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Ubuntu Drops Support For AMD's Catalyst GPU Driver (phoronix.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and newer will no longer be supporting AMD's widely-used Catalyst Linux (fglrx) driver. AMD has dropped support for this proprietary AMD driver in favor of encouraging users to use the open-source AMDGPU/Radeon drivers. While the fglrx/Catalyst driver is notorious among Linux gamers, this will represent a regression for many AMD Linux users due to the open-source driver only having OpenGL 4.1 support compared to OpenGL 4.5 in Catalyst, lower performance in common gaming workloads, incomplete OpenCL compute support, no CrossFire multi-GPU support, and other missing features. Much of the missing functionality will end up being implemented by AMD's new AMDGPU driver stack but that is still months away from being truly ready and will only benefit the very latest Radeon GPUs while the fglrx-free Ubuntu 16.04 is set to ship in April.
That is what this really boils down to.
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
SteamOS is downstream from Debian, which has not deprecated fglrx yet and probably won't until the new AMD driver comes out.
Ubuntu does not exist to support customers. That is what Windows is for!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Linux was never meant for gaming.
And neither was Windows.
There's an interesting concept called "progress" that you might want to learn about.
If AAA games ever do run on Linux, and run just as well as they do on Windows,then that will be the beginning of the end for Windows.
I have many machines that use Mint 17.3 but Catalyst or Crimson doesn't function well on my HP G6 with AMD A4 3300. Some reason the laptop turns on but the display is off. Not until I close the lid and open it again will the display turn on. This bug persists with Ubuntu 16.04 and even with Oibaf PPA which gives me the latest open source drivers. The drivers work great but I'd like to see something done cause this isn't a new problem.
Nomodeset does get the display to work but no 3D acceleration. Quick Google shows the problem is as old as 2012 at least.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showth...
Meant to say Catalyst and Crimson do work but the open source drivers don't.
Everyone knows Radeons suck under Linux, just drop a cheap nVidia card in and be done with it. Next problem.
Just drop AMD from your equipment. You'll be a lot better off.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Dropping support for something without having a reasonable replacement is usually a bad idea. But it's a good idea if you're trying to decrease choice, increase frustration, and leave the people who depend on you hanging. It might make things easier on the development side, but the long-term affects can be far reaching. Personally, I'd think the people who would have a problem with this would just move to a distribution that *does* have it - and then you've lost market share. It's hard to get back people who have already moved away.
except when we want you to use what we want you to use.
Keep running fglrx until the open source drivers are up-to-snuff.
As long as there is a road map, we should be good.
If they had dropped fglrx and didn't have a plan to replace it then there is a problem.
My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
Just switch to a different distro that will provide the proprietary driver and an easy way to install it.
like they did with 14.04 LTS.
Reason I'm asking is because installing CUDA on 14.04.x is/was a pain in the ass primarily because of the kernel change midstream.
That Catalyst was old, bloated, and required old versions of X. Also AMD has been dumping a ton of effort into its opensource driver which is now far superior to its catalyst driver and quickly reaching feature parity with the Windows driver.
Yes, AMD cards used to be terrible in linux, but Ive been playing steam games in linux for the past few years with AMD cards with no issue. I used the catalyst driver till AMD deprecated it about a year ago. When i switched to the opensource driver I noticed significantly better performance. AMDs open source driver isnt quite as good as the proprietary nvidia driver, but its gettin damn close (as long as the application isnt using Nvidia GameWorks).
Install steam and see for yourself.
If AAA games ever do run on Linux, and run just as well as they do on Windows,then that will be the beginning of the end for Windows.
Yes, but that will never happen. It didn't happen in 1995, 2000, 2005, 2015, and it won't happen now.
AMD drivers of ANY kind in Linux are half worthless, so I'm glad to see that mess go and at least move toward what will hopefully be a real solution. For all the hype about Linux performance, it still has a pretty lousy track record for gaming.
yeah if you use the proprietary nvidia drivers it works great. too bad the open source one sucks. I wished I lived in the world where everything was open source, even the firmware in my disk drives and bios and usb devices......but we don't live in that world
yeah if you use the proprietary nvidia drivers it works great. too bad the open source one sucks.
Do you really think any significant portion of gamers and other end users care about that? They want their systems to work well, they don't want to be writing driver code and recompiling hardware drivers.
That's one whopper of an 'if'. We've been waiting for gaming performance parity for a decade now, and it's still not here.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Why not? It does it very well. I play plently of games in Linux, some of them even AAA games. Sure there are still lots of games that are windows only but there are heaps that work in Linux and it's not just random indie games.
Actually I think you are wrong. Not because of any desire to support Linux but out of a desire by developers to support linux but a desire to protect themselves from a Microsoft own online store monopoly. Microsoft are clearly looking to create a store that is there by default in every windows install. What published won't want is to be held over a barrel to sell to windows. If 10% of the market is linux and there is a platform, ie steam, that lets you sell to that market, then the game will support it.
This will however only happen as the next generation of game engines are released.
Since 16.04 is LTS, if they don't drop catalyst, they are committing to supporting an OS with it for a while. Most likely AMDGPU drivers will be good enough well before the LTS release reaches EOL.
John_Chalisque
it's now in the "legacy" pile. I know this because I recently had to reinstall the driver for my other laptop and had to go to the legacy pile for the catalyst driver, as the new package ("Crimson") didn't work. I sort of half expected this anyway, since Catalyst is over decade old now. What, did you seriously expect AMD to support Catalyst forever??
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Putting a positive spin on things, this change isn't about catalyst being so terrible that Ubuntu won't use it, rather the open source driver has come so very very far.
From an AMD and open source perspective, if you want high performance and open source, you have to use AMD, the radeon guys have done an amazing job of bringing along the open source driver, and considering they're now up to OpenGL 4.1, which is truly impressive. The Nouveau driver doesn't suck, rather there is a lot of reclocking magic the Nouveau guys don't have and nVidia won't give them; hell nVidia just released the signed firmware for the 9xx series a couple of weeks ago.
For most folks, the open source driver is good and stable enough, need more, go catalyst or nVidia. I don't know too many people who are hardcore gamers and insist on open source drivers.
Open source never did a good driver, you are better off running proprietary drivers. Even if you don't game a lot, they are much better. But bottom line as a whole none of the Linux drivers are as well supported as Windows. The same can be said for OS X drivers as they are not very good and considered second thoughts from GPU makers. Linux gaming is so handicapped by poor drivers.
It looks like a gamble to see whether actual development happens in the open source driver once the mediocre closed source AMD driver stops being supported.
But i thought this was the year of the Linux desktop! Rofl
Gotta tell you, I very seldom have any issues with the open source drivers of either type. If I do, then I just toss another distro on and see what happens. That's it.
Now, the heaviest thing my GPU's going to face is playing a movie - and probably not even in high definition. So, I'm not sure what good my response does.
I very, very seldom use the proprietary drivers. It's not that I care, it's just that I might as well use source that I could read if I wanted to. I'm not only not going to read it, I'm not even going to understand half of it. It's even less likely that I'd be able to fix it. Nope. I just don't figure I'll put stuff on there that I can't see, just in case I ever feel like looking.
And it works. It works just fine. I did have a Mint Cinnamon 17.2 tearing issue with the open source nVidia drivers. I put my preferred distro back on there. The problem went away. It would tear a couple of times, toss me to TTY, and not start X again until reboot. I played around with trying to fix it. I gave up and put Lubuntu on. Other than that, I've not had any problems with video drivers in a while.
Mint works fine on a similarly aged GPU that is ATi. Which is completely and totally backwards, I guess.
I don't ask for much out of them. Just a movie. Maybe a high definition version of Zork. I guess my question is what kind of problems are you (or others) experiencing? Is it just for games or other intense tasks? Right now, I tend to try to go AMD CPU and nVidia GPU but that's not always an option and I'm not beholden to any one company - but have a mild preference for supporting AMD. I don't (usually) do more than two or three monitors. I get confused with too many. I did have a setup that was driving six and it was kind of sexy but I was constantly distracted and my 'work'-flow never really seemed to fit it. That was fine. Expensive, but fine.
Where's it breaking? The above tearing and then ceasing to restart issues were the last time I've had any issues. Is it just games or where else? I'm mostly just curious so that I know what to avoid as I may actually be doing some more intensive things in the not-too-distant future but I suspect that's mostly going to be video editing. I should probably be a bit prepared for this. :/
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Check back in a year.
So stop saying you care about the four freedoms and just admit the community only cares about free as in beer because that is EXACTLY what we are talking about here. One company has completely opened their code, the other is so hostile to Linux that Linus Torvalds himself gave them the finger and said "fuck you!" to the company.
If that is the way the community truly feels, that all that matters is it being FAIB? Just download and run the Win 10 insider edition, its FAIB for anybody. If you actually care about the four freedoms? Then show companies that it matters that they support FOSS by buying their products. Yes it will take time to reach feature parity, they are building the entire graphics stack from scratch minus the proprietary Intel code (Intel owns HDCP which has to be stripped out) but they have full docs and support from AMD so they are doing exactly what the community asked them to and completely opened the specs.
If the community refuses to support them after doing all they were asked to do? Then you have NO right to bitch when companies refuse to support Linux because Linux users will have shown that support does not turn into sales.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Actually I think you are wrong. Not because of any desire to support Linux but out of a desire by developers to support linux but a desire to protect themselves from a Microsoft own online store monopoly. Microsoft are clearly looking to create a store that is there by default in every windows install. What published won't want is to be held over a barrel to sell to windows. If 10% of the market is linux and there is a platform, ie steam, that lets you sell to that market, then the game will support it.
This will however only happen as the next generation of game engines are released.
Besides, MS only wants to cross the EU so many times. If MS 'encourages' an MS store so much it manages to oust Steam, the EU will come down on them again...
This is about what Canonical is prepared to support for the next 5 years. Catalyst is closed source so the support they can offer can only be as good as what AMD is prepared to offer. If AMD have announced that a replacement for it will be released imminently then it follows that AMD themselves probably aren't prepared to support Catalyst on Linux for the long term. Therefore, why should Canonical commit to supporting it in the long term either?
If it's an open source driver, then hopefully it will be included with the Linux kernel and you won't have to worry about it breaking every time there's a kernel upgrade, like the fglrx driver has a bad habit of doing.
This is the main reason I switched to the radeon driver, despite lower frame rates and compatibility.
Are Alien: Isolation and XCom 2 considered AAA games? Not sure if they run exactly as fast as they do on Windows, but I did see them running at very smooth frame rates on Linux.
I like security vulnerabilities! I like it when flash is used to compromise a computer. I like getting malware from code that cannot be audited. I like having my data stolen or held for ransom. Who cares? I just want the obfuscated code and malware to work. Idiots used to know how to fix their own cars, now they leave it just to professionals, the way it should be. Ignorant bliss, please.
So stop saying you care about the four freedoms and just admit the community only cares about free as in beer because that is EXACTLY what we are talking about here.
Whoa there cowboy, I think you replied to the wrong post, or didn't read properly. I didn't ever say I care about the four freedoms, in fact I pointed out that most people - me included - are quite content with whatever works the best, be it proprietary or free software. If the best option is Linux with an AMD GPU and open source drivers then sure I'll buy an AMD card when upgrade time comes.
So Windows is bad because of a monopolistic store, but Linux games are good because of a monopolistic store?(Steam)
I think Steam is a mild impediment, though it otherwise allowed linux gaming on its own.
With security and privacy scandals happening daily or weekly, I'm wary of having to run a single platform that reports by the second what you're playing and when you're playing to the mothership, a US company, and it's unescapable and under your real identity. The thing is that it will go on for decades, too. We decry it when it's Windows 10, but Valve gets a free pass because they made a good game in the late 90s. It's as if you took note of every book and newspaper you read, how many pages you read and and the end of every single day you report it all to the government.
Under Windows you can run games outside that behemoth. Perhaps only some classic games or cracked games, but the option is there and that represents many thousand games.
I hope we'll one day get some sort of software GPU (can use OpenCL/Cuda etc.) that runs under Virtualbox or KVM etc. with driver for Windows 98, XP, XP64 etc., then I'll be able to run some games again.
Huh? I'm not making any comment on whether Steam is good or bad. I'm talking about an incentive for game publishers to support platforms outside of windows. Steam doesn't hold a monopoly on game distribution, though it is by far the biggest. But people choose to install steam. If windows comes bundled with the microsoft store then it is no different to it being bundled with IE and eating netscapes lunch.
Also steam isn't the only way of playing games in linux. Linux is no different to windows in that regard. Get the linux binaries and run them, lots of humble bundle games are like that for example. Just at the moment Valve is the only one trying to develop the linux market.
What I am getting at is that publishers see the level of take that Apple and Google are making off the mobile app stores and don't want to be in that same situation on the PC. Sure you can download and install software independently on windows, but if there is a store front installed with windows by default it will inherently grab a huge market share & if it grabs enough market share microsoft can start saying things like "if you want to be listed in our store your software can ONLY be listed in our store".
The only real solution to that is to break up the PC market base. If games start running on linux then one of that last barriers starts to disappear. It doesn't need to be huge %s but get a linux install base to 10% and you are starting to talk a serious amount of money to publishers.
There isn't the cracking base targetting linux binaries currently so games for that platform are less likely to be pirated. But there is nothing inherent about that. And most of the older games you are talking about will work just find under wine. It is the newer programs that dont.
I realized that my writing wasn't really an answer to something in particular you said, but it was sent and I otherwise stand by my rant.
humble bundle games
Time-limited sales that have ended by the time you heard of it. That's too weird for me (or perhaps they are torrented around, that would explain slashdot users that say "But you can run Game X from humble bundle")
So stop saying you care about the four freedoms and just admit the community only cares about free as in beer because that is EXACTLY what we are talking about here.
Because it is all or nothing... Nope. I care about FOSS, and open software. But I NEED it to fucking work! So I run nVidia, and have for a while. I remember getting my second nVidia card, a 7950, and being excited. And it would still work fine now! Not so with AMD. I do run nouveau on one of my systems where 3D is not as critical, but it is just not there yet. Hopefully it will be one day. But in the mean time, I need my card to work!
What are you smoking?
Parity arrived 6 years ago with GL4.0.
Ok some alternatives then, Prison Architect - https://www.introversion.co.uk..., Europa Universalis 4 - http://www.europauniversalis4.....
That said the higher the profile the game the more likely they are to come stuck to steam. Borderland series, Xcom series, Civilisation series. They all work in linux but they come via the steam system. But that is no different to windows.
And if you want to pop over to Humblebundle.com now they have 2 bundles of which some are linux compatible. But they are all steam delivered. One is Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic II which while long in the tooth is a good game.
Anyways, not a big deal. I wouldn't want to install and 'buntu past 14.4 lts since they got rid of init (and added systemd)
One company has completely opened their code,
I must have missed that. The first few hundred times people claimed the Open Source driver for AMD hardware as usable it sucked because AMD only dumped the specs without providing anything in the form of implementation ( in my experience with catalyst this may actually be a good thing ). The next few hundred times it still sucked since many Games rely on drivers to work around their bullshit - all the game specific hacks are one of the reasons windows GPU drivers tend to be bloated. In the end I just stopped caring about AMD and the reality warping field their fan boys live in.
the other is so hostile to Linux that Linus Torvalds himself gave them the finger and said "fuck you!" to the company.
Linus is a kernel developer, binary drivers make his live hard since he cannot reason about the kernel state when one is active. Further they only support what NVIDIA itself implements, which can be annoying since Linux specific features like kernel mode switching come with a long delay. There is nothing outright hostile by NVIDIA.
. If you actually care about the four freedoms?
You already lost the moment you choose to run kernel fixed on the GPLv2, a license which has been declared insufficient and replaced with GPLv3 several years ago. If you really want the four freedoms you want to run GNU/Hurd on free and open hardware.
For me privacy is enough and most Linux versions have a better track record than Microsoft and the GPLv2 is enough to keep the source open.
what's that noise coming out of your computer right now? it's the gpu fan spinning like crazy, because the opensource amd driver can't regulate it properly based on gpu load. i had that problem with hd6970, r9 280x and still see the same problem with my cousin's r9 390x.
So stop saying you care about the four freedoms and just admit the community only cares about free as in beer because that is EXACTLY what we are talking about here.
I see you've been taking diplomacy lessons from George W. Bush, either you're with us or you're with the terrorists. I don't mind paying for a closed source AAA game to run on under free-as-in-beer closed source Steam on top of open source Linux, so shoot me. I value the four freedoms as a good thing, but it's a trade-off between that and what proprietary software offers. I'd like a distro that puts me in control so that I can decide what's best for me. Not a distro that has already decided that because I want Linux over Windows, I must also want open source over Catalyst, GIMP over Photoshop, LibreOffice over MS Office, Firefox over Chrome and that I should have no choice in the matter, it's all the way or not at all. If you don't see a problem with that type of reasoning, well the problem is on your end not mine.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Maybe the problem's with the kernel, not the driver.. It's the biggest problem with Linux, with every upgrade it breaks a lot of stuff, still haven't had an upgrade which didn't have me trying to fix some problems..
I have hd6970 and fan speed has been regulated just fine for years.
You are affected if you have a slower CPU, for sure. The oss driver is fucking garbage and all of the unimplemented functions are done by your CPU not the GPU.
Let me say it again. The open source driver for AMD is complete and utter shit and doesn't support about 80% of the hardware functions.
unlikely, as SMC fan control patches were only added to kernel slightly over a year ago (i think linux 3.22?). before that, the default fan speed on free driver was 40%, and 18% on the fglrx. so on ubuntu 14.04, all i got with the original kernel (3.19) was a loud whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
Actually the default fan speed was set by VBIOS, and differed significantly between boards. Most boards had fan noise reduced drastically when dynamic power management was enabled (years ago for HD69xx). Some boards had higher default fan settings, and the fan control patches were intended to address those.
Just curious, which 80% is that ? The open drivers are currently at GL 4.1 with a lot of the 4.2-4.5 features already implemented. Looking at the list of unsupported extensions very few of them seem to be hardware related - I could agree with maybe a few % of the hardware being supported but not 80%.
https://mesamatrix.net/
The Boltzmann (aka ROC/HSA) stack also uses the open source drivers, and that covers a lot of HW functionality even Windows drivers don't support.
bleah, no edit function.... previous post should read "I could agree with maybe a few % of the hardware being UNsupported"...
it's GNU Hurd then?
I do so enjoy the pleasant, mature and thoughtful discussion that ensues whenever one of these changes takes place in the Linux world.
PulseAudio, systemd, KDE 3, Gnome 4, Catalyst, Unity, Wayland, Oracle owning OpenOffice. It's like computing's own Peyton Place.
Still, I consider freedom to distribute the most interesting one for many reasons. For example, Win10 is only free to Win7 and Win8.1 upgraders. OEMs for example have to pay for it. When I suggested selling Windows to a non-profit foundation, I was referring to that one.
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2015/12/amd-embraces-open-source-to-take-on-nvidias-gameworks/
"The other is so hostile to Linux that Linus Torvalds himself gave them the finger and said "fuck you!" to the company."
Was.
After that incident, they've opened up a lot.
Finally someone said this loud: AMD driver is SHIT
When I was saying this, every AMD fanboy bashed me...
the "four freedoms" have nothing to do with computer code, you spew nonsense like a cult leader. are you a Stallman suckdick?