# amdgpu-pro graphics cards availability to gentoo devs?

## duby2291

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/amd-linux/882068-rx-480-on-other-distros?p=882737#post882737

Hey guys, I just read this post at Phoronix and it really concerned me. Is it true that Gentoo's team responsible for graphics driver ebuilds don't have any AMDGPU-Pro compatible cards? If so, then I think it is incredibly important for us gentoo users to step up to bat and obtain a few for them.

Hit me up, I want to try to help.

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## krinn

Fine that guy lost only 250$ to learn that, it took me 450$ for the lesson, well, could be seen as improvement so.

Please note the date! 12 years and nothing change.

It's not because you will buy one to any distro devs that they will have ability to fix anything in the binary drivers, only amd devs could do.

If you want help, gives the money to gentoo devs graphics herd, but don't ask them anything in return. They will sure enjoy more the money than a card that work only on vesa mode.

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## duby2291

Putting personal biases aside for a moment, AMD doesn't support gentoo at all, so the only people that can support AMD drivers on gentoo are gentoo users and devs themselves. I'd be happy to send money to the dev team -if- that money will only be used to buy an amdgpu-pro compatible card. Otherwise I would rather just ship a card itself.

Who do I need to talk to? And perhaps there are other users that would be willing to donate hardware?

EDIT: The point is that there are no ebuilds in the upstream portage tree. Tested on real hardware, upstream ebuilds, that's the point and that's why I want to help. I would be willing to ship a card out if I knew it was going where it would be used for this task.

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## chithanh

A bit of background on this:

x11-drivers/ati-drivers used to be maintained by Gentoo developer lu_zero. but when support for his r300 generation card was dropped, he could no longer test that package and we had to rely on users who had r600+ hardware to tell us whether what we packaged actually worked or not.

Fortunately, we found a user (Enrico Tagliavini) who continued to maintain this package by proxy. But after ati-drivers-13.1, support was dropped for his notebook GPU too. We sent a notice about this and a new user (Emil Karlson) stepped up to continue maintaining this driver.

So this situation is not new and actually has been the case ever since ati-drivers-9.4 release.

Now, there is a combination of amdgpu-pro replacing ati-drivers, and the open source drivers becoming good enough for many use cases that previously had made it necessary to run the proprietary drivers. Eventually, compatible hardware will find its way to the X11 team, but our interest would still focus on the open source drivers.

TL;DR

No, don't send us money or hardware. We will buy that stuff anyway over time. Rather, contribute to the amdgpu-pro ebuilds and we will happily proxy commit to the portage tree for you.

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## krinn

You cannot really tells amd doesn't support gentoo at all, amd has some support for their linux drivers, but it's not ubuntu drivers, it's linux drivers.

The fact it's binary drivers just mean no open source devs could do anything on them.

So if you willing to support gentoo dev that are working on amd packaging, you better gave them money, and they will do whatever they wish with it.

If you buy them a card, they won't cry too for sure, but by buying the card you are supporting amd bad behaviour. It's not gentoo devs that keep releasing a card without working drivers, it's amd.

 *Quote:*   

> Who do i need to talk to?

 

Well, as you see in phoronix thread, chithanh is there, so i think you couldn't get any better ears.

You might as well just look who push ati-drivers in the tree, from what i see, x11@gentoo.org and some others, but Manuel Rüger has done works on ati-drivers ebuild.

You might also just not talk if it's just to get an ebuild in the tree, most of the time: ask is enough.

You can ask it in bugzilla, and you might even provide the ebuild you tried use from the overlay.

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## duby2291

Ok, cool. I was just concerned that you guys didn't have the hardware you needed to test actual hardware. But, it seems from your context that you believe actual testing is happening regardless and things will work out soon. I'm happy with that. Thanks for responding.

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## duby2291

 *krinn wrote:*   

> You cannot really tells amd doesn't support gentoo at all, amd has some support for their linux drivers, but it's not ubuntu drivers, it's linux drivers.
> 
> The fact it's binary drivers just mean no open source devs could do anything on them.
> 
> So if you willing to support gentoo dev that are working on amd packaging, you better gave them money, and they will do whatever they wish with it.
> ...

 

I do agree with you that Catalyst sucked really hard, it was a bad driver for sure. But the status quo has changed since AMD released amdgpu-pro. The OpenGL implementation still sucks ass, but the platform is a whole lot better, they based it on the open source amdgpu driver which is really good.

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## chithanh

As I wrote in the Phoronix forum, the AMD proprietary driver team cares about four distros (Ubuntu, SteamOS, Redhat and SUSE enterprise desktops). If it works elsewhere, that is only by accident.

Also that AMD released the RX 480 without working drivers isn't true. The open source drivers for this card work well, and are easy enough to install in Gentoo (just need to install kernel 4.7-rc6 and unmask three live ebuilds).

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## krinn

As a french, i'm so good at complaining, so here's another thing you might do:

- Complain to amd (0$ cost to you for the email)

- Ask amd to provide free cards to gentoo devs (nearly cost 0$ for them, and having gentoo devs putting effort on their cards is worth the $ put on table).

 *duby2291 wrote:*   

>  do agree with you that Catalyst sucked really hard, it was a bad driver for sure. But the status quo has changed since AMD released amdgpu-pro. The OpenGL implementation still sucks ass, but the platform is a whole lot better.

 

Sorry from what i see, the problem remain the same, just the card cost a few less than before, but still 250$ cost for a card is not "nothing", and for $250 what you get at end? vesa mode!

So despite your good hope on amd, the reality seems quiet different for me.

I didn't complain really Catalyst sucks, that's not really the point, the point is even sucky, if you have a Catalyst version that handle the card, you can do 3D with it, if you don't have any, you just cannot, and the ultimate-latest-kickass amd 3D card is just a dumb shitty 2D vesa card.

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## duby2291

 *krinn wrote:*   

> As a french, i'm so good at complaining, so here's another thing you might do:
> 
> - Complain to amd (0$ cost to you for the email)
> 
> - Ask amd to provide free cards to gentoo devs (nearly cost 0$ for them, and having gentoo devs putting effort on their cards is worth the $ put on table).
> ...

 

You're not correct. The open source drivers are fantastic and nearly complete. They do work very, very well. Catalyst doesn't exist anymore, it got replaced with a new driver stack called amdgpu-pro that is itself based on the open source stack.

The open source drivers work well, but for Vulkan and OpenCL you need the amdgpu-pro stack. You'll never get stuck on vesa with any amd card. They all have nearly complete 3d acceleration with mesa.

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## chithanh

 *krinn wrote:*   

> - Ask amd to provide free cards to gentoo devs (nearly cost 0$ for them, and having gentoo devs putting effort on their cards is worth the $ put on table).

 Why should they? AMD doesn't care whether the proprietary driver works on Gentoo. They do care about the open source driver (when we report issues to them they react), and we make sure that the open source driver works because we like open source and we already own hardware that is supported by it.

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## krinn

 *duby2291 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> You're not correct. The open source drivers are fantastic and nearly complete. They do work very, very well. Catalyst doesn't exist anymore, it got replaced with a new driver stack called amdgpu-pro that is itself based on the open source stack.
> 
> The open source drivers work well, but for Vulkan and OpenCL you need the amdgpu-pro stack.

 

Maybe, never said i was fully correct as my latest try with amd was 2004. But really it seems it didn't change for me.

Is the card out? Do you have a amdgpu-pro drivers that works with it? (it looks better than before, as it looks like you have a ubuntu beta release, you might called that improvement, pardon me if i'm not).

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## duby2291

The clincher for me is Vulkan, and that's only provided by amdgpu-pro. Once an open source Vulkan implementation makes it's way out, I won't care about amdgpu-pro anymore.

EDIT: of course Vulkan capable titles are nearly non-existent yet, soooo..... I'm really just thinking ahead.

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## azp

 *duby2291 wrote:*   

> The clincher for me is Vulkan, and that's only provided by amdgpu-pro. Once an open source Vulkan implementation makes it's way out, I won't care about amdgpu-pro anymore.
> 
> EDIT: of course Vulkan capable titles are nearly non-existent yet, soooo..... I'm really just thinking ahead.

 

It's the same for me. I'm a developer and want to start fiddling around with Vulkan, so I need the drivers (+Linux support in RenderDoc... But AMD Code XL might be good enough for now).

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## Lucretia

 *duby2291 wrote:*   

> https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/amd-linux/882068-rx-480-on-other-distros?p=882737#post882737
> 
> Hey guys, I just read this post at Phoronix and it really concerned me. Is it true that Gentoo's team responsible for graphics driver ebuilds don't have any AMDGPU-Pro compatible cards? If so, then I think it is incredibly important for us gentoo users to step up to bat and obtain a few for them.
> 
> Hit me up, I want to try to help.

 

I'm actually waiting a reply from John Bridgman as to whether AMD will allow me access to the bits they give to devs, if so, I'll be doing more on the amdgpu-pro stuff. My interest is in writing language bindings to Vulkan, so I have a vested interest in getting this stuff working.

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## azp

 *Lucretia wrote:*   

>  *duby2291 wrote:*   https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/linux-graphics-x-org-drivers/amd-linux/882068-rx-480-on-other-distros?p=882737#post882737
> 
> Hey guys, I just read this post at Phoronix and it really concerned me. Is it true that Gentoo's team responsible for graphics driver ebuilds don't have any AMDGPU-Pro compatible cards? If so, then I think it is incredibly important for us gentoo users to step up to bat and obtain a few for them.
> 
> Hit me up, I want to try to help. 
> ...

 

Interesting, I hope it works out! Bridgman seems to be a really great guy, always very helpful and friendly on the forums.

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## Ant P.

 *duby2291 wrote:*   

> The clincher for me is Vulkan, and that's only provided by amdgpu-pro. Once an open source Vulkan implementation makes it's way out, I won't care about amdgpu-pro anymore.

 

There's also the intel drivers, but I don't feel like having to buy an entire new PC just to get some new GPU APIs.

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