Radeon proprietary drivers
 

hii

what is the way of installing Radeon proprietary drivers on Slackware nowadays?

It probably depends on how new your card is and which version of Slackware you are running.

For older cards (non-amdgpu) and Slackware-stable, probably this is still relevant:
https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...aphics_drivers

For newer cards, this may be worth a look
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...1/#post5790786

thanks for the info. The card is this:

https://pro.radeon.com/en/product/wx...n-pro-wx-2100/

i really hope it will be supported out of the box with newer kernels

You have a Professional AMD Card, and AMD do different politics with its PRO lines.

You will never see that support in the mainline kernels, they have even have different PRO blob drivers compared with the mainline ones.

In other hand, the Slackware made a politic platform point in ignoring the AMD politics about its PRO lines, which requires specific (older) kernels and usually older X.org stacks.

Then, I wish you all the luck with using this expensive piece of hardware under Slackware.

The older proprietary graphics do not support newer Xorgs. The latest non-amdgpu proprietary driver worked up to 14.1, but won't work on 14.2 and any future releases, and I think their older legacy version didn't even work on 14.1 due to the Xorg version.

@solarfields, if you try the amdgpu-pro approach (if your card is supported), it looks like it might be better to try my 16.60 SlackBuild over the 17.10 since it seems that one is not working properly yet (I don't have the hardware to test and it seems that it doesn't work properly here yet... I'm looking at trying some of the newer versions that supposedly don't require kernel patching, but it looks like AMD has a corrupted copy of 17.40 on their server, so I emailed them hoping they can fix it so I can try that version).

But if you look through that thread, I linked to a phoronix article that shows that the open source mesa and kernel drivers will outperform the proprietary drivers, so unless you need something that is only provided by the proprietary drivers, it might be worth using newer versions of mesa and the kernel. It was stated in that thread that it is a simple upgrade for mesa and libdrm, so that could be something if you're not running -current already. Also, the 4.15 kernel that will soon be out (it's in the RC phase now) had MAJOR improvements to the open source AMD graphics stack.

if this is true, then I will have to use the proprietary drivers. I also found this discussion:
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-a-4175589176/

thanks. The hardware was not really my choice.

This seems to contradict to what darth was saying. Anyway, I am going to upgrade the kernel or even switch to -current if necessary. The computer has not arrived yet, so who knows, maybe Slackware 15 will be released till then :P in any case, your 16.60 slackbuild seems to be exactly what i was searching for. Therefore, I mark the thread as SOLVED. I will post again here when the hardware arrives and report how things go or any issues. Thanks for your work bassmadrigal.

Your card use the Workstation Graphics Drivers, which is a complete different thing of the AMDGPU-PRO proprietary driver about our friend @bassmadrigal talks.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-arti...cs-Drivers.asp

NOTE: Software solution for enterprise deployments on Linux platforms built on stability and performance. The keyword is: enterprise.

BTW, I am pretty sure that I already had this discussion with him about the differences of AMD Professional Video Cards compared with the "normal" ones. Seems he forgotten.

I am not familiar with AMD's professional cards, but if they aren't supported by the open source amdgpu driver, then Darth is right and the amdgpu-pro driver likely won't work for you. Depending on how their professional driver is packaged, you may be able to use my SlackBuild as a starting point on how to install theirs onto Slackware.

However, looking at AMD's website for the amdgpu-pro 17.40 driver, it does show support for "AMD Radeon™ Pro WX-series", so it is very possible that their open source driver might work as well. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find their release page for the 16.60 driver, so I'm not sure when support was added for the WX-series. Now, if they could just fix their corrupted tarball so I can try and get the 17.40 driver working.

Thanks for making me to notice that in the latest AMDGPU-PRO they (supposedly) added support for some PRO cards. :thumbsup:

Or could be some generic support, like for the normal cards.

BUT, one would pay thousands and will buy a PRO-WX for things like 3D rendering (for AutoCAD, as example), and I am afraid that those features require some special APIs given by the Workstation Drivers.

So, if the OP will do a full disclosure and tell us what he intend to do with that card, I think that would help us, well ... to help him.

This is the driver AMD suggests for Linux:
http://support.amd.com/en-us/downloa..._64#pro-driver

supported distributions:

RHEL 7.3 / CentOS 7.3
RHEL 6.9 / CentOS 6.9
Ubuntu 16.04.3
SLED / SLES 12 SP2

heh, no secrets here...

the computer will dualboot Windows and Linux. Windows users will use the computer for imaging. I, the Linux user, will use the computer for computational biology. So I really do not care much about video performance in Linux. As long as FHD resolution is supported and windows do not move in a wobbly fashion I am happy. If this is supported by the opensource driver, it will be just fine.

for the record, i doubt the card costs 'thousands of euros'... it seems to be the lowest segment of the cards titled 'Pro'.

Same driver I supposed too.

Also, to note that those distribution are, as graphics stack, somewhere between Slackware 14.0 and 14.1, then maybe you will manage to make this card to work under 14.1.

As mentioned in the other thread, Phoronix seems to relegate the amdgpu-pro driver to really only be beneficial to workstation users (or people who need opengl compatibility profiles). The quote from that article is:

That might be AMD's only goal behind the amdgpu-pro... steering towards the "pro" being professional rather than proprietary ;)

Interesting POV. Thanks you! :thumbsup: