Originally posted by schmidtbag
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Typically, Linux hardware usage tends to be pretty similar compared to Windows (when accounting for x86 systems). For example, the GTX 1060 is the most popular on both platforms. I'm sure you can extrapolate from this that there are at roughly the same amount of Linux users who buy AMD for the same incentives that they would have bought AMD when/if using Windows. Of course, there are plenty of people whose decision would be reinforced by the open-source drivers, and, there are also those who, like yourself, only bought AMD strictly because of ideological reasons. That being said, I wouldn't be surprised if the AMD marketshare on Linux is higher than it is on Windows (the Intel GPU marketshare seems to be higher too). But, I'm pretty confident that people who buy AMD strictly for ideological reasons are in the minority, because those who don't prioritize games but still want an open-source platform tend to opt for Intel.
You can see very nicely in the benchmarks here on Phoronix that the 1060 almost always stands out against the 580. The same benchmarks on Windows often show a different picture, respectively the cards are often equal. From this it follows that Nvidia manages to develop great drivers for Linux, while AMD's drivers are always a two-digit percentage behind the Windows drivers. Don't misunderstand, I love my 580 and certainly don't want to trade it for a 1060, even if I don't achieve the same performance. Still, it's a fact that the proprietary AMD driver doesn't exhaust the hardware. Therefore I can also use the open-source stack right away.
All that being said, yes, if you bought AMD solely because of open-source drivers, then the closed-source drivers aren't an option. But I'm willing to bet you any amount of money that regardless of OS, the majority of gamers who have a Freesync display prefer functional drivers over open source ones.
Also in many cases, the AMD Linux drivers (open source or otherwise) do actually outperform the Windows drivers. Where they don't, Nvidia's drivers don't tend to, either, due to insufficient optimizations of their porting.
I agree that AMD has made a bit of a mess regarding their drivers, though, I'm also inclined to believe this problem you bring up is also Debian's fault; not just AMD's.
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