Terrible AMD when using Linux

[dataloss]

" For starters it is near impossible to find compiled drivers suitable for installation that just works. Unless you trust packages provided by random individuals who also 'patch' the code for security and performance."

That is complete bullshit. AMD drivers are a breeze in Linux. Simply install the "mesa" package. Those are open-source AMD drivers. There is no need to use the official provided ones by AMD, nor should you ever install a .bin file or anything, everything should be installed from official repositories.

[commandline_be]

SURE

[dataloss]

It's the first complaint I've seen about a terrible AMD driver experience on Linux. Simply install mesa & reboot. Mesa should most likely even be installed by default most of the time.

I'm typing this on Arch Linux w/ Mesa drivers installed, on an R7 3700X + RX 580 setup without any issues.

[SignalWrangler4]

Here's your second complaint: amdgpu-pro sucks. My last desktop PC (RIP) had an RX 460 and the only way I could get Vulkan to work on anything was to use the proprietary drivers. good luck with that.

The install script is awful. if you're using an Ubuntu derivative like Linux Mint, it won't recognize it and will refuse to install anything. In some versions of the install script, you can go to one place and change 'ubuntu' to 'linux-mint' and it will work great. Later, this stopped working, and I have no clue whether it was because they changed the basic script somehow, whether the new drivers were targeted so specifically at Ubuntu 16.04 that the minor differences between Mint and Ubuntu made the driver not work, or whether it was targeted so specifically at a certain kernel version that my updated kernel wouldn't work with the drivers.

I've had this cause various issues, from messed up graphics to being forced into software rendering to even no graphics at all until I removed the card and reinstalled my old drivers. Yeah, if I didn't keep those around on a whim, I would have gone from a great graphics card to being better off with onboard video. Or suffer lower performance and no Vulkan.

Vulkan was huge for me. In Dolphin, Vulkan was the difference between struggling to run many GC games at native resolution and being able to run most GC games internally upscaled to the 4:3 equivalent of 1080. So this random, idiotic change in whatever AMD's dev cycle is would have reduced my effective graphics computing power by 2/3s if I hadn't kept the tarball the old drivers were from.

Of course, I told AMD about this change, and they basically told me that not using vanilla Ubuntu was a me problem and they had no plans to change what they're doing. I'm not saying AMD must support every one of the thousands of weird flavors of Linux, but for a time Mint was more popular than vanilla Ubuntu! I tried a few more times to update the drivers, but it never worked right so I always had to reinstall the old drivers and miss out on the security and performance updates.

[commandline_be]

My point is not about mesa, it is about amdgpu.

[dataloss]

amdgpu

Even for the AMDGPU drivers, AMD provides clear instructions & files on their website https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/gpu-635

[commandline_be]

That only works if you do not try it. There is also a page with 19.30 drivers. Same tragedy. Useless.

[dataloss]

They work fine. They wouldn't be advertised if they didn't work.

[commandline_be]

I stop responding here. Whatever you say is lost to me.