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To be fair, AMD's Linux drivers have been pretty solid for a while now. I don't have an objective comparison, but the general perception definitely has some cat

To be fair, AMD's Linux drivers have been pretty solid for a while now. I don't have an objective comparison, but the general perception definitely has some catching up to do. For those Ryzens you'll probably need a very recent kernel, but that's to be expected with new hardware.

TwoNineA 9y ago
Especially with Kernel 4.15, AMDGPU got HDMI audio out.
Nullabillity 9y ago
These days I have far more issues with Intel iGPUs than my desktop's RX480.
jandrese 9y ago
It depends. We got a few machines with AMD RX460s (Or similar, I can't remember exactly) and the users wanted Ubuntu on them. So I install 16.04, the most recent LTS release available because I don't want these machines to turn into a pumpkin after less than 9 months but the graphics are a total fail. SVGA 800x600 only. So the kernel on that release is too old and updating the kernel on Ubuntu is fraught with peril. So I look into third party drivers and find that their support was dropped entirely from even the third party Ubuntu support. So I go to ATI/AMD's website and find the driver package, but it turns out to be a tarball full of .debs with zero instructions on how to install or enable them. I was having flashbacks to working on Linux installs in the late 90s and having to hack everything to get it working. In the end I had to install 17.10 and apply the hacks to make it work[1] just to get the graphics running, and now I'm going to have to revisit those machines in a couple of months to upgrade them to 18.04. [1] Disabling the new systemd DNS resolver that crashes on literally every lookup attempt on our network. Also had to learn how to program the modeline equivalent for Weyland for when you're going through a KVM and don't have EDID. This was no picnic in later versions of X, but I had already figured it out and had earlier versions as reference. I still miss xconfig sometimes.
- y4mi 9y ago
  Yes, using the latest hardware is painful with Ubuntu. It's gonna be a breeze in a few month though. And once that happens, the open source AMD drivers are going to be stabler than the Nvidia blob again.
  - jandrese 9y ago
    Given that the nVidia blob apparently doesn't work with Weyland it's going to be a problem in the near future.
- hsivonen 9y ago
  This is solved by rolling the hardware enablement stack forward on 16.04. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
- sangnoir 9y ago
  > So I go to ATI/AMD's website and find the driver package, but it turns out to be a tarball full of .debs with zero instructions on how to install or enable them. You should have read the friendly documentation! I have AMDGPU running on 16.04 after running an install shell script (amdgpu-pro-install) in the tarball, as spelt out by the docs.
- bryanlarsen 9y ago
  To bad you didn't wait for Spectre. Because of Spectre they bumped the 16.04 HWE kernel to 4.13. :)

TwoNineA 9y ago

Especially with Kernel 4.15, AMDGPU got HDMI audio out.

Nullabillity 9y ago

These days I have far more issues with Intel iGPUs than my desktop's RX480.

jandrese 9y ago

It depends. We got a few machines with AMD RX460s (Or similar, I can't remember exactly) and the users wanted Ubuntu on them. So I install 16.04, the most recent LTS release available because I don't want these machines to turn into a pumpkin after less than 9 months but the graphics are a total fail. SVGA 800x600 only. So the kernel on that release is too old and updating the kernel on Ubuntu is fraught with peril. So I look into third party drivers and find that their support was dropped entirely from even the third party Ubuntu support. So I go to ATI/AMD's website and find the driver package, but it turns out to be a tarball full of .debs with zero instructions on how to install or enable them. I was having flashbacks to working on Linux installs in the late 90s and having to hack everything to get it working. In the end I had to install 17.10 and apply the hacks to make it work[1] just to get the graphics running, and now I'm going to have to revisit those machines in a couple of months to upgrade them to 18.04. [1] Disabling the new systemd DNS resolver that crashes on literally every lookup attempt on our network. Also had to learn how to program the modeline equivalent for Weyland for when you're going through a KVM and don't have EDID. This was no picnic in later versions of X, but I had already figured it out and had earlier versions as reference. I still miss xconfig sometimes.

y4mi 9y ago
Yes, using the latest hardware is painful with Ubuntu. It's gonna be a breeze in a few month though. And once that happens, the open source AMD drivers are going to be stabler than the Nvidia blob again.
- jandrese 9y ago
  Given that the nVidia blob apparently doesn't work with Weyland it's going to be a problem in the near future.
hsivonen 9y ago
This is solved by rolling the hardware enablement stack forward on 16.04. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack
sangnoir 9y ago
> So I go to ATI/AMD's website and find the driver package, but it turns out to be a tarball full of .debs with zero instructions on how to install or enable them. You should have read the friendly documentation! I have AMDGPU running on 16.04 after running an install shell script (amdgpu-pro-install) in the tarball, as spelt out by the docs.
bryanlarsen 9y ago
To bad you didn't wait for Spectre. Because of Spectre they bumped the 16.04 HWE kernel to 4.13. :)