AMD Quietly Releases Catalyst 14.8 Linux Driver

[splice42]

I've dumped catalyst for the free radeon driver.

I would do that in a second (or however long it took) if anyone could actually explain to me the exact steps needed to get the OSS radeon driver to work on my A10-7850K on a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H. Every time I've tried, I've failed miserably and ended up with software rendering. The one time I was able to confirm I actually was using the drivers (Gallium3D showing up as driver when running "inxi -G") but I was in software rendering still, going with an amazing 10-20fps with all 4 CPU cores at 100% when playing video in XBMC.

Currently back on fglrx 14.6 drivers, which have issues with vertical blank sync, plays some videos with big blotches/banding, crashes XBMC when I exit, crashes on XBMC Gotham when displaying subtitles. I'd love, love, love to get on the OSS drivers. I haven't found a clear howto other than generally installing oibaf drivers and, I don't know, magic stuff happens and it works. Not for me. I'm handy, but not omniscient. I'd love to get them working.

I sent an email to Mr. Larabel who used this exact setup in an article and who keeps writing about the OSS drivers with my exact CPU. That was a month ago and I didn't receive a reply. I tried to post a thread on the OSS subforum here, and since I was cheeky enough to put in a link (to an article on this very site), my thread was dropped in the moderation queue and it's been languishing there for about a week now.

It's just frustration on all sides. I'll surely give it another go soon, but I really have no idea what I can add to what I've already tried. If someone'd be willing to help me out, damn, I might even be willing to pay for the support.

[Isedonde]

I would do that in a second (or however long it took) if anyone could actually explain to me the exact steps needed to get the OSS radeon driver to work on my A10-7850K on a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H.

In my case (discrete GPU), it was simple: Install Ubuntu, do nothing (i.e. don't go to the jockey menu or whatever it's called today to select fglrx), PROFIT.

I'm surprised it's not the same for APUs. Can't help you with that, sorry.

[Guest]

In my case (discrete GPU), it was simple: Install Ubuntu, do nothing (i.e. don't go to the jockey menu or whatever it's called today to select fglrx), PROFIT.

I'm surprised it's not the same for APUs. Can't help you with that, sorry.

Doesn't Ubuntu only offer some outdated version of fglrx? If I recall right, fglrx-updates was offering Catalyst 14.3, and regular fglrx was offering something even older than that. Can't really imagine the drivers doing all that well on newer hardware.

I'd probably recommend following the guide over at http://wiki.cchtml.com/index.php/Ubu...allation_Guide (can search specific distros and versions if you aren't using Ubuntu 14.04).

[Kemosabe]

There is no difference between apus and discrete gpus.
All you need is x86-video-ati ati-dri (lib32-ati-dri) and perhaps a radeon.conf in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d.
I don't know what why one should have any severe issues with that.

Edit: Ah, KMS is required too but this can easily archieved with an appropriate boot option.

[bridgman]

I would do that in a second (or however long it took) if anyone could actually explain to me the exact steps needed to get the OSS radeon driver to work on my A10-7850K on a Gigabyte F2A88XM-D3H.

For me it was "install Ubuntu 14.04, oh look it works" (although I haven't tried UVD or VCE).

[Sdar]

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Probably the easiest way to have the FOSS drivers up to date on ubuntu.

[splice42]

Guess I'll try again this week and document my almost certain failure. Will post after that, probably in the OSS forum.

[bridgman]

It would help if you could provide more details re: what "not working" means. Right now it's not clear whether there is a fundamental problem (no acceleration) or whether there is a specific issue with XBMC. A good in-between step would to to check the GL renderer line from glxinfo.

Please start with the vanilla install before adding any additional PPAs.

[splice42]

It would help if you could provide more details re: what "not working" means. Right now it's not clear whether there is a fundamental problem (no acceleration)

I thought I had included the basic details in my post, but yeah, no acceleration at all. I did mention software rendering a couple of times in my post..

At any rate since it's supposed to be easy and straightforward, I'll try again and document everything then post in the open-source subforum some time in the next few days.

Please start with the vanilla install before adding any additional PPAs.

By definition, that's how I built my system. If you mean I should remove the oibaf PPA entirely and use default drivers, no, that's a complete no-go. There is no support for A10-7850K (kaveri) in the non-oibaf OSS radeon drivers. I absolutely, 100% need the oibaf drivers, at least as far as I've been led to believe.

[xtachx]

Try installing Fedora. In my experiance, fedora's support for open drivers are a lot better than others simply because the kernel they use is much newer (6 months ahead sometimes) from Ubuntu.