
- Or use any of these
  https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/china_approved_tech_list/

Modern Ryzen are fine on Linux. Not sure where they're declaring it happens for "all Ryzen" from.
- Not sure where they’re declaring it happens for “all Ryzen” from.
  I've not see anyone claim it happens on "all Ryzen", just that the Arch Wiki article doesn't specify a particular range or model

Here I was hoping we would get a breakdown on the companies making ARM processors ... Still an informative comments section.

My Ryzen 5700u work great with Debian, so as others said, consider upgrade CPU on your am4 motherboard, better buy apu since it always feels good to have backup gpu in your system in case main gpu breaks
- I don’t think getting an APU ‘just in case’ is a good idea. It limits your turbo frequency and halves your L3 cache compared to the equivalent CPU variants. It also limits you to PCIe 3.0 only. Some AM4 boards have a single 4.0 x16 slot for graphics cards, so getting an APU could directly affect the graphics performance from a discrete GPU. OP should get the chip that is more suited to their typical use case.

https://milkv.io/pioneer
- Holding out for the Oasis, myself. Cores licensed from SiFive and compliant even with the 1.0 rev of the Vector Extension (SG2380).
  
  Did you pre-order?

I had a similar problem with a Ryzen 5 1600, at first it worked flawlessly when I did a manual OC, then when I made a reset, I didn't care to OC again, and it began to occasionally freeze, usually when idle. When I made my manual OC again including upping voltages a bit for CPU and RAM it worked flawlessly again???
Weird since motherboard defaults aught to be stable IMO, but apparently they aren't always.
I've been using this CPU for 7 years now, and it still runs like a champ, as long as I don't use the motherboard defaults. I can't remember last time it crashed or froze.
EDIT:
I just found out the package "disable-c6-systemd" mentioned in your link, is exactly to prevent voltage drop below 1v at idle, which sounds exactly like the bug I had. which is funny to learn 7 years later. ;)

Get another AMD chip, you've just been unlucky. I've had AMD running Linux for 5 years with no issues.

RK3588 is used in many Linux devices, but I'm not sure if Rockchip is in the BDS list. I don't know which factory was RK3588 from.

What kernel version are you seeing that lockup bug on? I have a similar bug on Ryzen 5 2600x with kernel versions >= 6.7. 6.6 is fine.
More directly: Buy used. Lots of reputable sellers on eBay and their returns policy for defective products is unbeatable.
- hardened kernel v6.7.9, but I also had the same problem on the regular Linux kernel a while back. It's been a while since I've used the regular Linux kernel though so it might have gotten fixed on the regular kernel but not the hardened version?

As I understand, early ryzen processors are generally more buggy. I run 5800x on my desktop and a 5600(x?) in my server. You could try a newer ryzen and see if it works. I would recommend shopping around for a decent warranty.
- That's good to hear that you're not having problems on newer Ryzen. Although not sure if I want to risk buying a new Ryzen CPU if there's a chance I could have the same problem

While it probably isn't the issue for you, I have once been chasing a hard freeze that was caused by some APM setting in the BIOS. If you are on AMD right now you could check it.
It was very weird, setting it to automatic would cause random freezes. Setting it to on or off would both work just fine. Somehow the automatic setting gave me issues.
Just a random thing for you to check I guess.

I've no ideia what you're rambling about. I can attest that the Ryzen 5 1600 and the Ryzen 5 2600 that aren't even new CPUs run perfectly fine with Debian.

Not 100% sure if it is the same issue as you linked to, but I have an early Ryzen 7 1700 that has a hardware error (google "ryzen performance marginality" to find info about it) causing it not to work properly with linux. I never bothered to RMA my CPU. I've made it kinda work anyways, by disabling cool and quiet or whatever it is called, and set a fixed overclock to compensate for the lack of turbo after that. The idea is that the CPU should always run at a fixed clock speed instead of clocking down to save power when idle. Haven't had any issues with this CPU for a while now after I did that.
BTW I upgraded my desktop with a 3900x and put the 1700 in a server. Never had any issues with the 3900x on linux, so getting a newer generation ryzen for you PC second hand or something might just fix it as well.
- Thank you, I'm getting this response a lot. Will be getting a newer gen Ryzen, probably a Ryzen 5 5600X because I don't want to get an AM5 board (which will only support DDR5 RAM, thus I'll have to replace my perfectly good DDR4 sticks, etc, just a ridiculous amount of unnecessary e-waste when I've had multiple people commenting here saying 5000 series seem to work fine)

Flapping about, feeling morally superior... did you even try to search for an answer or did you just want to virtue signal? Take a look at RIsc, or Arm... or w/e the Chinese just released.

What is BDS?
- https://bdsmovement.net/

I heard that Linux gets new patches for Loongson, but I didn't try it yet.

Am I the only one of the opinion tech companies that don't produce any kind of military equipment should not have any political leaning whatsoever?

I appreciate you raising this question, thank you.

I run AMD r9 7000 series fine on Linux since like a month

What motherboard do you have? Also what happens exactly when the lock-ups happen? Have you ever been playing audio when the lock-ups happen and does it loop or stop or keep playing?
I recently had to "fix" (workaround) a similar issue in the OpenBSD kernel with a specific hardware peripheral on my PC (running a 2nd-gen Ryzen), the High Definition Audio controller. For whatever reason (and only when I was running OpenBSD) interrupts from the HDA controller (to let the CPU know to refill audio buffers) would just randomly stop making it to the CPU and audio would loop for a few seconds and then shut off. I spent a long time trying to figure out what causes it and reading Linux driver code but I couldn't find a cause or why only OpenBSD would trigger it. I ended up having to write kind of a hacky polling mode into the HDA driver. My only guess is some of these AMD-chipset-having motherboards have faulty interrupt controllers.
Maybe there is a similar issue with your system and timer interrupts aren't making it to your CPU or something. But I'm not really an expert on PC architecture and idek if it even works like that on PCs lol
Sorry for so many questions but do you also have any kernel logs available from when this happens?
- This is my mobo
  Also what happens exactly when the lock-ups happen?
  Screen is frozen, doesn't respond to keyboard or mouse input, including unable to switch to a tty or kill the graphical session (I have a keybind to exit my Wayland compositor, which I launch from the tty, so when I use the keybind it sends me to the tty—that is, if my computer isn't locked up lol).
  I don't remember if this has ever happened with audio playing, idk what happens to audio if it happens with audio playing.
  I think I did post kernel logs to a forum way back in the day when I first got this PC and started having this issue, to no avail—at this point I'd rather just get a new CPU and save the headache and stress, especially since this is a known issue with Ryzens
  
  I see. Our motherboards have different chipsets (I have an X570 in mine). It probably has nothing to do with my issue...
  Hoping those kernel parameters fix it. I wish I could help further. PCs are just a bottomless, mostly undocumented rabbithole :(

Please keep politics out of here
- Yeah, there’s nothing political about free software! Why should we have to read about people’s liberatory ideas in the linux community?
  It’s absurd I tell you!
  
  Ohhh, I the title is just confusing. I thought it meant companies that support Israel. Nevermind, but companies that don't are sadly rare.
  
  I know you are joking but I actually agree with your statement
- For what its worth I agree with you. From my experience the idea of not being political is unpopular with lemmings
  
  Attempting to avoid politics is itself a political stance. Enjoy your paradox, fellow lemming.

Based question but I hope your username is ironic.
- I mean, communist doesn't have to mean tankie.

97 comments