Radeon Software for Linux 20.30 Released

[OneTimeShot]

I assume that AMD are just repackaging the Open Source drivers for older distributions. I can't imagine that they bother writing an open and a closed source driver for their chips...

[bridgman]

AMD should simply offer amdvlk-pro and opencl as standalone packages/archives. It's just throwing user space drivers into file system and that's it, no need for weird obstacles like distribution restrictions etc. amdvlk-pro driver is highly underrated, I consider it much better than the Nvidia crap.

Agree. The ROCm stack includes instructions for installing user space packages on top of a distro kernel and the packaging hierarchy supports it with a single package that drags in everything required. I thought the graphics stack was set up the same way but apparently that is not the case today.

There are still a couple of package formats we need to get covered as well.

[aufkrawall]

I think the main purpose of amdvlk-open is that it can serve as a guidance for game and Mesa developer if it makes sense to do so. So I'd say it's good that it exists, but unless AMD doesn't improve shader compile times, it's not a good choice for consumers while there are much better suited amdvlk-pro and RADV ACO drivers.
I'd communicate that accordingly if I was AMD, including making amdvlk-pro more accessible to more users.

[user1]

AMD should simply offer amdvlk-pro and opencl as standalone packages/archives. It's just throwing user space drivers into file system and that's it, no need for weird obstacles like distribution restrictions etc. amdvlk-pro driver is highly underrated, I consider it much better than the Nvidia crap.

Completely agree. I extracted amdvlk-pro and its json vulkan loader to my home directory and just changed the path to amdvlk64.so in the vulkan loader. This way it works on virtually any distribution. I personally have much better experience with amdvlk-pro than amdvlk-open. amdvlk-pro has absolutely no issues on my end, while amdvlk-open I remember had graphical glitches in some versions and when I tried one of the latest versions, I had hangs and garbage on screen. Not to mention amdvlk-pro has much faster compile time performance because the proprietary compiler is still way ahead of LLVM and the general performance is also a bit faster than amdvlk-open. I mean at this point I don't understand what is AMD's goal with amdvlk-open when RADV+ACO is now clearly the superior open source option. While amdvlk-open is technically open source, its development is not transparent like the development of mesa drivers and it seems to recieve low amount of external contributions unlike mesa. I think AMD should just release amdvlk-pro as standalone packages like it currently does with amdvlk-open. These days most games on Linux will probably run the best with RADV+ACO (at least on Polaris), but some Windows Vulkan games like DOOM run the best with amdvlk-pro so that's why I think it'll be useful to release it as a standalone package like amdvlk-open.

[eydee]

Linux 20.30? What? Are we time traveling or has Linux been taken over by Mozilla?

[GraysonPeddie]

Okay guys. I've had enough of quoting me. It's not like I didn't read the first post and ignored it.

[skeevy420]

Why is that? Can you please explain why gamers should stick to open source drivers and the latest kernel? What if I want to use Blender for rendering basic scenes or models? An open-source version of OpenCL is slow by default until I download opencl-amd 20.20 from AUR and rendering is a lot faster.

Blender is a 3d modeling software. That's not really the same thing as a game and has different requirements and needs...but...

Because there are very few benefits for a gamer to use OpenGL or Vulkan from AMDGPU-Pro and more reasons for using up-to-date kernels, Mesa, etc than just AMDGPU alone. With Vulkan, sometimes AMDVLK or AMDVLK-Pro preform better than RADV, but since they can all be installed along side each other it's easier to try them all and pick the best so Vulkan is kind of a moot point to use for a Pro versus Open debate. RADV+ACO almost always performs the best these days and that's all from the Open Vulkan stack.

For gamers, and only game playing users, Pro versus Open is really all about using OpenGL since the rest of Pro is cherry-picked easily enough. With OpenGL, however, I'm not actually sure what games, emulators, WINE games, etc prefer or work better with the Pro stack these days since the open stack has performed so well that I haven't used it for OpenGL since 2014/2015-ish, maybe earlier...it's been a while since it was actually necessary for any of the games I've played. I assume that's close to the same experience of other Linux gamers with AMD GPUs here based on the other comments -- stick with the Open Stack's OpenGL; try all the Vulkans but likely end up with RADV+ACO.

Ever since Catalyst was dropped and they've gone open source, their proprietary driver has become less and less necessary with each passing year. That said, there have been some new hardware headaches along the way where their proprietary driver has made more sense to use....BUT, it does seem that they're finally catching up on that with these mystery GPUs like Navy Flounder popping up in the sources and being reported on so we'll see how new hardware headaches go when those GPUs are finally announced and come to market.

If they can get Sienna Chichlid and Navy Flounder developed, released, and working with open source software on launch then perhaps they can start to switch their model to the standalone packages that aufkrawall is proposin

[aufkrawall]

AMD should simply offer amdvlk-pro and opencl as standalone packages/archives. It's just throwing user space drivers into file system and that's it, no need for weird obstacles like distribution restrictions etc. amdvlk-pro driver is highly underrated, I consider it much better than the Nvidia crap.

[tildearrow]

What if I want to use Blender for rendering basic scenes or models? An open-source version of OpenCL is slow by default until I download opencl-amd 20.20 from AUR and rendering is a lot faster.

That's not "most gamers" then, AKA the use case Michael mentioned.

...even though I agree that the proprietary OpenCL stack is much faster (Clover does not work on Vega, and ROCm somehow likes to stutter the rendering therefore making it slow)

[Marco-GG]

Why is that? Can you please explain why gamers should stick to open source drivers and the latest kernel? What if I want to use Blender for rendering basic scenes or models? An open-source version of OpenCL is slow by default until I download opencl-amd 20.20 from AUR and rendering is a lot faster.

To be fair, Blender is not a "gamer" software. If we accept that gamer is a person who play games, radeonsi and radv are the best options on AMD side for now. But still, you can use Vulkan proprietary and AMDVLK along side radv if you want. I wish it was possible to do the same with the proprietary OGL driver.