Fedora 21 AMD Video Drivers: FLOSS or Proprietary?

Usually I use nvidia for my desktop builds, but for this HTPC I inherited I'm stuck with onboard AMD. Because of my lack of familiarity with AMD, I had some questions.

1) I know with nVidia and 3D acceleration it's pretty much necessary to use their drivers instead of noveau. What about for AMD? I know they open sourced a lot of their code and they seem to work more closely with the Linux community than nVidia. So my first question is - do I even need to install the proprietary driver?

2) Right now with the sound output through HDMI I only get 2.0 output. 5.1 does not work. I have to double-check that the MOBO provides 5.1, but I think it'd be weird if it didn't. Is that something the proprietary driver would help with?

3) With the default Fedora install, do I need to do anything to make sure it's using the correct FLOSS drivers? Or will it automatically pick the right one?

3.5)How do I figure out which driver it's using so that I can install the i686 version (so steam will work)?

4) If I want video acceleration (libva) do I need to install a separate package?

Thank you!

Opensource AMD drivers have only complete support for OpenGL 3.3 only. They have incomplete support of various OpenGL 4.0, 4.3 versions. So their catalyst drivers are currently best, but there are reports that some games don't run well with it.

For video acceleration (Open Source) there are libvdpau or libvaapi libraries as well as Glamour which provides Video Acceleration using OpenGL.

Originally Posted by veerain Opensource AMD drivers have only complete support for OpenGL 3.3 only. They have incomplete support of various OpenGL 4.0, 4.3 versions. So their catalyst drivers are currently best, but there are reports that some games don't run well with it. For video acceleration (Open Source) there are libvdpau or libvaapi libraries as well as Glamour which provides Video Acceleration using OpenGL.

Thanks for the info. Unlike the nVidia drivers, all I hear are tales of woe with the proprietary AMD (which is why I always use nVidia if I have a daughter card). I was able to get Steam Big Picture to run and Bastion was *OK* considering it's a onboard graphics that I didn't buy for gaming.

Question on the video acceleration: are ibvdpau,libvaapi,and Glamour conflicting? Can I install them all? Also, am I right that vdpau is nVidia and vaapi is AMD?

Yes. you can install all of libvdpau,libvaapi,and Glamour. libvdpau is nvidia specific, recently amd has started using it(correct me). And intel uses vaapi. Glamour is a feature of Xorg Server/Drivers (gives Xv and XvMc).

Originally Posted by DJOtaku Question on the video acceleration: are ibvdpau,libvaapi,and Glamour conflicting? Can I install them all? Also, am I right that vdpau is nVidia and vaapi is AMD?

Glamor is not for video acceleration, it is 2D acceleration using OpenGL functionality. Yes, you can install them all without conflicts. VDPAU was originally invented by Nvidia, but is also used by the open source radeon drivers (they are not FLOSS, by the way, the have a MIT-like license). vaapi is an Intel thing, but can nowadays also be used by the proprietary AMD driver.

Originally Posted by TobiSGD Glamor is not for video acceleration, it is 2D acceleration using OpenGL functionality.

I didn't elaborate, but Xorg's X-Video extension used for Video acceleration started using/uses Glamour in some drivers. See this pages on phoronix site, page1, page2, page3 and plus others.

Originally Posted by veerain I didn't elaborate, but Xorg's X-Video extension used for Video acceleration started using/uses Glamour in some drivers. See this pages on phoronix site, page1, page2, page3 and plus others.

I stand corrected, I didn't know that they have added that. Always learning.