Radeon VII (Vega 20) Firmware Support Lands In Linux-Firmware.Git

[rgloor]

... while for the non-rolling-release distributions they generally don't ship new firmware updates until their next OS release.

Well, I don't know about other distros, but running openSUSE LEAP 15, I have received several firmware updates since it's launch. Presently being on Version 20181218, which was last updated with some fixes to 20181218-lp150.2.9-1 on January 25.
So even some Stable-Releases are quite up-to-date.

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Radeon VII (Vega 20) Firmware Support Lands In Linux-Firmware.Git

In addition to needing a recent version of the Linux kernel and Mesa (ideally, Linux 5.0 and Mesa 19.0 if enjoying the very best performance and features) for using a Radeon VII graphics card on Linux, you also need to have the necessary firmware binaries manually installed if not using the Radeon Software for Linux driver package. Those firmware bits are now in the linux-firmware.git repository...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Vega-20-Linux-Firmware-Git