Open-source AMD drivers for Arch Linux

hanouzz · January 5

I have heard that if you have an AMD card, your drivers are automatically installed for you because they are bundled with the kernel.
Is this true, and if so, does this mean that nothing is required on my part to get the drivers up and working?

And is it the open-source AMDGPU drivers with RADV (Radeon Vulkan) and Radeon SI (OpenGL, I think)? coz I don't want the proprietary drivers [amdgpupro]

This knowledge will help once I have a PC sometime this spring.

Levent · January 5

4 minutes ago, hanouzz said:

Is this true

Yes [Generally speaking]

hanouzz · January 5

1 minute ago, Levent said:

Yes [Generally speaking]

Great! So is there anything else I need to install to get most modern games ands programs working?
Examples including anything relating to display technology such as X11/Xorg, Wayland or graphics APIs such as Vulkan or OpenGL?

WereCat · January 5

9 minutes ago, hanouzz said:

Great! So is there anything else I need to install to get most modern games ands programs working?
Examples including anything relating to display technology such as X11/Xorg, Wayland or graphics APIs such as Vulkan or OpenGL?

For gaming you don't really need to do anything.

For productivity like video encoding, 3D rendering, etc... It really depends on what kind of SW you use. Some like OBS work fine, Blender requires the proprietary drivers for GPU accelerated rendering and Davinci Resolve does not support GPU encoding on Linux with either of them... To give an example.

hanouzz · January 6

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

For gaming you don't really need to do anything.

For productivity like video encoding, 3D rendering, etc... It really depends on what kind of SW you use. Some like OBS work fine, Blender requires the proprietary drivers for GPU accelerated rendering and Davinci Resolve does not support GPU encoding on Linux with either of them... To give an example.

So then here are my next questions:
1. Am I able to swap between drivers easily, and if so, what would I need to do it?
2. I know that DaVinci Resolve works on Linux, so how would I get that working? Coz I was looking forward to using that

WereCat · January 6

4 minutes ago, hanouzz said:

So then here are my next questions:
1. Am I able to swap between drivers easily, and if so, what would I need to do it?
2. I know that DaVinci Resolve works on Linux, so how would I get that working? Coz I was looking forward to using that

1.) Can you swap? Yes. Easily? No. Should you? Probably not.

2.) Davinci Resolve works on Linux but the encoding with AMD does not so you'll have to rely on your CPU for encoding.

You can probably quickly export losses video then re-encode with Handbrake or FFMPEG which should work with AMD encoder.

hanouzz · January 6

1 hour ago, WereCat said:

1.) Can you swap? Yes. Easily? No. Should you? Probably not.

2.) Davinci Resolve works on Linux but the encoding with AMD does not so you'll have to rely on your CPU for encoding.

You can probably quickly export losses video then re-encode with Handbrake or FFMPEG which should work with AMD encoder.

Alright, thanks!