So to explain: my RX-480 radeon graphics card only has drivers for ubuntu 16.04 and Centos ##. After trying and failing to get a couple different Debian versions to work i settled on ubuntu 16.04. Now my hard headed-ness doesnt want to settle and i want Debian back on my machine. What i want to do is see what makes up ubuntu 16.04 and see if i can mimic it but with a version of debian. after all isnt a linux distro just the kernel and different packages that make it unique from other distros?

i tried to search for this through search engines but i wasnt getting far at all. i suppose i couldn't come up with the correct phrase to get the results i'm looking for. Anyhow, any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

You can list all installed packages and pipe the output to a file with this command. Note that it is likely to be quite a long list.

What distinguishes one distro from another is primarily the package format and package tools (*.deb, *.rpm, etc.) and the init system, though SystemD seems to have been adopted by most distros.

To a much lesser extent, the desktop environment also distinguishes them, as some distros customize the DE, some of them quite extensively, but that is strictly cosmetic and, generally, you can install other DEs/WMs if you wish.

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Welcome to LinuxQuestions.

From what I can gather...

The AMD proprietary driver is officially supported in Ubuntu, RHEL/CentOS and SLED/SLES

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...ase-Notes.aspx

The pure open source driver is supported via the Linux 4.7 kernel and RadeonSI Gallium3D Mesa 12.1-dev.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...RX-480-Drivers

I don't know if there is an easy way to install the open source driver in debian.
https://linuxconfig.org/getting-the-...mdgpu-on-linux
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...id-4175587673/

thanks for the replies. i'll see what i can do to get debian to mimic ubuntu and post results when i can. i'm in the middle of a move and all my projects have come to a screeching halt :\

you do not need to mimic ubuntu, that is not a good approach (I think). The video driver for RX480 works with the kernel of ubuntu 16.04, but won't work with older kernels (for example on debian).
From the other hand you can use debian, but the full 3d acceleration will not be available.
But I installed it a year ago and probably it is better now (=you may find a solution for debian).

yes if i remember correctly Debian 9 worked out of the box with some of the drivers just not the ones from Radeon. when i installed the radeon driver on Ubuntu 16.04 you can easily tell how much better the graphics and performance was with the radeon drivers. I just REALLY want to have the good ole debian symbol i love so much AND the radeon drivers installed.

No

Gentoo also works.

You need newest userlands + kernel. as the driver is now open source. So a dated binary distro may be not the best choice.

Same as i said in the past. When you have new hardware do not run amd64, run ~amd64 on gentoo.

So why don'T you change those packages than?

I got a headache with arch linux in the past when I wanted to change some core componets. My reason why I do not use much binary distros anymore. And of course SYSTEMD.

@ michaelk

What I have read in the past. The binary driver development has stopped. So you need the open source drivers and the latest kernel and such.
the binary drivers are a dead end for over 1-2 years?

For some reason slackware, linux mint, arch linux and of course gentoo which i use the most, do not stick to the same config files and config file locations.

I do not care for the package manager. But when I search in different locations for simple configuration files, than the fun ends

Also the way how services are started and stopped are differently

The network stack is also not the same. an older user like myself prefers ifconfig but now it is ip tool. and of course the fabulous predictable network names. eth0, wlan0 was clear. now it is some gibberish

--

@ topic

and @ title Reload this Page How can you distinguish the differences between distrobutions?

I wanted to change my gentoo recently.

I looked into the new distro of choice
*) installer manual
*) wiki (a win for arch linux and gentoo)
*) is the forum active
**) are newbie posts answered
**) how is the quality and contents of answered posts
*) are my needed packages available. Some do not have e.g. i3wm
*) some distros can not play multimedia => suse needs some hacks to do it
*) which init
*) which bootloader
*) how dated is the software (i do not like museum software, except in games)
*) is it one of the bigger distros or an exotic one
**) bigger: debian / gentoo / slackware / suse / arch-linux

stability. E.g. sabayon + funtoo are not stable

easiness (win for linux mint for windows 10 and apple iphone guys)

package manager

flexibility (win for gentoo)

also consider the init system a big difference, where the config files are, how the services are started

well soon you will have systemd distros which will be mostly the same because of the systemd disease, and others which may be a few

Does not look like the binary drivers are dead yet.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...ase-Notes.aspx

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Good find -- and timely!