Re: Vulkan with Radeon RX 5700 XT
On 10.07.2021 20:54, The Wanderer
wrote:
I had enough times when I couldn't launch X (at least not with any
acceleration at all, even 2D acceleration) because an updated NVIDIA
driver which was compatible with the new X or kernel version hadn't been
released yet, and enough troubles trying to switch drivers etc. and
remnants left over on the computer afterwards, that it left me with an
antipathy towards using NVIDIA products.
The fact that NVIDIA's Linux support implementation is proprietary is
both the reason for those problems, and an entirely separate reason why
I decided that until that fact changes, I will never voluntarily buy an
NVIDIA card for a Linux system.
I often read about problems with nvidia drivers others are having,
but personally I haven't experienced anything like you described.
Probably because these kinds of problems only surface on platforms
with Nvidia-Optimus technology, which every OEM out there making it
in their unique way.
The only thing I do after installing an updated kernel is rebuild
DKMS module by reinstalling "nvidia-kernel-dkms" package, to ensure
it would be build using current kernel sources.
As I understand matters, this is another consequence of the fact that
the NVIDIA driver (stack) is proprietary - or rather, the only reason
why there's an nvidia-driver package is because it's not practical (or
necessarily even possible) to provide that functionality in a more
integrated way, because of the proprietary and opaque way the NVIDIA
drivers etc. are provided. In an ideal world, no such explicit separate
package(s) would be needed.
It is the matter of convenience, because nvidia drivers, even legacy
ones, are in official Debian repos.
And installation of them is as easy as "apt install nvidia-driver",
plus supplementary libraries like GL/GLX, EGL, GLES, OpenCL, VA,
VDPAU, Vulkan, etc, all could be found by searching "nvidia-*"
Internally, by the looks of it, AMD drivers and Nvidia drivers look
the same. Both of them consist of DKMS kernel module building suite,
XOrg modules\extensions and all necessary libraries I've already
mentioned.
I don't see any complications or barriers (other than maybe
licensing) that prevent creation of "amdgpu-driver" metapackage and
naming all other necessary packages "something-amdgpu-something" and
"amdgpu-driver-something", in the same way nvidia drivers are made
in Debian repos.
I'll take this under advisement; at the very least, it's my fallback if
other investigations don't produce any usable results. The examination
of those packages and the results they provide is appreciated.
I should've mentioned about official instructions for amdgpu driver.
They seem to distinguish between two stacks of drivers [1] and
"All-Open" doesn't have Vulkan in it.
It is just a thought, but maybe only a truncated version of
"All-Open" stack is available in Debian repos, which rely on Mesa
Vulkan implementation instead of more recent variant from "Pro"
stack.
Even looking through files from Mesa Vulkan package there is a
difference:
apt-file list mesa-vulkan-drivers | grep ".so"
mesa-vulkan-drivers:
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvulkan_intel.so
mesa-vulkan-drivers:
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvulkan_radeon.so
mesa-vulkan-drivers:
/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/intel_icd.x86_64.json
mesa-vulkan-drivers:
/usr/share/vulkan/icd.d/radeon_icd.x86_64.json
And "amdvlk64.so" library file, along with ".json" files from
"./vulkan-amdgpu*_amd64.deb" packages don't exist inside Debian
repos:
apt-file find amdvlk64.so
apt-file find amd_icd64.json
Also file sizes of "libvulkan_radeon.so" and "amdvlk64.so" are far
too different.
[1]
https://amdgpu-install.readthedocs.io/en/latest/install-overview.html
--
With kindest regards, Alexander.
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