Lack of Southern Island support in most kernels

This is a bit of a rant.

I installed Ubuntu 16.10 excited to have AMDGPU support for my r9 390 only to find in the kernel config:

CONFIG_DRM_AMDGPU_CIK=N

Having to compile my own kernel because Canonical and most distros don't have southern island support for amdgpu enabled in their kernel has me rather pissed.

I understand that it is experimental but it still requires a kernel boot parameter to enable it so it wouldn't expose unknowing users to an experimental feature. But completely removing the feature is insane.

Now, I have to do a couple of hours worth the work to change a "N" to an "Y". Fucking bull shit.

If I wanted to compile I would have installed Gentoo....

I understand your frustration, I want mesa with opengl 4.3+ but it's not in a stable release. Experimental features are almost always disabled until it's agreed to enable them.

Saying that.. you should be able to just download the kwnrwl source and use the existing config with that one line changed and just tell it to compile and install. Doesn't take long in modern systems.

Well I got it working. Cloned the mainline Ubuntu kernel changed the config and compiled added a few new power saving tweaks while I was at it. Need to install amdgpu pro over it. Will post findings if I remember.

its not experimental AFAIK.

The only experimental support is for older cards like the 7970 which SHOULD be stable for the 4.9 kernel release.

CIK is still marked as not fully functional. So a few distros are not enabling it for their kernels.