Currently in my ATI Radeon R5 I’m running fglrx with that last release. I downloaded the rubber from AMD in tar format and I installed it from scratch waiting it could have the Crimson version and the new Radeon settings software but SURPRISE, still Catalyst and fglrx remained.

So I don’t know if the current Linux tar file on AMD is the correct driver for my APU device.

@Bruno: Thanks for providing us the formerly fglrx driver.

I am currently working on repackaging of AMDGPU-Pro 16.50 (SLED 12 SP 2) for openSUSE Leap 42.2 with a rewritten makerpm-amdgpupro python script from scratch.

The bad news:
Unfortunately AMD has forgotten packaging 32-bit libraries (I have already report it to AMD). So I use temporarily the 32-libraries from Ubuntu 16.04. The default openSUSE kernel does not work with my graphics card. So I should installed Kernel 4.9 from Kernel repo because I have a Radeon R9 290X (Southern Island architecture). 🙁

The good news:
Open-Source 3D-Games with OpenGL is working. 3D-Games from Steam is working. OpenCL is working. Hardware video acceleration based upon VDPAU is working. Performance is really really very good. 😉

# lsmod | grep radeon

[No output]

# lsmod | grep amdgpu

Output:
mfd_core 16384 1 amdgpu
i2c_algo_bit 16384 1 amdgpu
drm_kms_helper 159744 1 amdgpu
ttm 102400 1 amdgpu
drm 360448 14 amdgpu,ttm,drm_kms_helper

# hwinfo –gfxcard

Output:
39: PCI 100.0: 0300 VGA compatible controller (VGA)
[Created at pci.378]
Unique ID: VCu0.2+ifnaJv4L1
Parent ID: _Znp.+7g4VeAizS0
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.0/0000:01:00.0
SysFS BusID: 0000:01:00.0
Hardware Class: graphics card
Model: “XFX Pine Double Dissipation R9 290X”
Vendor: pci 0x1002 “ATI Technologies Inc”
Device: pci 0x67b0 “Hawaii XT / Grenada XT [Radeon R9 290X/390X]”
SubVendor: pci 0x1682 “XFX Pine Group Inc.”
SubDevice: pci 0x9290 “Double Dissipation R9 290X”
Driver: “amdgpu”
Driver Modules: “drm”
Memory Range: 0xc0000000-0xcfffffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0xd0000000-0xd07fffff (ro,non-prefetchable)
I/O Ports: 0xe000-0xefff (rw)
Memory Range: 0xfea00000-0xfea3ffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
Memory Range: 0x000c0000-0x000dffff (rw,non-prefetchable,disabled)
IRQ: 35 (70884 events)
I/O Ports: 0x3c0-0x3df (rw)
Module Alias: “pci:v00001002d000067B0sv00001682sd00009290bc03sc00i00”
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: radeon is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe radeon”
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: amdgpu is active
Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe amdgpu”
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #22 (PCI bridge)

Primary display adapter: #39

# glxinfo

Ausgabe:
name of display: :0
display: :0 screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: AMD
server glx version string: 1.4
server glx extensions:
[…]
client glx vendor string: AMD
client glx version string: 1.4
client glx extensions:
[…]
GLX version: 1.4
GLX extensions:
[…]
OpenGL vendor string: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.5.13462 Core Profile Context
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
[…]
OpenGL version string: 4.5.13462 Compatibility Profile Context
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL extensions:
[…]
OpenGL ES profile version string: 4.5.13462 Compatibility Profile Context
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: 4.50
OpenGL ES profile extensions:
[…]

# clinfo

Ausgabe:
Number of platforms: 1
Platform Profile: FULL_PROFILE
Platform Version: OpenCL 2.0 AMD-APP (2236.5)
Platform Name: AMD Accelerated Parallel
Processing
Platform Vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Platform Extensions: cl_khr_icd cl_amd_event_callback cl_amd_offline_devices

Platform Name: AMD Accelerated Parallel
Processing
Number of devices: 2
Device Type: CL_DEVICE_TYPE_GPU
Vendor ID: 1002h
Board name: AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Device Topology: PCI[ B#1, D#0, F#0 ]
[…]

# vainfo

Output:
libva info: VA-API version 0.39.4
libva info: va_getDriverName() returns 0
libva info: Trying to open /opt/amdgpu-pro/lib64/dri/amdgpu_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_0_39
Warning: LLVM emitted unknown config register: 0x4
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 0.39 (libva 1.7.3.pre1)
vainfo: Driver version: mesa gallium vaapi
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
VAProfileMPEG2Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileMPEG2Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Simple : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileVC1Advanced : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Baseline : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264Main : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileH264High : VAEntrypointVLD
VAProfileNone : VAEntrypointVideoProc

Stay tuned. I post a new article if the AMDGPU-Pro installation script is done.

Greetings,

Sebastian Siebert
openSUSE Member
Formerly Package Maintainer for AMD Catalyst (fglrx)

I also emailed AMD in November letting them know that if they cannot support us linux users, we will no longer support their pruducts. I just hope that theywork in conjunction of equating their drivers to our releases. SuSE has always had problems with video. Since i started using it in ver. 6.1 it has been one thing or another. Oh well, love it, or leave it. Heck, I love it!

I mean here that these GPUs are still being used in daily work, not that they are still produced today.

Many GPU’s in the HD7000 and HD8000 series are using a Terascale architecture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_7000_Series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_8000_series

These GPUs are less than 5 years on the market and therefore a lot of them are still in production.

Second and third generation Terascale GPUs very much depend on Fglrx because they give very competitive performance with Fglrx in such a way that even many modern games can be played, while on the open source driver side, the majority recent progress has happened on the RadeonSI driver for GCN cards, while Terascale cards (r600 driver), has by far not seen the same progress, and still gives subpar performance. Other stuff like OpenGL 4.5, OpenCL, Eyefinity monitor support, all works perfect on Fglrx, and not on r600.

Now it is absolutely true that Fglrx is a dead horse, so not bad word for dropping it. But at the same time, for owners of Terascale cards, the advantages of 42.2 are mostly likely not big enough accept severely decreased graphics functionality. Therefore I expect this will cause some users not to upgrade and stick with older distributions. Wether or not a new Evergreen happens depends on demand, but these decisions contribute to such demand.

As for the time how long the repo would need to be available, I can’t make financial trade-offs, but I propose to look at the economic life of a computer. Let’s put the economic life of a computer at 5 years. The final Terascale cards were introduced in 2013. Allowing users of those computers to run (some version of OpenSuSE) during this economic life period, would mean that the repositories would need to be available until somewhere in 2018.

The mass you describe was HD2x to HD4x mostly, and those have already moved to free and open source driver.

The other point : need another evergreen ? Don’t get silly, asking in one things, doing is another one. And we don’t get the expected contribution for evergreen (even if it was successful).

Same you ask to keep the repo, but how much time, and with which money?

😉