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.

Comments

A little pain for a lot of gain

[poet]

That is what this really boils down to.

Re:A little pain for a lot of gain

[iggymanz]

nope, the open source drivers are garbage, people will install the binaries from the vendor themselves

Re:A little pain for a lot of gain

[Anonymous Coward]

People run Linux for a variety of reasons, most of which aren't directly that the software is open source. If you want wide adoption of Linux, or a particular distribution, you have to cater to a wide range of users with a wide range of wands and needs. It's great that you're passionate about open source, but not everyone is that way, nor do they need to be. If you want people to use open source software, you have to satisfy many needs in the process. Sometimes that means being pragmatic and accept that a closed source solution is the best choice until a suitable open source solution is available. That people want their computer to be usable for their needs isn't stupid at all. I run Linux on several of my computers and I have many reasons, but open source is pretty far down on the list. I value that I don't have to pay for a lot of the software that I use, but I'm willing to donate to a few projects in return. I value the relative security, stability, and privacy afforded by running Linux. Some of the software I use for my job requires that I run Linux or a similar system. Some of these tools for visualizing meteorological data require a fair amount of video horsepower, so I certainly value any performance boost from the video driver. If all things are equal or pretty close to equal, I prefer an open source solution over a closed source solution. But it's pretty far down on my list of priorities. It doesn't mean that my needs are stupid at all, despite what you say.

Re:A little pain for a lot of gain

[armanox]

This is why people don't like the GNU groups - you are all about freedom as long as it is what you choose for others.

So....

[The-Ixian]

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.

The summary fails to mention...

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Not completely correct.

[exomondo]

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.

Stop being negative!

[gukin]

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.

Re:Customer support?

[the_other_one]

Windows supports customers?

Do you have an example?

It downloads the next version for the customer when they forget to ask for it.

Re:Not completely correct.

[hairyfeet]

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.