Problems on new artix openrc system

03 September 2024, 12:54:41

Hello,

Few days ago I ended a toxic relationship with windows and moved on to artix on Openrc with Gnome gui. So far pc works great, installing stuff is even easier and most of them just work out of the box. However there are some things that, despite applying tips from linux forums, don't work as they should:

pc specs:
ryzen 5 3600
radeon rx7800xt
16gb

- Audio - audio levels reset when source refreshes. For example while playing music through librewolf, each audio source is separated, but they reset when i skip music or play next episode. Resetting audio on reboot worked with this https://askubuntu.com/questions/859732/sound-configuration-is-lost-on-restart but apps reset each time new sound plays. I also downloaded Datcord, a discord with frontend on firefox, not chromium, and sound slider in system does nothing. Sound slider in app works on every sound and not only discord sounds separated with sound of call.

- gamemode - I play games, so far tested 2 of them (dota 2 and deadlock). They both work but only on vulkan and performance is questionable. I wanted to use gamemode, which may increase gaming performance, but it doesn't work and built-in test fails. Maybe it's problem with my CPU?

- GPU drivers - I downloaded radeon drivers but gpu still displays as "ATI VGA compatible controller", maybe its just the way it is? As i said games work great on dx11 and Unigine superposition benchmark is ok.

- network - sometimes while playing dota my network disconnects for a few seconds, never happened on windows or other devices. When this disconnect happens, my discord audio input doesn't register and have to change it and change it back so it works.

- NTFS disk - My ssd no.1 works on ntfs after mounting, but the other one just fails to connect, it's called sda and mounting it to /mnt/ntfs doesn't work. In this mounting location is first drive, do i have to make 2 separate for 2 drives?

When switching to linux i knew it was never going to be easy, but audio problems? Never had them on windows. I'm not planning on switching back, but I'd rather have pleasant experience i can recommend to others.

Thanks in advance for any help

Re: Problems on new artix openrc system

Reply #1 – 03 September 2024, 15:35:01

Hello, I will answer a few things very quickly, will let someone else get into the details:
-Audio : Gnome desktop likes pipewire so do the switch to it if you haven't done already: https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Site/PipewireInsteadPulseaudio
-Gamemode for linux requires systemd so it won't work here without adjustments, anyway most of the stuff it does you can find in improving perfromance article of arch https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Improving_performance. Also you can overclock that cpu a bit and make sure ram xmp is on, but it's not too weak.
-GPU driver is default amdgpu, it must work if it ran vulkan but you can check like the link speed in /sys/class/drm/card*/device/current_link_speed
-network: are you connected to normal router with normal dhcp i assume? There are some settings to be done for NetworkManager or you can even remove it's service from openrc startup list and replace it with dhcpcd (again only if you use normal connection to router)
-ntfs disk: yes they need separate mount locations, also you can check their filesystem just to make sure

Re: Problems on new artix openrc system

Reply #2 – 03 September 2024, 15:57:32

Thank you for these tips, they should be enough so i know where to look.

As for gamemode, i switched power mode to performance and that fixed an issue with gamemode, however the performance in games was really bad and so turning it off helped more. I forgot to undervolt my cpu and enable xmp so after doing so, it gave me a bit more performance. As for drives, this solution was meant to be temporary, I'll format them in near future, just wanted to have access to files so thanks for help in that.

For network I'm connected to router with dhcp, I don't have separate dhcp server. I'll try just that.

I'm really thankful for the help