AMDGPU X.Org 22.0 Driver Released With AsyncFlipSecondaries, GLAMOR Fixes

For those relying upon the open-source AMD Linux graphics driver stack and continuing to use an X.Org Server rather than Wayland and not using the generic xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver, xf86-video-amdgpu 22.0 is out today to improve the X.Org experience for Radeon graphics.

Out today is the latest infrequent update to xf86-video-amdgpu, the DDX driver for use with the X.Org Server that is seldom updated these days due to the most interesting work taking place on the AMDGPU Linux kernel driver and then the OpenGL/Vulkan drivers within Mesa.

One notable change with xf86-video-amdgpu is adding the "AsyncFlipSecondaries" driver option, which behaves the same as the xf86-video-modesetting option introduced last year. Enabling AsyncFlipSecondaries allows for non-vsynced flips for secondary display outputs. This improves the multi-monitor experience especially for mirror/clone mode and where primarily caring just about the best experience / page-flipping on the primary monitor and don't necessarily mind tearing on secondary displays -- especially if your primary monitor is a higher refresh rate than the secondary displays. More details on this option adapted for the AMDGPU DDX via last year's article: X.Org Server Adds "AsyncFlipSecondaries" To Deal With Crappy Multi-Monitor Experience.

There is also a GLAMOR fix around tiled distortion for shared pixmaps between APU and GPU setups. And there is a second GLAMOR fix for shared pixmaps due to the scanout usage flag not being set that could result in GPU artifacts for some scenarios.

Today's new update is for the AMDGPU DDX, not to be confused with the AMDGPU DRM kernel driver or the AMDGPU LLVM compiler back-end.

There's just this handful of changes with today's xf86-video-amdgpu 22.0 release, which is the first since last July but again not much exciting work happens in the X.Org DDX driver space these days.