I moved from Debian to Slackware64 sometime ago when Debian (started with potato) moved to systemd and have been very happy with the Slackware stability and performance.
There is just one last item to try and it's the muxless graphic.
Is it feasible to install the open source amdgpu and have the discrete ati card always on and render everything graphical before piping it to the dedicated intel card.
I'm not fussed about power saving.
It looks as if the amdgpu developments have progressed really well lately and perhaps it will work.
Should Xorg and other drivers/libraries/config be upgraded/modified?
Is there a definitive Slackware howto towards amdgpu installation/upgrade?
Research shows the latest kernels should be installed and I think that's the easy part :-)
Thanks in advance for the assistance.

lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 06)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor PCI Express x16 Controller (rev 06)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 06)
00:03.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio Controller (rev 06)
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB xHCI (rev 04)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset High Definition Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #1 (rev d4)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #3 (rev d4)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #4 (rev d4)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port #6 (rev d4)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family USB EHCI #1 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation HM86 Express LPC Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family 6-port SATA Controller 1 [AHCI mode] (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 8 Series/C220 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller (rev 04)
01:00.0 Display controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Venus PRO [Radeon HD 8850M / R9 M265X] (rev ff)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless 7260 (rev 6b)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 0c)
05:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5249 PCI Express Card Reader (rev 01)

Look here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-a-4175589176/

Good Luck-

Yes, I have avidly followed this amdgpu-pro thread.
They are making it happen with the pro version.
But I'm interested in the open source solution.
Thanks in advance.

1 members found this post helpful.

Have a look in the Slackware documentation and see if what you want is there.
https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...aphics_drivers

Intel for Slackware:
http://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackwa...-intel-driver/
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/...000005520.html

http://www.slackwiki.com/ATI_Graphics
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...kware-14.2-RC1

If you just want to install the amdgpu open src driver this thread should give you a fairly good idea.
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2317751

I'm not sure where else to look but other members may.

The regular amdgpu (non-pro) driver is already included in Slackware 14.2, however, between the driver and the kernel module's age, it is likely old enough it wouldn't support your card. Even now, I'm not positive the latest pro driver would support your card (it lists the HD8800M, so it might support the HD8850M, but it doesn't mention the M265X from the R9 series).

If your card is supported by the latest driver, you'd likely need to build a new kernel (possibly the 4.10, depending on when support was added) and the latest xf86-video-amdgpu driver.

Once you do have proper amdgpu support, you could use PRIME to have X use your discrete card (AMD). If you want everything permanently using the discrete card, you could just add export DRI_PRIME=1 to your environment variables (maybe ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile... I can never remember which one does what).

But, is there a reason you want amdgpu over the radeon driver? Most devices still work better with radeon and provide better performance.

1 members found this post helpful.

To bassmadrigal and Ztcoracat.
I appreciate the information.
Yes, I would like to permanently use the discrete card for rendering all graphics.
I'll give it a shot by installing the latest 4.10 kernel, xorg and amdgpu but quite unsure if any other libraries and firmwares need installing.
Should I upgrade to slackware current to make things easier?
Thanks :-)

1 members found this post helpful.

Well, make sure you go into the 4.10 kernel to explicitly enable support for Southern Island cards. I believe it is still considered experimental and is disabled by default. NOTE: I haven't tried using newer kernels, so I couldn't tell you what options need to be enabled.

As for -current vs 14.2... there is a newer mesa in -current (I think it is pretty close to the latest version). And now that I think of it, you'll likely need to use a newer mesa anyway, along with the other items I mentioned.

But, I'm still pretty sure that you'd want to use just the radeon driver for your card unless there's a specific thing the amdgpu driver provides that the radeon doesn't. The last time I checked, for cards that can use both radeon and amdgpu, radeon almost always performs better. And I can't even verify that the amdgpu-pro driver supports your card, so it's very possible the opensource amdgpu driver might not as well.

amdgpu is still in relative infancy compared to the seasoned radeon driver. Most people who can use both will want to use radeon... at least until the amdgpu driver eventually surpasses radeon in performance.

1 members found this post helpful.

Oops, I totally meant to link to the Arch Wiki article on X's PRIME earlier. This is what allows you to use a certain GPU for a program to use a discrete card (or you can use DRI_PRIME=1 as an environment variable to theoretically force all apps to use the discrete card).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PRIME

You should be able to do that with your radeon driver now (although, if you can get amdgpu working, it should work there too).

2 members found this post helpful.

Thank you for the great posts/assistance.
Tried a couple of the live iso for current and no dramas.
Guess I'll post how it went once I've completed the whole process.
Thanks again and hope it will not go pear shape :-)

You're Welcome.

Let us know how things go.

Well the current dvd iso I used to install did not go well.
I'm currently posting this message from the a live usb :-) :-)
Giving amdgpu a test run will have to take the backstage for a short while.

Thanks for the update.

Was the .iso corrupt?

Not sure about the iso being corrupt.
#md5sum slackware-live-current.iso
4524ece2848d9362e77fbe6b33c0068c slackware-live-current.iso

Generally the terminal will complain if the signatures don't match.

Did you download Slackware from this page where it says iso images?
http://mirrors.slackware.com/

Burning the .iso to the DVD should be done at a slow speed. Were you able to burn at a slow speed?

Sometimes DVD RW's don't like to boot for me.

I originally downloaded the iso in January sometime and then used unetbootin to burn it to a flash disk.
Something must have gone sideways during the setup2hd process from that older iso.
The flash disk itself boots ok and that's how I could communicate in the meanwhile.

Today I downloaded the latest 64 current iso, checked the md5sum and performed a direct install.
The install process was flawless and I now have a desktop back.
Guess it pays off to make backups and have /home on a different partition :-)

I'm booked for the next two weeks and willl probably get back on the horse the weekend after.
Thanks again for the assistance and hope you have a great week.