It is used in large enterprise data centers, internet infrastructure devices, and personal development systems. The variety of supported chip architectures is astounding and has led to Linux in devices large and small from huge IBM mainframes to tiny devices no bigger than their connection ports and everything in between. Linux is being deployed into a much wider array of devices than Linus Torvalds anticipated when he was working on it in his dorm room. The benchmarks I made are for the original 5.0.0-23 Kernel and the 4.
Login normally and everything should work perfectly.Īfter the Kernel update was complete and I logged into the Plasma Desktop, I ran HardInfo again and found the results were improved. The booting process should proceed normally until you get to the Login screen which should now be Kubuntu Plasma. Make sure you select the normal one and not the ‘Recovery’ line. In the menu you need to select ‘Advanced’ and then find the line which contains the Kernel version you selected from the AMD website. Once the installation is completed you can reboot.Īfter the BIOS screen is done you need to press ‘Escape’ before Ubuntu loads so the GRUB menu is displayed. The installation process should proceed and may take a few minutes depending on your Internet speed. When prompted press ‘Y’ and ‘Enter’ to accept the EULA. The installation process should start, but you need to press the space bar a few times to view the complete EULA. You can perform an update for Linux with the following two commands: Once reloaded the system should start fine. Remove the USB Stick with the installation files on it and reboot when prompted. Let the installation proceed as usual until it finishes.
You do not need to check the box for ‘Third-party software installation’. Check the box to ‘Download update when installing’. The system should boot from the USB Stick and start the installation of Ubuntu. Change the Boot Order to have the USB Stick as the first Boot Drive. Start the board and press Escape or Delete to enter the BIOS. Also connect the board to the Internet with an Ethernet cable in one of the 1 GbE ports.
You will want to connect a SATA hard disk or even a USB Stick to install Linux. To begin the installation you will need to download Ubuntu 18.04 and extract it to a USB Stick using Balena Etcher or another program. It acts more like a full-size computer because it is running an AMD processor. Keep in mind that this is not a typical Small Board Computer (SBC). I also removed a power button from the system as well to turn the board off and on. I removed a case fan from a broken system to cool it. There is a connector for a fan which keeps the board below 100° F. At 140° F the board will turn itself off. NOTE: I cannot express enough how important it is to cool this board. The installation of Linux is easy, but has a few hoops to get through. These are very impressive specs for such a little board (Figure 1), but having a Ryzen CPU the Linux install is not straightforward.
It also helps to have the proper GPU driver for performance. Linux can be installed from a stock ISO, but the system does not perform as well unless using a special Linux kernel from AMD. The board I am using is the IBase IB918 to install Linux. The embedded processor also contains a Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) which is an AMD Ryzen Vega. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) has released the Ryzen processors which works very well with Linux.