We're already there: AMD has first class upstream Linux support!
I played steam games for ten hours on 6.11-rc3 last week with zero problems, on a very old userland (Debian bullseye). The amdgpu driver was built-in, not a module.
I thought we were already there, 19years ago
I'm not discounting your experiences at all, btw. My 11 year old has been using Ubuntu as his main gaming rig, and the NVidia drivers work incredibly well and Steam games just work. It's still mind boggling to me that it works so well.
And, I no longer have to troubleshoot removing Windows virii from his computer.
My understanding though, is that most of "steam games" are still windows binaries + wine + patches (proton, etc). It's well hidden behind a nice GUI, but the tech couldn't exist without the legacy of pure old wine.
Will we ever get UT2k2X?
Fortunately UT2k4 is still fun and plays well, even on an ancient PC, and looks decent enough.
I’ve heard there’s still some folks on some self-hosted servers playing it, maybe I’ll have to look into that.
Website is still up, but only partially functional. Check out the character design for Samael.
Yeah, I guess I was always holding out some futile hope that they may reboot it at some point.
Just a couple of months ago, yet another motherboard where UEFI and Linux distributions don't get along without some gimmicks.
When Win10 goes out of support I'll probably be using Linux as my daily driver for the foreseeable future, so I'm glad Valve put in the work.
And really Valve/Linux Community is more responsible for AMD's Opensource Radeon drivers and Gaming performance on Linux than AMD is!
Even Intel has better Blender 3D iGPU/dGPU Accelerated Cycles rendering support for Intel's ARC/Earlier iGPUs and dGPU hardware(Via OneAPI/Level-0) and iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux. And so really one must first consider what Linux Opensource applications need proper iGPU/dGPU compute API support so they do not have to use the slow and power hungry CPU rendering/whatever fallback instead.
And Blender 3D used to support OpenCL as the iGPU/dGPU compute API for AMD and Intel Graphics but even back then AMD's OpenCL component was not easy to get installed and working on Linux. And Linux/MESA had the old clover OpenCL implementation in the MESA drivers but that was not kept updated for OpenCL feature set support! And even with the newer Rusticl OpenCL Implementation in MESA that's just been created is that Rusticl/OpenCL implementation been fully enabled in any Ubuntu versions or Ubuntu derivatives currently?
Look at support for AMD's ROCm/HIP in Linux and for Consumer/Client iGPUs and dGPUs and that's rather limited and Polaris dGPUs have long since been dropped form the ROCm/HIP support matrix and Vega iGPU/dGPUs are on borrowed time for ROCm/HIP support.
So be careful there giving too much credit to AMD's iGPU/dGPU efforts on Linux as there's more to that story. And Look at Blender 3D where that works with Nvidia's CUDA and Works with Apple's Metal and iGPU compute API support there and dGPUs as well.
And I'm on Linux Mint and never going back to Windows but all my older AMD iGPU/dGPU hardware has never been properly supported for Blender 3D's iGPU/dGPU accelerated Cycles rendering. Intel's got better iGPU/dGPU compute API support on Linux but for ARM Based Processors Apple's the only choice there for proper Blender 3D iGPU support and no mention of Blender 3D iGPU accelerated Cycles rendering support for Qualcomm's Adreno X1 iGPUs on the Snapdragon X Elite SOC based laptops or Mini Desktop PC(Coming soon for consumers).
Imagine spending the money for a premium laptop and the hdmi port being just permanently busted because it has an AMD apu inside, lol.
Even worse… AMD has settled on rdna 3.5 as their forever architecture for APUs (like Vega before it) so this isn’t going away anytime soon even if it’s fixed in rdna4. Same problem with av1 encoding - the bugs are present in rdna3.5 and won’t be fixed until rdna4 at earliest, and AMD won’t put rdna4 in APUs because it’s got raytracing, so these bugs are just gonna stick around forever. It’ll be probably 3 years until they launch APUs with rdna4.5 or rdna5 or whatever the next forever architecture is.
So anyone who wants plex transcoding is best advised to stay away as well. And that’s the problem - with Radeon you’ve always had to start listing off all the people who shouldn’t buy the product, and if you don’t use any of those things it’s great. (well, decent… except for x y and z…)
Hardware transcoding is unnecessary, I don't care if it works and I never will.
That's not AMD's fault and there's nothing AMD can do here outside of releasing a proprietary driver. Which they used to do. It sucked and caused a lot of confusion and problems.
Actually,
(1) it’s their product so yes, it is their fault, and blindly assuming HDMI would be willing to open-source their product for AMD (after release!) was an incredibly stupid decision from the get-go. You get legal approvals beforehand like any other company does. You certainly don’t release a whole second generation (or further cards in the same generation) without it fixing it, and you don’t continue advertising it on products that don’t support it.
(2) literally everyone else has figured it out, including intel, who has an open driver. They do it by implementing a LPCON onboard, which is perfectly fine and gets the job done. AMD is the only one with broken HDMI support under Linux.
(3) AMD already has a proprietary driver, amdgpu-pro, so this clearly isn’t a problem or burden. In fact it was and is their primary focus of development, per their communication with geohotz.
I will never understand why the AMD fan base engages in this kind of apologism for clearly broken features etc. like oh gosh poor lil AMD had no idea that hdmi was unwilling to open-source their shit, despite every single other vendor realizing this and implementing workarounds. It’s not their fault, they had no choice but to ship a broken feature, advertising it on the box, and spend 5 years leading people on that it was going to happen!
Like they are literally still shipping broken products today! Not just standalone cards, but laptops etc where it will never ever be fixable.
That’s shitty anti-consumer behavior and you’re enabling it.
At the end of the day it's AMD's product, the buck stops with them. Nobody is making them continue falsely advertising the product, and in fact it really is their job to make sure it works properly before release, not begging HDMI to open-source their product after the fact. Imagine if literally any other company had gone ahead and released the product before they knew they were legally allowed to release the product - "oops" would not cut it.
Which is an extremely questionable business decision, probably driven by statistics like desktop market share.
But the resources need for driver development are negligible and Linux does run on most computers worldwide, so the behavior of many hardware manufacturers is quite puzzling from a business and technology standpoint.
It’s a matter of time.
I strongly believe that AMD's driver is superior because the open source process makes it better. NVIDIA does not participate in that process.
Aside from source availability and maybe the risk of version mismatch, I mean.
There are some subtle arguable advantages, for example on x86 static kernel text sits on 2MB hugepages while module text sits on 4K pages from vmalloc.
The kernel on my gaming machine is actually built without loadable module support at all. It's a static binary with only the exact necessary set of drivers turned on.
Debloated and no ads. You do have to do a little bit of troubleshooting, install extra components (e.g. to install the Microsoft store), etc., but it was significantly easier than debloating a regular Windows 11 install.
https://massgrave.dev/genuine-installation-media#verify-auth...
> instead of just using Linux (and possibly making it work better?)
I want a PC that can play games without hassle. I love Linux, computing, and complexity, but sometimes I want something that just works consistently.
Linux has gotten better over the years, especially as far as compatibility goes, but it's still _much_ harder to use than Windows.
I dispute that notion
I was a Windows user from 95 all the way to 10. Yearly formats with fresh installs were a constant through the whole time.
Ever since I switched to Linux things are surprisingly stable. My laptop is running as well as my fresh install from more than 2 years ago.
No it's not all in a browser. That's a shitty assumption and one that should not be forced upon anyone.
I always wonder how many people have been fucked over by a helpful relative giving them a Linux install with a browser and telling them to get on with it ...
But, if we're talking desktops, I suspect most desktop users want much more than just a browser. Either for gaming, office use, creative use, etc.
The keyboards are really bad for a developer, though. Otherwise, I might use them a bit more.
The rendering of the Office file formats by the LibreOffice is dogshit. Feature parity is a rounding error. LiberOffice UX is completely from last century. There is so many little UX things that MS added which are so out of the league (like live content update from Office 2007!) for LibreOffice and its outdated codebase.
The Office alone can maybe replaced partially in Linux-compatible environments. However the MS Office-integrated prosumer software ecosystem is the thing that keeps people on Windows. Unless Linux people redesign the whole ecosystem to be as accommodating to closed source app ecosystem and find a time machine to replace all the existing Windows ecosystem, nothing will change.
The reality is that even without talking about the UI and various stability/compatibility/performance (oh god) issues there are even some very basic missing functionalities that ones will encounter regularly when doing stuff that is not just low-level administrative filler work.
If one company would decide to invest in developing a decent competitive alternative it could be worthwhile but, in the meantime, most people are better served with browser-based stuff. Either the Google stuff, free Microsoft version or even the newer Proton offering are decent but there are some semi-commercial offerings that can be decent too.
On the surface LibreOffice is all right, but the hard reality is that it is way too much of a PITA to work with for most people to bother unless they really don't have a choice or are forced too for some reason.
The fanboys don't like that reality and would rather deny it instead of working on fixing the issue; which is precisely why it's a lost cause.
One of them was really sceptical, but after while said "I though linux is more for nerds and more different than Win." Well, she is just casual user of browser, few chat apps, Kodi and occasionally libre office, but still positive with change.
However while I use linux on server and laptop, I cannot use it on workstation beacuse of Adobe that I need for professional work.
Your experience with Linux will heavily depend on your experience with computers, distro, hardware (e.g. due to obscure driver issues), and workload.
Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent. There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux.
- Your experience with macOS/Windows will be fairly consistent. I do not agree. Every system update scares me quite a bit.
- There are still driver issues with Windows, but they're less common than Linux. On Fedora, I never had to install drivers manually. All drivers was installed together with first upgrade after fresh install. Even on very old ThinkPad x201 from 2011. On Windows it's mix of searching on multiple HW manufacturer sites, manually installing them and trying if they are compatible.
The caveat is that I don't play games on my computers. For gaming, Windows is still the best choice.
The average person, though, still would prefer regular Windows 11 over your favorite Linux distro.
> The average person, though, still would prefer regular Windows 11 over your favorite Linux distro.
I don't know, I think it depends on their needs. Most users these days use their computers as "browser launcher" and for that Linux works just fine. I also don't think most people are enjoying those massive ads in Windows 11.
I am aware that Valve has done some shady stuff in the past. Given time, I'm sure they will do more in the future. Today, though, they are such a breath of fresh air for the support they have shown.
Link: https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6121-ECCD-D643-BA...
Oh man, what did they do in the past? I have Valve on my very short list of "good companies". Go ahead and rip off that band-aid: what are you referring to?
But any day now.
In response, Valve seems to have had a tantrum and won't release things like the Steam Deck here. I guess they're afraid they might need to honour the warranty for those too. ;)
Naive question: Most of ML workload in a datacenter runs on Linux, for which I assume there's good driver support. Why do we say that Nvidia does not have enough driver support on linux?
Source: once worked as an student system admin in my university HPC center.
It's a long story.
Nvidia has provided pretty-good datacenter/CUDA support on Linux for a long time, now. The problem is desktop Linux. Nvidia wanted to focus on supporting the old x11 desktop server at a time when most distros were switching to Wayland as a replacement. Nvidia tried to fix the issue by giving Linux devs a proprietary render API to develop Wayland support on, but it was largely rejected since it required writing a lot of platform-specific code. For a few years, the only way to properly accelerate Wayland on Nvidia hardware was to use the reverse-engineered Nouveau drivers that broke most desktop software - a catch-22 for Nvidia users that wanted a more updated desktop experience.
Very recently, a few things started changing. For one, Nvidia started to shuffle around their proprietary GPU code to make their hardware more open and modular. For two, starting with 510-series drivers and continuing through 535 and 555, Nvidia has started to make Wayland support a priority. In the long-term this should resolve the issue of Nvidia GPUs requiring special workarounds to support modern desktops.
The good news is that those days are mostly behind us, with the more recent Nvidia drivers. Guess the crypto/AI boom helped them find the cash to hire better Linux devs.
Steam still has Linux at only 2%, but agreed, I've been playing most Windows games fine through Proton
https://old.reddit.com/r/linux_gaming/comments/17h6kwt/do_we...
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=applicatio...
But to backyp steam doing something right, https://www.reddit.com/r/Lutris/comments/vcnaqe/very_poor_pe... so I can see winehq not being so useful when they just say game version x wine version, while steam's Proton may be better configured & kernel version / gpu etc matter. I'm on an AMD gpu
> Nvidia has been the single worst company we have ever dealt with. So, Nvidia: [angrily for moment, wags a middle finger to the camera] fuck you.
They all suck the same. In different ways.
I never hit that wall you speak of. Has been so amazing I donate 20 bucks every year to the project, just because I feel it has no right being at the same time free and that good.
That did not work for me. Once in the last 25 years of trying apart from a small bit between 2003-2004 when Fedora worked.
It works for a narrow group of vocal people who use it for specific tasks but generic and usable, it is not.
> the absolutely terrible inconsistent user experience
really? That would make sense as an argument for MacOS, but Windows is an absolute dumpster fire when it comes to consistent UX.
These days for 90% of users, the only "must have" application is a web browser anyways.
I'd still argue large swathes of things we take for granted on other platforms don't exist or don't work either.
I don't know where you'd start to see a performance difference compared to Excel for Win32.
If Microsoft and Apple weren't continually making their platforms worse I might switch back to one, but they have been continuously going in the wrong direction for many years now, while Linux keeps getting incrementally better.
I actually booted up an old Windows 7 PC the other day and had forgotten how clean and nice the UX was. An OS like that is not bad, but Windows 11?! Good lord, I want nothing to do with it and would much rather deal with some occasional rough edges in Linux.
Google, Facebook, Valve, Red Hat, the French Gendarmerie, the Munich city hall...
I contend that if they can do it, others can too.