In trying to get my Ryzen integrated GPU working properly, and ultimately in trying to set the screen resolution above 1024x768, my understanding is I need at least Linux 4.15.
I am using Debian Stretch, which is on 4.9. So I hear about "backports" (https://backports.debian.org/Instructions/) and am told to add the line:
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian stretch-backports main
to /etc/apt/sources.list. I have done this, and I've run apt-get update.
This made a 4.17 kernel image (linux-image-4.17.0-0.bpo.3-amd64) available in the package manager, which I happily installed, and the kernel boots and runs fine.
The next error message is:
[drm:amdgpu_pci_probe [amdgpu]] *ERROR* amdgpu requires firmware installed
See https://wiki.debian.org/Firmware for information about missing firmware
Okay..... So I need to upgrade the kernel firmware package to the backported version too.
Here I am stuck.
I can't see any backported version of any firmware packages in Synaptic. The Debian backports instructions page suggests using the -t (target?) parameter with apt-get to choose the backports repository or whatever it is, but it's not bringing any success.
Here are the commands I'm running:
root@debian:~# apt-get -t stretch-backports install firmware-linux
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package firmware-linux is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
firmware-misc-nonfree
E: Package 'firmware-linux' has no installation candidate
root@debian:~# apt-get -t stretch-backports install firmware-linux-nonfree
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Package firmware-linux-nonfree is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
firmware-misc-nonfree
E: Package 'firmware-linux-nonfree' has no installation candidate
root@debian:~# apt-get -t stretch-backports install firmware-misc-nonfree
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
firmware-misc-nonfree is already the newest version (20161130-3)
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 212 not upgraded
root@debian:~# apt-get -t stretch-backports install firmware-linux-free
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
firmware-linux-free is already the newest version (3.4)
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 212 not upgraded
I don't know which of the packages I'm trying to install is the one I really want, but the point is apt is not seeing any of them. But I know they exist, because they're listed online: https://packages.debian.org/stretch-backports/firmware-linux (version: 20180518-1~bpo9+1).
I've been trying since last night to persuade apt to acknowledge that fact, with no success.
The lines in my sources.list are:
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ stretch/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/debian-security/ stretch/updates main
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian/ stretch-backports main
