HOWTO: RX 5700 XT/RX 5700 with open source drivers on Ubuntu 19.04

[Claritux]

I just got my brand new RX 5700 XT and had to do a bit of trial and error to get it up and running, as I couldn't find a complete guide on how to do so. This should most definitely work with the regular RX 5700 as well, but I can't test.

As for 19.10, the firmware files for Navi did not make it into the final release, but they are included with the first linux-firmware patch, so full support will be enabled after your first system update. The default kernel and mesa has built in support, but I would still recommend installing newer kernels and mesa, as the drivers are still a work in progress.

First of all the kernel needs to be updated to 5.3 or later. You can get kernel debs from here or do as me and install "Mainline", a tool for handling custom kernel updates.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cappelikan/ppa
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install mainline

Open "Ubuntu Mainline" from applications menu and install the latest 5.3 kernel or disable "Hide unstable and RC releases" in settings and install the latest 5.4rc kernel (recommended).

Next we need newer versions of llvm and mesa. Luckily everything is neatly packaged for us in Oibaf's PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade

Finally we download the proprietary firmware files for Navi 10 and place them in /lib/firmware/amdgpu

wget -r -np -R "index.html*" https://people.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/radeon_ucode/navi10/
cd people.freedesktop.org/~agd5f/radeon_ucode/navi10/
sudo cp navi* /lib/firmware/amdgpu

Optional: If you have an AMD Freesync capable monitor you can enable Freesync in the amdgpu driver. Note that this is very unstable at the moment, at least for 144hz monitors like mine. You can check if your monitor is capable of Freesync by running xrandr --props and look for the line that says vrr_capable: 1.
This option does unfortunately only work in X on single monitor setups, and not in Wayland.

sudo nano /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf

Add the line Option "VariableRefresh" "true", so it looks something like this:

Section "OutputClass"
        Identifier "AMDgpu"
        MatchDriver "amdgpu"
        Driver "amdgpu"
        Option "VariableRefresh" "true"
EndSection

You can verify that it's enabled (after rebooting) using:

grep -w VariableRefresh ~/.local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log

To disable, simply change the VariableRefresh option to false.

Reboot and enjoy!

Uninstall guide:
Remove user installed kernels using mainline. You will have to boot an earlier kernel version before doing so.

Remove Oibaf's PPA and downgrade packages.

sudo apt install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

Remove firmware files. This is not recommended for 19.10 onwards, as the firmware files is now part of Ubuntu's default linux-firmware package.

sudo rm /lib/firmware/amdgpu/navi*

[Badouken]

Can confirm. I ran these steps and now my card is being recognized. Thank you!

[montfox]

I created an account just to note that this absolutely works on my 5700 (not the XT)! Windows 10 was giving me a bluescreen if I had more than one application open, so I decided to download Ubuntu bungie and follow these steps! Although I had issues building mainline with these steps, I just used ukuu (You can still get it free on the git release page)

[dlapik]

The only solution that works for RX 5700XT, thank you! However please be aware that kernel 5.3rc7 doesn't work, only 5.3rc6. rc7 fails to load navi FW and consequently nothing is visible on the screen.

[coffeecat]

Not a request for help.

Thread moved to Tutorials.

@Claritux, thank you for posting this howto. Please see the Tutorials Guidelines sticky

[Claritux]

Not a request for help.

Thread moved to Tutorials.

@Claritux, thank you for posting this howto. Please see the Tutorials Guidelines sticky

Will do! Thanks for moving the thread!

[Claritux]

The only solution that works for RX 5700XT, thank you! However please be aware that kernel 5.3rc7 doesn't work, only 5.3rc6. rc7 fails to load navi FW and consequently nothing is visible on the screen.

That's odd. 5.3rc7 works fine with me. 5.3rc8 is out now, maybe give that a go!

[Claritux]

I created an account just to note that this absolutely works on my 5700 (not the XT)! Windows 10 was giving me a bluescreen if I had more than one application open, so I decided to download Ubuntu bungie and follow these steps! Although I had issues building mainline with these steps, I just used ukuu (You can still get it free on the git release page https://github.com/teejee2008/ukuu/releases),

I didn't want to include Ukuu in the tutorial, as the original author has discontinued his original project and made it proprietary, but I'm happy you got it to work!
Edit: Mainline has a PPA now. I will update the tutorial with that. I recommend switching over, as the GitHub version of Ukuu is unmaintained.

[montfox]

I didn't want to include Ukuu in the tutorial, as the original author has discontinued his original project and made it proprietary, but I'm happy you got it to work!
Edit: Mainline has a PPA now. I will update the tutorial with that. I recommend switching over, as the GitHub version of Ukuu is unmaintained.

Added to my PPA, but package manager is unable to find mainline

Hit:4 http://ppa.launchpad.net/cappelikan/ppa/ubuntu bionic InRelease

sudo apt install mainline
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Unable to locate package mainline

[Claritux]

It seems the PPA had a build failiure for the 18.04 package. You can try running the 19.04 .deb until it's updated:
https://code.launchpad.net/~cappelik...04.1_amd64.deb