Should I install the ATI closed source driver manually?

[Eugenia]

Today, I installed Linux Mint for the first time ever (although I'm not new to Linux in general). One of the reasons I installed it was because I saw that it had a little preference panel that lets you choose if you want the proprietary driver or not for graphics cards. So, I thought that this would be a good way to have the system take care of any updates for it etc.

However, upon installing the distro, Mint only used the open source driver, and did not give me any option to install the proprietary driver. That pref panel is empty. I later even updated to kernel 4.18.x, just in case, but with the same results.

My card is an ATI FirePro W2100 (GCN 1st gen), 2 GB.

I need the proprietary drivers for two reasons:
1. In order to use DaVinci Resolve, which requires it.
2. 4k video playback with the open source driver is choppy (on Windows it's not).

So what gives? Why isn't the pref panel give me the choice? If I manually install the driver, will it break the next time there's a kernel update? I mean, is that a sure deal?

[roblm]

One of the reasons I installed it was because I saw that it had a little preference panel that lets you choose if you want the proprietary driver or not for graphics cards.

I don’t know of any preference panel. You may be thinking of the Nvidia PRIME applet on the panel for switching between Nvidia and Intel GPUs. Your video card should be using the amdgpu driver, which is the best for overall performance for most users.

The only alternative is the AMDGPU-Pro hybrid driver which needs to be downloaded from AMD’s website. Since DaVinci Resolve is for film and video editing, then the OpenCL support from that driver would be desirable. Get the Radeon™ Software for Linux® version 18.50 for Ubuntu 18.04.1 here:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/relea ... 50-unified

Use the installation instructions in my third post in this topic:
viewtopic.php?f=59&t=272074

[Eugenia]

Thank you for the reply. Way too much hacking and fiddling is involved to install the Ati driver. ATi should be ashamed of themselves.

I decided to buy a refurbished nvidia 2 GB card and install that official driver instead (the GT 1030 GPU, the cheapest 2 GB nvidia card). IMHO, it installs with fewer headaches, and Resolve prefers it anyway. I should have the card next week or so.

[Hoser Rob]

Thank you for the reply. Way too much hacking and fiddling is involved to install the Ati driver. ATi should be ashamed of themselves.

I decided to buy a refurbished nvidia 2 GB card and install that official driver instead (the GT 1030 GPU, the cheapest 2 GB nvidia card). IMHO, it installs with fewer headaches, and Resolve prefers it anyway. I should have the card next week or so.

It's a good thing you didn't try hacking the ATI driver. The closed driver fglrx has been deprecated in all Linux distros as recent as Mint 18. And even if you're running 17.3 that card is too old to work with fglrx anyway. And I'm not sure that you're going to get decent 3D acceleration with a card that old with the open source driver anyway.

In other words, if you had done this you would have

Code: Select all

completely

broken your video.

So getting a newer Nvidia card is the best way to go IMO, it's not too old and Nvidia has the best Linux gpu supporf.

Just do NOT go to the nvidia site and try to dl the latest Linux driver. That's the obvious thing to do for WIndows users but Linux is different. There's actually very little backwards compatibility in Linux in general. The right way, almost always, is to go into Driver Manager and install the Nvidia driver that DM recommends.

BTW AMD is hardly unique in this, hardware support is one of the biggest problems in Linux. Never buy any hardware for Linux without checking for compatibility first.