Radeon Software for Linux 19.20 Brings RHEL 8.0 Support

Quietly released last week was Radeon Software for Linux 19.20, the latest quarterly update to AMD's packaged Linux driver that consists of their AMDGPU-PRO binary driver option as well as the AMDGPU-Open packaged components using a snapshot of Mesa.

Radeon Software for Linux 19.20 only has a sole change listed: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 support and any other binary compatible downstream like the yet-to-be-released CentOS 8.0. That's it in terms of the official changes but should be also pulling in a newer snapshot of Mesa and their binary OpenGL/Vulkan drivers, newer DRM kernel driver code, etc.

It's unlikely the Radeon Software for Linux 19.20 driver has any support yet for Navi, at least in working form. For that we should see a new Radeon Software for Linux packaged driver release on launch day, 7 July. It remains to be seen though if they'll be able to get this driver working for Ubuntu 19.04 or if launch-day customers not wanting to roll their own kernel/Mesa would need to revert to using an Ubuntu LTS release for support. The Radeon Software for Linux driver package remains focused primarily on the enterprise Linux distributions.

Those wanting to try out Radeon Software for Linux 19.20 can download it at AMD.com.