Graphics card driver advice

[heinkel_111]

Hi, I just purchased a new SSD to install kubuntu as second OS on my desktop computer. I got kubuntu 15.10 installed with ok status, some problems which I will spend some days trying to figure out.

My desktop is based on AMD hardware, and I have an ATI Radeon HD7970 graphics card. I have been googling for an hour or two trying to get some linux-based user experience on drivers for this kind of card but don't seem to have much luck. What is the reputation of ATI proprietary drivers on linux these days? I am especially interested in experience or advice regarding their high-end graphics cards. Just hints on where to look would be appreciated, thanks..

[heinkel_111]

Basically, my question is - what is really the right answer here:


I now use the open source radeon driver, and it works for what I have tried so far, after installing kubuntu last week. The most advanced graphics application I tried was glxgears, and it works like a charm :-)

However, when I log on and log out there is some frantic flashing (black/white) of the screen that does not really inspire confidence. I have also tried the live disk demo using fglrx and I think that was a failure (ended up having a much more serious problem - an SSD crash so the only think I can remember in detail is having to do a lot of stuff over again and thank God for backups...).

What I am looking for is kubuntu user experience with AMD/ATI cards - preferably something similar to mine:

heinkel_111@mymachine:~$ inxi -Gx
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Tahiti XT [Radeon HD 7970/8970 OEM / R9 280X]
           bus-ID: 06:00.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.17.2 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD TAHITI (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.6.2)
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.0.2 Direct Rendering: Yes

Background
I use linux a lot but AMD/ATI high-end hardware is new to me. A couple of years back (some 6 years...) I used nvidia on a now-dead-device and remember some struggles with the drivers. At the time ATI (as I think it was known) was just known as even worse for linux, so I did not care. In the meantime, I bought a little laptop with Intel integrated graphics which for compatibility with linux was heaven compared to the old desktop. The machine I am now installing kubuntu on was bought for a role as a windows workstation & fun machine, so I selected AMD/ATI based hardware for price/performance reasons, not for linux compatibility. Now that the hardware has a few years on the road, I expected there would be linux drivers available so decided to install kubuntu. Now, I find at least three drivers offered out-of-the box (how things have improved) but guidance on which to choose is incredibly hard to come by - that is why I am looking for other user's experiences.

[mastablasta]

place to look at for info is phoronix

otherwise you select the first option. hwoever there is a known issue where AMD drivers won't compile in 15.10 as they are not made for the new compiler. more here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...5.10-fglrx-Fix

[heinkel_111]

place to look at for info is phoronix

otherwise you select the first option. hwoever there is a known issue where AMD drivers won't compile in 15.10 as they are not made for the new compiler. more here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...5.10-fglrx-Fix

Thanks for the info mastablasta, this may explain my somewhat unsuccesful attempts to get fglrx to work when testing it with the live disk. I am surprised that broken fglrx (or should I call it Catalyst) was not picked up during testing of the distribution. Based on reputation I was not super-surprised that there are some problems with linux drivers from AMD/ATI but that it should be such a fundamental issue is surprising, and disappointing.

In the meantime, I can use the open-source driver but it does not look like a good alternative for high-performance 3D graphics becaue it does not seem to have any support for accelrated 3D graphics (K-infocenter lists 3d-accelrators as "unknown" which I think means it cannot detect it?) although by now I am quite happy with how it works for "ordinary desktop" use.

[sithlord48]

Unless your using having issues with the open source driver or trying to use open gl higher then the currently supported in mesa i would continue to use the open source driver.

you can find your gl version by using the command (requires the mesa-utils package)

glxinfo | grep 'OpenGL'

you will get output like this

OpenGL vendor string: X.Org
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880
OpenGL core profile version string: 3.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 10.3.2
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 3.30
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:

incase you were wondering about the card in this

➜ ~ inxi -Gx
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS880M [Mobility Radeon HD 4225/4250] bus-ID: 01:05.0
X.Org: 1.16.0 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1920x1080@60.0hz
GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD RS880 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2 Direct Rendering: Yes

you can see whats working in the open source driver here
http://xorg.freedesktop.org/wiki/RadeonFeature/

also the flicking when the logout/shutdown dialog is up seams to happen on both the radeon and intel drivers. so im guessing its just a render bug either in kde or elsewhere in the gfx stack

[mastablasta]

Based on reputation I was not super-surprised that there are some problems with linux drivers from AMD/ATI but that it should be such a fundamental issue is surprising, and disappointing.
.

except this time AMD may not be at fault. fix seems to be arround the corner. until then, there is a workarround posted in that link or there is always 14.04 LTS with slightly older kernel if you enable hardware enablement stack, where the AMD drivers should work.

i've read dedoimedo review of 15.10 and apparently drivers in Kubuntu are the least of the problem. reviewer ave it a 0 out of 10 as it dissapointed him so much. it's been a while since i was on these non LTS releases. i can say, i only hope they do better for 16.04. less politics, more bug solving. :P