Ubuntu 16.04 display UNCLAIMED

Question

I've recently updated my girlfriend's notebook to 16.04. Now, with the new AMDGPU drivers there shouldn't be a problem with the AMD card, however the video reproduction is choppy and slow. When i enter lshw -c video I get this

*-display UNCLAIMED  
   description: VGA compatible controller
   product: Kabini [Radeon HD 8400 / R3 Series]
   vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
   physical id: 1
   bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
   version: 00
   width: 64 bits
   clock: 33MHz
   capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list
   configuration: latency=0
   resources: memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f2000000-f27fffff ioport:4000(size=256) memory:f2900000-f293ffff memory:f2960000-f297ffff

Now, I'm a pretty basic linux user, so what I get from that is that for some reason the driver is installed but not in use. Do I have to activate or change someting?

Solution

I had a similar problem; try the following:

First check that the video device is unclaimed:

sudo lshw -c video

Then check to see if you have the radeon module installed:

find /lib/modules/`uname -r` -type f -name "*.ko" | grep radeon

My problem specifically was that the radeon module was not added to the autostart file:

less /etc/modules

If "radeon" does not appear there, add it in:

echo 'radeon' | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Reboot and see if it starts. You can check afterwards if the video device is claimed.