Here is the YouTube tutorial I followed: https://youtu.be/BoGYR3JiH-A
Here is the driver I installed: https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-r9-series/amd-radeon-r9-200-series/amd-radeon-r9-290
I selected "Ubuntu x86 64-Bit" (at least I think I did, I'm not so sure anymore), and "Radeon™ Software for Linux® version 23.10.2 for Ubuntu 22.04.2" which downloaded a file called amdgpu-install_5.5.50502-1_all.deb.
After I downloaded the file I followed the tutorial. There were a few minor errors related to no permissions/access and something about unsandboxed but nothing major that I could tell. I rebooted my system and that's where the troubles started. My computer was able to POST just fine then grub showed up and asked me what to do. As normal I selected Kubuntu, and I gota glob of errors popped up but this is nothing new, this is normal for me. I ignore these errors because my computer seems to boot and operate just fine otherwise. However, the screen never went past these errors this time. They were just stuck on my screen.
I looked at the SSD drive light and it was reading no activity so I wondered if I was at the crypto screen (LURKS) and decided to mash a few keys and pressed enter. The SSD light blinked a few times then stopped. I put in my passphrase and wala, it was light Christmas on my SSD light, all blinking green 'n stuff, happy as can be. :3
HOWEVER, my stupid screen was still stuck on the black background with white text with the errors. I waited a few seconds to a minute and still nothing. I rebooted, selected the second option called "Advanced Options for Kubuntu", selected the 3rd option which booted me into Kubuntu just fine (which is what I'm using now). I tried going back to using the regular one on the grub screen which isn't working.
I did recovery mode on the first selection and tried dpkg and fsck. failsafeX wasn't an option on mine. Neither of those were of any help. I tried the resume option and was able to boot into Ubuntu but only one screen was active on the desktop.
While I was there I did the following Konsole commands:
amdgpu-uninstall - which seemed to have uninstalled everything.
sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall - which didn't do anything.
I rebooted and tried booting into normal mode but no luck, same thing. I think that's all the steps I took, which brings me here. The reason for me installing AMD drivers in the first place was because I was having major artifacts on the STEAM program and I tried playing a FPS game using STEAM's proton but the artifacts were so bad it was impossible to see anything to play the game. So I figured maybe I could install AMD drivers and see where that takes me. I did NOT download any Radeon software, just the drivers.
I looked at options online but was overwhelmed by the search results; or the info was 5+ years out of date; or didn't apply to my situation.
I tried looking at the official install guide online for Ubuntu and Radeon drivers at the beginning but the amount of information was intimidating and overwhelming, which is why I used the YouTube tutorial. I'm not skilled at all with Linux. I feel like there's something that I missed that's causing this issue.
I would appreciate all help. Thank you.
Here's my system:
KDE Plasma Version: 5.24.7
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.92.0
Qt Version: 5.15.3
Kernel Version: 5.19.0-45-generic (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 12 × 12th Gen Intel® Core™ i5-12400
Memory: 31.1 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: HAWAII
