Questions on Installing AMD's RX 6800XT Drivers under Fedora

Ask Fedora
, ,
1

Since it’s more likely that there will be AMD users on a Fedora forum than that there will be Fedora users on an AMD forum, I guess I’ll cross-post a thread I started on AMD’s forum:

Currently, I’m using the AMD graphics drivers baked into the Linux kernel under Fedora. I decided to try the actual AMD Linux drivers:

https://www.amd.com/en/support/graphics/amd-radeon-6000-series/amd-radeon-6800-series/amd-radeon-rx-6800-xt

but after wading through the installation instructions:

https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

I decided I didn’t know enough to make it through successfully. So, I have some questions:

  • Is this driver even compatible with Fedora? According to the Release Notes, it’s compatible with:

Ubuntu 18.04.5(6) HWE
Ubuntu 20.04.4 HWE
RHEL/CentOS 7.9
RHEL/CentOS 8.6
RHEL/CentOS 9.0
SLED/SLES 15 SP 3

I’m assuming Fedora falls under the RHEL category. But, at a driver level, I don’t know if that’s a valid assumption.

  • Under:

https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install-prereq.html#installing-the-installer-package

it says for RHEL, install with:

sudo yum install ./amdgpu-install-VERSION.rpm

Under Fedora, I assume I change that yum to a dnf. But, what part of the driver name is considered the “VERSION”? The current driver is called:

amdgpu-install-22.10.2.50102-1.el8.noarch.rpm

So, do I replace VERSION with “22.10.2.50102-1” or with “22.10.2.50102-1.el8.noarch”?

  • Next, the instructions use waffle words like “might” and “consider” when talking about OpenCL:

https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install-installing.html#installation-opencl-optional-component

Again, I’m just a normal person. Do I or do I not want to install OpenCL? I assume not since it talks about OpenGL being the default and I’ve at least heard of that.

  • It also gives me an option for installing Vulkan. I’m just surprised by that option. Why wouldn’t Vulkan be the standard default?

  • Then, the instructions talk about SecureBoot support (which I need):

https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install-installing.html#secure-boot-support

That involves Machine Owned Keys (MOK), mokutil, the MOK Manager, rebooting, and temporary passwords. Really? Is there no way to make this more streamlined or easier?

BTW: what do these proprietary drivers get me over the kernel drivers? I’m assuming I’ll get some equivalent of the neat software/utility AMD provides on the Windows side of things (Adrenalin).

2

The only thing I can see you really get additionally is AMF support. I am running nobaraproject and installed this as well:
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/amdgpu-pro-vulkan-fedora
https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/amdgpu-pro-amf-fedora

Gives me access to the AMF encoder, and I can switch between the RADV and AMD driver when I want

3

I guess I’m even more confused :slight_smile: . Did you install AMD’s proprietary drivers, then GE’s amdgpu-pro-vulkan-fedora and then his amdgpu-pro-amf-fedora? Does that mean AMD’s RHEL drivers are compatible with Fedora and I can use them?

Or, are you usiing GE’s pair of scripts INSTEAD of AMDs RHEL drivers (and those are incompatible with Fedora)?

4

The mesa drivers was part of the distro. I then installed amdgpu-pro-vulkan-fedora and then his amdgpu-pro-amf-fedora.

5

Just to be clear, do you have a reason to be using those external drivers?

6

The only reason I wanted to try them was to see if they offered the same kinds of utilities the Windows Adrenalin drivers do. But, after researching this some more, I’ve decided not to bother. It looks like even AMDs official drivers are just drivers (I think – I’m not sure). Also, I ran across some articles on Phoronix saying that the open source, baked in drivers actually outperform the proprietary ones.

The GloriousEggroll scripts Jacques noted, above are really interesting. But, I don’t do enough video encoding to need them.