Vulkan Open-Source Linux Driver Coming Before Christmas

[DooKey]

Vulkan has been out for nearly 2 years now and Linux users have been patiently (maybe not so patiently) waiting for open-source drivers. According to Phoronix, AMD is going to release those drivers in the next few days. These drivers are being released under the GPUOpen initiative and will be available on GitHub. Keep watching there and you're soon to be rewarded.

They are promoting this open-source Vulkan driver for accelerating open-source Vulkan development on Linux, quick support for new AMD hardware, support for the Radeon GPU Profiler, easy integration of AMD's own Vulkan extensions, and they will support third-party contributions to their driver.

 

[jardows]

Open source is good, but if it only works on Linux, have we really gained? There are plenty of other alternate, open source OS's that could greatly benefit from this, and allow us to have greater choices than just the fruit, the penguin, and the building component.

 

[cyclone3d]

Open source is good, but if it only works on Linux, have we really gained? There are plenty of other alternate, open source OS's that could greatly benefit from this, and allow us to have greater choices than just the fruit, the penguin, and the building component.

Feel free to port them.

 

[Simmonz]

Open source is good, but if it only works on Linux, have we really gained? There are plenty of other alternate, open source OS's that could greatly benefit from this, and allow us to have greater choices than just the fruit, the penguin, and the building component.

So you want less options not more ? I don't see the reasoning to not have this work done.

 

[/dev/null]

Vulkan has been out for nearly 2 years now and Linux users have been patiently (maybe not so patiently) waiting for open-source drivers. According to Phoronix, AMD is going to release those drivers in the next few days. These drivers are being released under the GPUOpen initiative and will be available on GitHub. Keep watching there and you're soon to be rewarded.

They are promoting this open-source Vulkan driver for accelerating open-source Vulkan development on Linux, quick support for new AMD hardware, support for the Radeon GPU Profiler, easy integration of AMD's own Vulkan extensions, and they will support third-party contributions to their driver.

Already finished Mad Max on LInux using the vulkan binary + (non-oss) binary nvidia drivers. Time for AMD to catch up

 

[ole-m]

Already finished Mad Max on LInux using the vulkan binary + (non-oss) binary nvidia drivers. Time for AMD to catch up

Both work great on either vulkan driver in linux so no need to catch up

 

[Simmonz]

Both work great on either vulkan driver in linux so no need to catch up

Yeah my RX 580 runs Mad Max pretty well. The odd dip in FPS but usually above 60. Trying to work it in soon, backlog is huge. Furthermore there are already closed source Vulkan drivers for AMD. This is about them being open sourced. How are Nvidia's open source drivers doing these days ? Doing much gaming on Nouveau ?

 

[jardows]

So you want less options not more ? I don't see the reasoning to not have this work done.

No, I am lamenting that the OSS community seems to be focused only on Linux, when there should be more effort to port OSS software and drivers to other OS's, such as Haiku and *BSD. The more legitimate choices available, the better off we are.

Feel free to port them.

Think this book will be enough to help me get it done? Fact is, I haven't learned programming, nor do I have the time to learn. But I am a user, and can be an advocate, so I would hope someone with more knowledge, skills, and time than I have could catch the vision and work on it.

 

[Simmonz]

No, I am lamenting that the OSS community seems to be focused only on Linux, when there should be more effort to port OSS software and drivers to other OS's, such as Haiku and *BSD. The more legitimate choices available, the better off we are.


Think this book will be enough to help me get it done? Fact is, I haven't learned programming, nor do I have the time to learn. But I am a user, and can be an advocate, so I would hope someone with more knowledge, skills, and time than I have could catch the vision and work on it.

I would agree that more choices are better and I think it would be great if other OS's such as BSD would be improved but I don't think that should mean less work done on Linux. It takes a lot of effort to create a demand first. For Linux to get as much attention as it has took the efforts of Valve, a multi billion dollar company bringing Steam to it. I think the best thing BSD users can do do drum up support would be to find those on Patreon and other such services who are working to improve BSD or whichever OS you want to use and start backing them with money. Email as many developers as you can asking for support, go to facebook, Twitter, etc and shout to the heavens. See if the likes of Ryan Gordan, Ethan Lee etc would port games to BSD. Best of luck regardless.

 

[dgz]

Open source is good, but if it only works on Linux, have we really gained? There are plenty of other alternate, open source OS's that could greatly benefit from this, and allow us to have greater choices than just the fruit, the penguin, and the building component.

"Oh, but this isn't the solution to ALL our problems. Meh..."

 

[DukenukemX]

Open source is good, but if it only works on Linux, have we really gained? There are plenty of other alternate, open source OS's that could greatly benefit from this, and allow us to have greater choices than just the fruit, the penguin, and the building component.

Mesa Gallium is open which means you could in theory port these drivers to Windows, Mac OS X, and even Android. Does anyone do this? No, no they don't. Though this is due to many other reasons. Windows is using drivers that is probably better than what Mesa Gallium has, and therefore won't benefit from this. Nvidia has driver code that's shared bewtween Linux and Windows anyway. Apple won't use this because Apple has their own drivers which are worse than Mesa Gallium. I believe Apple still dosn't have OpenGL4.5 and Vulkan? They could use this but they won't. Android doesn't even use desktop hardware and won't benefit from this either.

The benefit of opening up the drivers is that other people can contribute code. Valve contributes code, as well as RedHat and many other people. The Radeon HD 5000/6000 cards still get support even though on Windows these cards are essentially dead in terms of driver updates. Also Mesa Gallium already had an open source AMD driver that worked nearly as well as AMD's, and that's a problem cause what started off as a joke kinda ended up being very competitive to AMD's Vulkan driver. But both drivers are worse compared to RadeonSi, the open source OpenGL driver for AMD.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=amdgpu-1750-open&num=4

If you click the link above you'll see the AMD Vulkan driver 17.50 is slower in Mad Max compared to the already open source Vulkan driver. On average the AMD Vulkan driver is better, but the open source driver had no help from AMD. By opening up the AMD Vulkan driver, now everyone can work on a since better Vulkan driver.