Graphical corruption and overall inusability at boot while trying every ubuntu flavor

[punstar]

I managed to run inxi -G but because I wasn't able to log into a browser before the OS corrupting the display again, all I could get was a quick picture of it, sorry for the crude way it was taken, it's just that I didn't expect to get that far after many restarts and still being able to get a picture, let alone a copy of the text. One weird thing is that the 1280x1024 display is a 75hz display but it shows in the terminal as 60hz, everything else seems correct.

Photo hosted on imgur since it seems to take a lot of screen space in the forum
https://imgur.com/a/zfN0z0U

[Impavidus]

As a general rule, don't look for drivers on the manufacturer's website. Use the additional drivers utility instead. That should select the appropriate drivers and help you download and install them.

For AMD graphics drivers there was a change recently. For older kernels you have to install the proprietary drivers using the additional drivers utility, but for more recent kernels the AMD drivers are built-in. I don't know exactly at which kernel the change happened.

If you installed Ubuntu using the 18.04 or 18.04.1 iso (or any of the other flavours), you get kernel 4.15, which needs the proprietary drivers. The 18.04.3 iso comes with the HWE stack enabled and gives you kernel 5.0. Maybe that one still needs the proprietary drivers. But a few days ago 18.04 with HWE stack upgraded to kernel 5.3, which is the same as the one used on Ubuntu 19.10 and has the drivers built-in. I don't know about the quality of those drivers. For cutting-edge hardware they may be buggy.

So telling that Ubuntu 18.04 is supported is not very clear, as there is a difference between Ubuntu 18.04 with and without HWE stack. And telling that Ubuntu 18.04.3 (with HWE stack) is supported isn't very clear either, as 18.04.3 with HWE stack automatically upgrades to the next kernel, where support may be different.

When you installed 18.04.3, did you tell in to install upgrades right away? That may have given you a newer kernel (the one for Ubuntu 18.04.4), which would affect AMD's proprietary drivers.

You mention using two monitors. Do you get a usable system if you only connect one monitor?

[punstar]

For the record, I haven't been able to install any manufacturer drivers yet, I planned to use 18.04.3 because I was getting weird performance and same graphical instability in other distros and thought it might be fixed by getting official drivers installed, I don't seem to get far enough on a terminal or in the files manager to go an install them due to the problems I'm having so I'm just running with whatever default selection Xubuntu chose during installation, the additional drivers tells me there isn't additional drivers to be downloaded so I can't get anything off there, unless there is a way to do so.

Also I've tried to install and boot into the OS with 1 monitor each for a while but depending on the one I use It's just glitchiness (1280x1024 75hz) or just a black screen (1920x1080 60hz)