AMD Squeezes In Few More AMDGPU Updates For Linux 4.3

[dungeon]

I think a lot of it comes from the fact that all the games coming out seem to assume Catalyst is the official driver.

Does Catalyst driver suite comes from nVidia Corporation? Of course Catalyst is official driver, but radeon driver is also official just opensource one . Maybe you misunderstood bridgman... both drivers are official and there is no single reason one to kill another - some users has that "bright" idea over last 15 years, but just don't listen them

If opensurce one is enogh - use that or need Catalyst more - use that Both are official.

[bridgman]

Yeah, smitty3268 does have a valid point -- game devs don't seem to be as aware of the all-open stack as we would like. Noted.

[duby229]

Does Catalyst driver suite comes from nVidia Corporation? Of course Catalyst is official driver, but radeon driver is also official just opensource one . Maybe you misunderstood bridgman... both drivers are official and there is no single reason one to kill another - some users has that "bright" idea over last 15 years, but just don't listen them

If opensurce one is enogh - use that or need Catalyst more - use that Both are official.

That's not at all what has been said. It comes down to use cases. Depending on what you use the graphics product for is what diver you should use. Desktop users should be using the OSS driver and gamers are desktop users. That's the only driver game devs should target.

[dungeon]

Then i think you or bridgman can explain why Catalyst team make profiles for Linux games too and not just for workstation apps?

If Catalyst is really only for workstation users then desktop parts shouldn't be even supported there, let alone optimizations for Linux games which are there... i really wish somebody can explain differently these facts

How can some dev who bought Tonga year ago recommend mesa driver - please explain and try to be real.

Usually in requirements they say at least this and this hardware with at least this and this driver version is supported... maybe also they can say + Mesa drivers usually supported, if that means anything - it is better to say nothing as oppose to that

[smitty3268]

Then i think you or bridgman can explain why Catalyst team make profiles for Linux games too and not just for workstation apps?

I'm not sure what argument you think i'm trying to make, but i wasn't speaking about Catalyst at all.

All I said was that the game devs seem to ignore the Mesa drivers and don't treat them like an official driver, and that's a shame.

It's not all that surprising, I suppose - they are used to targeting Catalyst on Windows and OSX, and you can't download the Mesa drivers from amd.com, so I can see how they wouldn't get the impression that they are officially supported.

[dungeon]

I'm not sure what argument you think i'm trying to make, but i wasn't speaking about Catalyst at all.

All I said was that the game devs seem to ignore the Mesa drivers and don't treat them like an official driver, and that's a shame.

Ignorance is the main problem i think, but it happens on both sides. Because you (well not just you, any radeon user tend to do that) ignore Catalyst users, but then said how game devs ignore Mesa users

That is kind of dishonest generally to speak of, people should use either fglrx or radeon driver it is their choice... otherwise as i see it, ignorance on any side (drivers, game devs, game services, etc...) will just continue .

[dungeon]

It's not all that surprising, I suppose - they are used to targeting Catalyst on Windows and OSX, and you can't download the Mesa drivers from amd.com, so I can see how they wouldn't get the impression that they are officially supported.

That is unneeded really, SteamOS recently patched their mesa package to build gcc/libstdc++ staticaly, so that mesa users don't need to remove their libraries... Mesa devs are strongly oppose to that, saying that even all games on steam (and not just on steam) should be fixed

Same happens on GoG with shipped libraries, they explicitly don't want to support mesa officialy even if it is official - just for that one reason

[dungeon]

Yeah, smitty3268 does have a valid point -- game devs don't seem to be as aware of the all-open stack as we would like. Noted.

Heh, game devs do know about mesa drivers, but if any of the following are not there - they take their freedom (and to defend their business practices) to say this isn't supported or what better sounds is silence - to not say anything about

Quality, performance and (probably) workarounds... if some game does not pass that, driver simply isn't supported No one of them care just about driver code quality, if things are slow only with mesa or something fail only with mesa... well you know it

[Kano]

The main reason why OSS drivers are more complicated for endusers is the lack of easy upgrades. You might be lucky with source based distributions or maybe with *buntu PPA but not for the rest. If you don't like to use the unstable branch of Debian you get OSS driver updates every 2-3 years. Without LLVM updating the driver stack would be much easier - but if a new version requires a new compiler to bootstrap then you can forget it. I am also not that happy that modesetting is now bound to the xserver - but this driver could basically replace all hardware specific ddx - I don't get why AMDGPU ddx was introduced - this must be just a copy of it.

[smitty3268]

The main reason why OSS drivers are more complicated for endusers is the lack of easy upgrades. You might be lucky with source based distributions or maybe with *buntu PPA but not for the rest. If you don't like to use the unstable branch of Debian you get OSS driver updates every 2-3 years. Without LLVM updating the driver stack would be much easier - but if a new version requires a new compiler to bootstrap then you can forget it. I am also not that happy that modesetting is now bound to the xserver - but this driver could basically replace all hardware specific ddx - I don't get why AMDGPU ddx was introduced - this must be just a copy of it.

I believe they've said the primary reason behind the amdgpu ddx was for distros that didn't want to upgrade everything necessary for modesetting, such as RHEL. I think they are now recommending modesetting for most use cases, though.

I agree about the upgrading issue. If the stack ever gets into good shape, it might eventually be enough for most people to only update Mesa and forget about the rest. That would be a lot simpler, since you're down to just 1 package again rather than needing to grab X, the kernel, LLVM, etc. as well. But who knows if we'll ever reach that point or not.