Debian 12 Bookworm's Installer Updated To Better Handle Non-Free Firmware

[cgmb]

AMD GPU firmware for gpgpu is as far as I can tell completely broken right now.

What hardware are you having problems with? Let's see if we can get this fixed before the hard freeze.

[mandrake2]

What hardware are you having problems with? Let's see if we can get this fixed before the hard freeze.

I've tried the standard (Mesa) driver on Debian 11.6 on an AMD 5950X/B550/RX 6600 machine and also an AMD 7950X/X670/RX 6800 machine (motherboards and GPUs are MSI).

The instructions to install the Radeon GPU driver stack at AMD.com are for Ubuntu; I've tried on Debian 11.6 but amdgpu-install fails: unmet dependencies. I've not tried it on Debian 12 (the only machine I have Bookworm on the metal has an Nvidia GPU). I've tried it on Kubuntu: the 5950X system running Kubuntu 22.04.1 installs the drivers successfully but Blender can't find an RDNA GPU that supports OpenCL or HIP. The 7950X system running Kubuntu fails to run amdgpu-install with the same kind of installation issues as Debian 11.6: unresolvable dependencies (unsurprising since the instructions are specifically for Ubuntu running 22.04; there are also instructions for Ubuntu 20.04. Also RHEL but I'm not running that.)

I just tried again on the 7950X system running Debian 11.6 to make sure but amdgpu-install is a no-go with unresolved dependencies.

The GPUs run fine, handle large screen resolutions and multi-monitor support, I just can't get OpenCL support working, at least as far as Blender is concerned. I've been looking around for an independent OpenCL sanity test/stress test that I can use to verify driver support.

Blender works fine on all machines and finds an RDNA GPU to use when running Windows 11. I've tried various versions of Blender on Debian and Kubuntu all without success. I did manage to get Blender 3.4 to recognize an RTX 3050 as a CUDA-capable GPU but only on Fedora 37 with rpmfusion drivers.

[cgmb]

I've tried the standard (Mesa) driver on Debian 11.6 on an AMD 5950X/B550/RX 6600 machine and also an AMD 7950X/X670/RX 6800 machine (motherboards and GPUs are MSI).

That's all Navi 2x hardware, so that should be great. The RX 6600 might need you to set `export HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=10.3.0` to work with some applications, but I think that should work well. AMD donated a few GPUs to the Debian project back in October to help support RDNA2 hardware.

The instructions to install the Radeon GPU driver stack at AMD.com are for Ubuntu; I've tried on Debian 11.6 but amdgpu-install fails: unmet dependencies. I've not tried it on Debian 12 (the only machine I have Bookworm on the metal has an Nvidia GPU). I've tried it on Kubuntu: the 5950X system running Kubuntu 22.04.1 installs the drivers successfully but Blender can't find an RDNA GPU that supports OpenCL or HIP.

The instructions at AMD.com are still not going to work, because Debian is not an officially supported platform for AMD. However, Christian Kastner, Étienne Mollier and myself have been working hard to get ROCm into the Debian repositories as normal packages. We don't have everything packaged yet, but the core components are done and more high-level libraries should become available in the backports repo when they're finished.

On Debian 12, you should be able to `apt install libamdhip-dev` and the Blender binaries distributed via blender.org should detect your GPU in Edit -> System -> Cycles Render Devices -> HIP. There are some bug fixes still pending migration from unstable, so you might also need `apt install libamd-comgr-dev libhsa-runtime-dev`. The -dev packages probably install a few more things than you actually need in order to get Blender working, but it will get the job done.

[mandrake2]

The instructions at AMD.com are still not going to work, because Debian is not an officially supported platform for AMD.

I know.... I thought I'd give it a try just in case, and because Ubuntu is derived from Debian after all (but obviously a completely different version than 11.6)

However, Christian Kastner, Étienne Mollier and myself have been working hard to get ROCm into the Debian repositories as normal packages. We don't have everything packaged yet, but the core components are done and more high-level libraries should become available in the backports repo when they're finished.

That's great! I wish you all the luck getting it in. God knows, Linux needs GPUs to work (fully) out of the box!

On Debian 12, you should be able to `apt install libamdhip-dev` and the Blender binaries distributed via blender.org should detect your GPU in Edit -> System -> Cycles Render Devices -> HIP. There are some bug fixes still pending migration from unstable, so you might also need `apt install libamd-comgr-dev libhsa-runtime-dev`. The -dev packages probably install a few more things than you actually need in order to get Blender working, but it will get the job done.

I'm probably going to "upgrade" the 7950X to Debian 12. I'll give it a try. (The machine is new and I've been trying to determine the ONE Linux distro I want to run on it. Debian is my preference, but old toolchains and difficult GPU support have been militating against. I'm really hopeful for Debian 12! Fedora updates too often for my liking: I really prefer an LTS build (Buster has been phenomenal!). Ubuntu is sort of a half-way house but it's not my preference). Thanks!

[BrokenAnsible]

That's all Navi 2x hardware, so that should be great. The RX 6600 might need you to set `export HSA_OVERRIDE_GFX_VERSION=10.3.0` to work with some applications, but I think that should work well. AMD donated a few GPUs to the Debian project back in October to help support RDNA2 hardware.



The instructions at AMD.com are still not going to work, because Debian is not an officially supported platform for AMD. However, Christian Kastner, Étienne Mollier and myself have been working hard to get ROCm into the Debian repositories as normal packages. We don't have everything packaged yet, but the core components are done and more high-level libraries should become available in the backports repo when they're finished.

On Debian 12, you should be able to `apt install libamdhip-dev` and the Blender binaries distributed via blender.org should detect your GPU in Edit -> System -> Cycles Render Devices -> HIP. There are some bug fixes still pending migration from unstable, so you might also need `apt install libamd-comgr-dev libhsa-runtime-dev`. The -dev packages probably install a few more things than you actually need in order to get Blender working, but it will get the job done.

Sir, you and your cohorts are doing God's work. Godspeed to you all.