Bit lost with AMDGPU (Pro), LLVM, Mesa and all...

[Brausepaul]

Hi,

some years ago I ran and used an Ubuntu install that nearly made it to become my primary operating system instead of Windows. Back then I was gaming a lot but this has been reduced due to personal reasons. I still do some gaming, though (mostly games that are available for Linux anyway).

I decided to give it another try in March with Ubuntu 15.10, my plan was to upgrade to the upcoming LTS version and leave it at that since I do not want to figgle around too much since my time is limited. Since I own an AMD R9 280X I was bitten by the well-known flgrx decision, so my 15.10 installation was removed again. I follow the Linux use regularly since then with an eye on the graphics section. I still would like to return to Linux or Ubuntu more specifically, but I do need an effort-free, stable OS without too much change as a developing platform. Still, I want to do some gaming.

So, what are my options? I have to admit that I read a lot about LLVM, mesa, this and that...without fully understanding their relation to each other. I take it that with the current kernel included in Ubuntu 16.04.01, I would miss every necessary improvement / progress that has been made to get my graphics adapter running in a way necessary for gaming. Am I correct? Even building a mainline kernel and adding ppas etc. would have consequences to my hopefully stable development platform. Setting up a dual-boot with a more up-to-date distribution? Mmh, still a bit of a hassle...any ideas or suggestions? Do I miss some obvious, golden option?

[bridgman]

OP has an SI card, so if they are hoping to avoid fiddling around then I think they would be better off with the radeon stack in 16.04.1 for now.

A few months after each new 6-month release comes out a new version of LTS will be made available with updated kernel and graphics stack - that seems like a good compromise between "stable" and "keeping up to date with new graphics drivers" if I am understanding the OP's priorities. At some point the amdgpu-based stack will probably be enabled by default and a few months later that should automatically appear in the next 16.04.x LTS version.

On the other hand, if the OP is looking for the latest bleeding edge code, your advice is probably just what they need.

[bridgman]

I'm not following your logic. Even if I agreed with your premises, why not use the radeon stack if it works better ?

[Shalrath]

bridgman well for one, opensource radeon stack + TF2 from DEC2015 until now = hard lockup in about 1-5 minutes of playing, every time, all the time.


So at the moment, it's a choice between waiting to see if the AMDGPU stack will come to gcn1.0 cards, shell out 250$ on a new one, or just keep playing certain games through wine in dx9 mode to bypass the lockup bug.

[bridgman]

bridgman well for one, opensource radeon stack + TF2 from DEC2015 until now = hard lockup in about 1-5 minutes of playing, every time, all the time.

Still not understanding... are you saying that the amdgpu kernel driver is better than the radeon kernel driver w.r.t the TF2 lockup ? If so then that is very useful info, not reported anywhere AFAIK.

Usually issues like that are more likely to be fixed in the userspace driver than the kernel driver, and the same userspace driver (radeonsi) is used with both radeon and amdgpu kernel drivers.

In your case I guess you might be talking about the -pro stack with a different userspace GL driver (is that right ??), but that is not what the post I responded to was recommending.

[Shalrath]

bridgman No idea if amdgpu solves that particular problem. I have a GCN1.0 card, and have not yet successfully gotten the amdgpu stack to work.

[dungeon]

Do I miss some obvious, golden option?

As a Debian user i can keep recommending Debian Stable for this case, so i would still say here golden option is Debian Stable for longterm GCN 1.0 users, because last fglrx 15.12 works fine there effort free (available in backports repo)... Even if you need newer kernels it is patched up to 4.7, but even works with 4.8 actually

Basically Stable was unaffected by all this changes... amdgpu, ubuntu lts, gcc5, xserver, etc... GCN 1.0 fglrx user likely does not complain there at all this year

[dungeon]

Or if you must use Ubuntu 16.04 then just continue to use opensource radeon driver, that would be a best + no effort.. and eventually wait for amdgpu(-pro) if/when that appear.

[dungeon]

A lot of unapproved mod-shit, i had one post before this

[Hibbelharry]

Basically do the following:

Install Ubuntu. Install your game. Try it out.

If it works, good, do nothing.
If it doesn't work: ask again.

And as an advice: Don't follow all ideas from Debianxfce. His ideas are mostly out of this world.