Is AMD turning things around on Linux? Vulkan Support

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Want to link to an article from the guys over at Phoronix: http://phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-Hybrid-Linux-Driver

As an AMD R9 390 owner, and currently using Linux exclusively, this effort is a pleasant surprise. And IMO very much needed.

Essentially, it is a stack containing: Catalyst, Vulkan, OpenGL 4.5 and native OpenCL 1.2 support. No one has tested it, and it won't be considered production ready until Ubuntu 16.04 comes out.

It is currently only supported on Ubuntu 14.04.4, gonna give it a shot.

Thanks to Eden for the direct driver link: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-PRO-Beta-Driver-for-Vulkan-Release-Notes.aspx

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Direct link to AMD its self.

http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMDGPU-PRO-Beta-Driver-for-Vulkan-Release-Notes.aspx

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Great, thanks, edited that into the post. Looking forward to how it goes.

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Here's where I'm at:

Installation worked well, they have good, concise instructions on their site.

However, I am noticing very noticeable mouse lag when using the computer normally. I've seen this happen when the compositor gets all screwy.

Games boot up just fine, but I can't accurately determine the performance considering the compositing lag.

But it's a beta. Anyone else trying this out?

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A large part of a lot of this will be using Wayland as the desktop rendering system. I am currently using wayland with KDE on my 370 and everything is going WAY better than normal.

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I may have found why I am having the mouse lag issue.

Looks like the R9 390 is not supported? Their supported list cites the 380x, fury cards, but not the 390/390x. Hopefully that'll come around soon.

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I haven't done much digging into Wayland.

It is the next-gen of Xorg, correct? Unlike mir which is completely seperate?

On Mir with Unity8 you have to jump through a few hoops to get xorg apps working, what is that like on Wayland? Do you know by chance?

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Wayland is completely separate as well.

Everything runs fine as far as I can tell.

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Yup, only Tonga and Fiji for now, or in other words GCN 1.2. At least officially.
Official support for GCN 1.1 and 1.0 will come eventually. This is just the first beta driver for Vulkan.

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I know that steam just did the update that supports the Vulkan API, has anyone noticed anything different?
also, Is this driver usable with KDE Mint 17.3? sorry not a Linux power user yet.

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Ubuntu 14.04.4 is the only OS that AMD themselves is testing on. But I assume that KDE Mint would work. No guarantees until it's fully released, though.

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