The Libdrm & xf86-video-amdgpu Repositories To Follow For FreeSync

Many Linux gamers are excited by the prospects of soon having FreeSync support working on the purely open-source Radeon Linux graphics driver stack.

Last week the AMD Linux developers began discussing with other upstream open-source graphics driver developers about plans for FreeSync / AdaptiveSync support in trying to come up with an approach and set of interfaces that could be adopted across drivers.

That work remains a work in progress. While AMDGPU DC is initially expected for Linux 4.15, the FreeSync bits are still settling. A good place to track if wanting to follow the AMDGPU DRM kernel side work is amd-staging-drm-next.

There's also updated user-space bits needed, namely libdrm and xf86-video-amdgpu, for being able to communicate to the DRM kernel driver when to turn on/off FreeSync. For that Nicolai Hähnle has been leading the charge.

There is this DDX code branch for the testing patches for xf86-video-amdgpu and this libdrm branch.

Once the code begins settling down for FreeSync and looks solid, I'll begin with some tests at Phoronix to see how it's working out and also a how-to guide if necessary.