Ubuntu 15.04 Receives Early Release Of Catalyst 15.3 Linux Driver

Early adopters of Ubuntu 15.04 Vivid Vervet can now use AMD's new Catalyst 15.3 Beta driver that's been packaged for Ubuntu and uploaded to the Vivid repository prior to its release on AMD.com.

As usual, AMD has pre-seeded Canonical with a beta of the next Catalyst Linux driver release. This driver is needed to support the latest Linux kernel and X.Org Server of Ubuntu 15.04 with the public AMD.com driver not supporting these latest versions. This has been happening for years with AMD's turnaround time for new xorg-server and Linux kernel support generally lagging.

Known changes for the Catalyst 15.3 Beta include support for X.Org Server ABI 19 (X.Org Server 1.17) and dropping of various DKMS patches. This driver is significantly larger than Catalyst 14.12, the current stable release, but it's not known yet what other changes are encompassed by this new driver.

It was just a few days ago I wrote about expecting a new Catalyst Linux update soon. It's not known though when AMD will release Catalyst 14.3 Beta for Linux to the general (non-Ubuntu) public. Confirmation of the package hitting vivid-proposed was sent today to the vivid-changes list.