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Any initial insights as to whether this new CPU/GPU combo will play any nicer with linux than previous AMD GPUs? Setting up Catalyst and getting my ATI Radeon

Any initial insights as to whether this new CPU/GPU combo will play any nicer with linux than previous AMD GPUs? Setting up Catalyst and getting my ATI Radeon cards to work properly in a linux setup is probably my least favorite step in setting up a linux computer.

Mikeb85 13y ago
Probably not. It doesn't seem very high on their priority list, and as long as they ignore Linux, Nvidia (and their CUDA) will continue to dominate them. With the big push by Steam, as well as GPU computing and Linux's dominance in supercomputing, you'd think AMD would be a little more motivated...
- venomsnake 13y ago
  AMD has begun to ship drivers on steamOS. And have begun to pick up their game. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2NjQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2NjQ
martey 13y ago
They updated the binary driver today [1], but it looks like open-source support is not working properly [2]: "However, when the X.Org Server started, the screen remained black and nothing appeared ever on the display nor was anything outputted to the X.Org Server log after reporting it was using RadeonSI and initializing GLAMOR. This was with the Mesa 10.0.1 driver packages in Ubuntu 14.04. Lastly, I tried adding in Mesa from Git master (Mesa 10.1-devel) but here when launching the X.Org Server and going with GLAMOR for 2D acceleration, there was a segmentation fault." [1]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU3MTE http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU3MTE [2]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_kaveri_ulinux&num=3 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_kaver...
Glyptodon 13y ago
Personally, I find installing the AMD driver on common Linux distros pretty easy. 1 command to build itself into a package for your distro, then 1 command to install. Reboot and you're good. Sure, you probably can't fix the screen tearing. And their VDPAU equivalent isn't the greatest. But getting up and running? It's always been really easy.
- shuzchen 13y ago
  In my personal experience (I have a thinkpad x120e with a E-350) it used to be the case that I needed the proprietary drivers to get anything respectable. However, things have changed recently (in the last year or so) and I've been getting good performance out of the opensource drivers.
- GigabyteCoin 13y ago
  I can install the open source ATI package on Arch linux in one single command: pacman -S xf86-video-ati ...but it doesn't actually work. The card doesn't get used to it's full potential. Which two commands are you talking about?
  - Datsundere 13y ago
    open source drivers don't have full 3d support yet. Also, you can change your power profiles and specify a few custom configs. But typically open source drivers are still not as good as proprietary regarding 3d support.

Mikeb85 13y ago

Probably not. It doesn't seem very high on their priority list, and as long as they ignore Linux, Nvidia (and their CUDA) will continue to dominate them. With the big push by Steam, as well as GPU computing and Linux's dominance in supercomputing, you'd think AMD would be a little more motivated...

venomsnake 13y ago
AMD has begun to ship drivers on steamOS. And have begun to pick up their game. http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2NjQ http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU2NjQ

martey 13y ago

They updated the binary driver today [1], but it looks like open-source support is not working properly [2]: "However, when the X.Org Server started, the screen remained black and nothing appeared ever on the display nor was anything outputted to the X.Org Server log after reporting it was using RadeonSI and initializing GLAMOR. This was with the Mesa 10.0.1 driver packages in Ubuntu 14.04. Lastly, I tried adding in Mesa from Git master (Mesa 10.1-devel) but here when launching the X.Org Server and going with GLAMOR for 2D acceleration, there was a segmentation fault." [1]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU3MTE http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTU3MTE [2]: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_kaveri_ulinux&num=3 http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amd_kaver...

Glyptodon 13y ago

Personally, I find installing the AMD driver on common Linux distros pretty easy. 1 command to build itself into a package for your distro, then 1 command to install. Reboot and you're good. Sure, you probably can't fix the screen tearing. And their VDPAU equivalent isn't the greatest. But getting up and running? It's always been really easy.

shuzchen 13y ago
In my personal experience (I have a thinkpad x120e with a E-350) it used to be the case that I needed the proprietary drivers to get anything respectable. However, things have changed recently (in the last year or so) and I've been getting good performance out of the opensource drivers.
GigabyteCoin 13y ago
I can install the open source ATI package on Arch linux in one single command: pacman -S xf86-video-ati ...but it doesn't actually work. The card doesn't get used to it's full potential. Which two commands are you talking about?
- Datsundere 13y ago
  open source drivers don't have full 3d support yet. Also, you can change your power profiles and specify a few custom configs. But typically open source drivers are still not as good as proprietary regarding 3d support.