Interestingly, I'm now seeing issues with my R9 285 on Debian Testing using the fully free software stack which I did not before. Crashes after just a couple of seconds of rendering a game. I suspect it might be related to a kernel upgrade, so might see if I can narrow down the problem over the Easter break.

Maybe the issue I'm seeing is just a regression in a recent AMDGPU patch.

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Quoting: bridgmanThanks for the note about multi-arch... I don't remember anyone running into that during testing but will check.

Thanks - I didn't expect any sort of reply from AMD. I didn't even know anyone from AMD monitored Gaming on Linux. Nice one!

Quoting: bridgmanSounds like you got a very different 14.04.4 HWE from what we downloaded from ubuntu.com. The stock 14.04.4 HWE image should have 4.2 kernel and associated graphics stack, not 4.4 or 3.13.

I'm usually a Debian user, but just installed Ubuntu because that's what the drivers said was supported. I tried using the normal graphical installer wizard, and that would fail (with some very strange errors/behaviour) every time I tried installing my root/swap partitions on top of LVM2, on top of a dedicated LUKS partition used for the LVM2 physical volume, so in the end I just set it up manually (because I really hate not using encryption).

So in the end I basically just ran parted, crypsetup, lvm pvcreate/vgcreate/lvcreate, mkfs.ext4/mkswap, debootstrap, installed grub-efi/kernel/kernel tools/kernel headers/xfce-desktop/goodies packages, edited /etc/cryptsetup, /etc/default/grub, /etc/fstab, created accounts via useradd, ran grub-install, done. Then later I added the i386 architecture via the dpkg --add-architecture i386 command.

FWIW, debootstrap was ran using the Ubuntu 14.04.4 installer/Live CD, so I'm assuming it's supported by Canonical.

Quoting: bridgmanIf you install 14.04.0 or 14.04.1 and apply the regular security/bug fix updates the distro version will show as 14.04.4 but it won't have the 14.04.4 HWE kernel or graphics stack.

Since I used the 14.04.4 Live CD, I assume I have everything fully up to date. In case it helps:

abolte@dragon:~$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu trusty main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu trusty main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu/ trusty-updates main restricted universe multiverse

deb http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu-security/ trusty-security main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://cyclops.monsters:3142/ubuntu-security/ trusty-security main restricted universe multiverse
abolte@dragon:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
abolte@dragon:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 14.04.4 LTS
Release: 14.04
Codename: trusty
abolte@dragon:~$ 
where cyclops.monsters is just the apt-cacher-ng server I have on my LAN for caching packages. If you would like a complete package listing or any other details, feel free to send me an e-mail at abolte at systemsaviour.com. Really, the AMD deb packages should depend on all the packages they require so they will be installed automatically (or simply fail to install if the dependencies aren't available).

Quoting: bridgmanDid you install the 4.4 kernel on top of the 14.04.4 install or did it come in automatically ? I'm wondering if ubuntu.com might be giving out different configurations in different locations or something.

Since I used debootstrap, I didn't get a kernel by default. I simply looked at my available options, and saw there was a 4.4 kernel in the official repos that was LTS, so that's what I grabbed.

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I've got an Asus Radeon R9 285 OC edition installed on a MSI Z170A Gaming M7, 32Gb of DDR4, an i7-6700k (overclocked to 4.6Ghz, rock stable with the latest Prime95) and traditionally had a dual-boot setup. Debian Testing with the amdgpu free software stack, and Ubuntu 14.04.4 with Catalyst (for Dying Light, ARK, Shadow of Mordor and whatever else doesn't run with the free software drivers).

When this news hit, I grabbed a spare 120Gb SSD I had laying around and did a new clean minimal Ubuntu 14.04.4 install, installed Xfce, and finally installed the new AMD GPU-PRO driver package.

First problem I hit was that multi-arch needed to be enabled or the packages will fail installation, so I went ahead and did that. You would think that would have been caught straight away in QA! Then I ran the script that installed a local repository (that installs unauthenticated packages). I hate seeing that warning, so I removed all that and re-installed the deb packages directly using gdebi. Apparently that doesn't work too well for reasons I didn't investigate... so I went back to using the install script eventually. Not a great start.

Also, I had the Ubuntu 4.4 "xenial" kernel installed, which apparently doesn't work. The AMD DKIM stuff doesn't support 4.4 yet, so I had to go back to the 4.2 "wily" kernel. The 14.04.4 default kernel is currently 3.13.0-83, which doesn't support my motherboard network card, but it turned out 3.13 isn't supported by AMD's new driver anyway.

So next I installed Steam, pointed Steam at the HDD with all my games, checked the drivers all appeared to be installed and loaded correctly via lsmod, dmesg, glxinfo, etc. and proceeded to load a game that sucks under Catalyst... Dying Light. It instantly showed weird purple checkered colors before even hitting the initial loading screen, and then the computer became unresponsive. I'd normally hit Ctrl+Alt+F2 followed by Ctrl+Alt+Del to safely reboot the computer when I see the graphics output is broken, but even that didn't work. It seemed to have completely locked up.

Next I tried Ark. Well I got to the loading screen on that one, but it crashed the instant I clicked on the Host Game button.

Finally I tried The Talos Principle, because everyone else seems to be able to get that to work based on what I read on Phoronix. The game loaded, showed the opening pre-rendered animation, and then goes to the animation that appears to not be pre-rendered (and says something like "Press any key to continue"). It plays for about 2 seconds, and then I get another hard lock-up.

FWIW, I also tried undoing my overclock (which has never given me a hint of problems anyway) and reverting to stock. No difference at all. This driver is screwed on my hardware.

So it's back to Catalyst for me. Now excuse me while I go play some more Dying Light at 17FPS. :(

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I agree, the news sucks. I've been wanting to play this game for so many years now, but I'm going to wait until it officially supports GNU/Linux.

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I backed it (first time I've ever backed something on Kickstarter), so I got the demo and finished it pretty quickly (R9 285, amdgpu/Mesa stack on Debian testing). It's a bit buggy, but it shows a lot of promise and I had fun with it.

Particularly interesting (for me) was the lighting, where you could see shadows of something nearby. There's also a button mapping option to quickly rotate the ship 90 degrees, which I don't recall having from the original Descent games and made navigation feel slightly quicker (even though the actual ship speed is just the same as the originals).

The Revival Productions developers promoted the heck out of this game throughout the last week with constant e-mail updates, new demo builds (with comprehensive change lists), the Windows demo on Steam and even a 24-hour live stream for the last day. My only gripe at this point is the lack of a GNU/Linux demo for non-backers, but there are issues with it not working in full screen and some graphics corruption on certain graphic settings, so perhaps they will also add a GNU/Linux demo when those two problems have been addressed.

When they first posted the download link, they misspelled "Linux" and the download link didn't work because of that, so I get the feeling that the team were extremely busy burning the midnight oil to pull the demo off.

Revival also has a YouTube channel [External Link] where they show off a bunch of weapon prototypes and some development time-lapse videos. For the curious, the game is apparently developed using Unity and Mono.

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Agreed. I'd happily purchase old games wrapped in Wine. It also seems pretty rare to see a new release on Steam that's just been Wine wrapped (probably in part due to Wine currently only supporting up to DirectX 9 for graphics), so I don't see the problem.

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I'm currently running a R9 285, which is the first card to have the new amdgpu driver support. It works almost out of the box on Debian Testing, and runs great!

I did notice a few games don't work. Ark, Dead Island, Dying Light and Shadow or Mordor all have problems. The first three just crash (just because they aren't well made, or - in the case of Ark - are still in early access), and the last one works but has a lot of missing textures (presumably something to do with the lack of OpenGL 4.2 support in Mesa).

And that is the only significant problem with amdgpu today; only OpenGL 4.1 is supported, which isn't enough for some of the recent releases. When Mesa gets that sorted (or when AMD's proprietary stack for amdgpu is released), AMD's driver will be far superior to Nvidia's in a lot of ways. But as it stands today, almost all games seem to work fine with amdgpu - assuming you have a card based on GCN 1.2 or higher. Otherwise... yeah that sucks.

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Quoting: Grimfistwhich is what I most often do with every music CD I buy

Again, I do that when Bitcoin is supported (eg. http://www.shanthagopian.com/ [External Link] ) but unfortunately I don't see it happening enough.

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I buy most of my games from SteamBitShop or IndieGala, since they accept Bitcoin. Sometimes Humble Bundle accepts Bitcoin (but not usually), so I occasionally buy from them. Sometimes I'll reluctantly pay using PayPal as a payment, but I almost never hand over my credit card (well, limited debit card) details directly.

I would happily buy keys from Steam or the developers directly, if Bitcoin was an option there.

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It's also worth noting that Steam Machines and the controller is still marked as "Coming Soon" in many parts of the world, including my country. SteamOS still isn't running in top gear.

I just built myself a new GNU/Linux machine, which has no Windows install. Finally I should now be able to run Shadow of Mordor, Dying Light, Metro Redux, etc. Been looking forward to this day for a long time.

I also brought myself a Thrustmaster T.Flight Hotas X for Descent Underground, Overload (if it's successful in getting backed), etc. but saddened that the throttle behaves oddly and is basically unusable in it's current state. Everything else on the thing works 100%, so that's a real head-scratcher - especially since it's supposed to be a popular model.

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