There was a time when AMD was hyped to heaven for their efforts. Wrongfully so in my opinion. Nvidia cards just always worked on linux, you had to install the blob but then it was a breeze. Fglrx on the other hand...
I tried to setup a dual-gpu notebook for a friend last week. It was impossible. fglrx doesn't support the chips anymore and ubuntu doesn't support the legacy blobs. Complete fail. I had to tell her ubuntu won't work on her computer. (The gpus will overheat without a proper driver)
So thank you AMD for basically not providing any drivers at all, and if you do, them crashing randomly taking the kernel with them. Thank you Nvidia for just working.
Imho in that regard Linus didn't know what the f*ck he was talking about.
AMD has been paying developers for years to develop free drivers. It has taken this long because they essentially had to rewrite everything and modern display drivers are complicated beasts.
The in-kernel, fancy KMS, AMD drivers should just work right now for many people. 2D is faster than the proprietary driver and the 3D speed is a significant fraction of the proprietary driver.
Have you tried enabling dpm? When enabled with a kernel parameter it dynamically changes the card frequency. I think you need a kernel version > 3.11. Check out:
I didn't yet. The best results I could possibly achieve were dynpm ones - about 65 degrees Celsius, which is completely unacceptable anyway. I've moved to a regular desktop PC, and I'm so happy for it ever since. Good to know though, that some improvement seems to be made. Thanks for that link!
I tried to setup a dual-gpu notebook for a friend last week. It was impossible. fglrx doesn't support the chips anymore and ubuntu doesn't support the legacy blobs. Complete fail. I had to tell her ubuntu won't work on her computer. (The gpus will overheat without a proper driver)
So thank you AMD for basically not providing any drivers at all, and if you do, them crashing randomly taking the kernel with them. Thank you Nvidia for just working.
Imho in that regard Linus didn't know what the f*ck he was talking about.