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Mint 18.1 Cinn: How To: AMD Driver install (RX480, R7, R9) + Steam
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Mint 18.1 Cinn: How To: AMD Driver install (RX480, R7, R9) + Steam
Post by Monarch Black » Sun Mar 26, 2017 8:16 pm
Updated 4-7-2016
There are a few threads floating around with info on this, but some of it is just a little bit off due to some changes in some things. They have the info needed in there, but buried along with other stuff. Going to do a step-by-step from a fresh install for those that are having issues. The main issue appears to be that the newest drivers DO NOT like kernel 4.4, so updating to kernel 4.8 could be all you need to do if you are having issues. After spending the day troubleshooting getting my RX480 running, I wanted to spend a little time making a concise to-do list for the novice. This may not be the ONLY way to get it working, but it does work and I repeated it to make sure. From installation start to everything working takes about an hour on my mediocre CPU and a standard hard-drive, your mileage may vary.
**Much of this comes from LuckyDuck99’s thread, but AMD changed some things that messed up some of the instructions. So, props and much credit to him.
1) Install Linux Mint 18.1 from install DVD. Let it use 3rd party drivers for mp3s and stuff when it asks. After it finishes it will kick out the DVD. Take out the DVD, then hit ‘Enter’ to reboot.
2) After initial reboot click on the «Drivers» module in the welcome pop-up. Enable drivers that may be there that you want to use. For me that is AMD microcode. Reboot. (Some people may not need this step).
3) After next boot, update everything. Click on the «Update Center» icon beside the clock. Choose the middle option (do not choose the top one) for update center behavior. Update everything it wants to update. For me this was about 3 batches of stuff. At first it was a couple items, after that it gave a large amount of items, after those updated it did firmware and the 4.4 kernel. (May not need to update the 4.4 kernel since we are going to replace it, but I went with better safe than sorry.) Restart after updates to make sure everything is locked in.
4) On this boot, install the 4.8 kernel. Click the «Update Center» icon beside clock. At the top of the Update Center window, choose «View», then «Linux kernels». Click «continue» on the warning popup. Click on «4.8» on the left side, then click on the bottom 4.8 kernel in the list, and install. At time of writing this is 4.8.0-45. Reboot. (Edit: it also appears to work installing the 4.10 kernel that is now available, instead of 4.8. Both worked in my testing.)
5) This boot, download and install AMD drivers. In Firefox, go to http://support.amd.com/en-us/download/linux and download the Ubuntu driver listed for your card. At time of writing this is version 17.10-401251. (If you use a different browser that saves somewhere other than «Downloads», you will need to go to that directory when you install.)
6) Open the terminal (little black & white box by Menu). Need to go where the downloaded file is and extract the driver. Then, move into the new folder. So, type these at the prompt to do that. (The file name and directory will change with future driver releases, this is for 17.10 driver.)
Scroll down until you see «ubuntu» listed below a section «function os_release». Where it says «ubuntu», delete that and make it «linuxmint». (Do not change anything else but «ubuntu» to «linuxmint»!!)
Hit «CTRL+o» to save, «Enter» to confirm, then «CTRL+x» to exit. Keep the terminal open.
8 ) Install the AMD driver.
Edit: that is «period slash amdgpu-pro-install -y» Sort of hard to see.
9) The user needs in the «video» group.
Close the terminal, almost there.
10) Finally, delete the old driver. Open up the «Software Manager». (Menu, Administration, Software Manager). Search for «Radeon» in the search bar. Scroll down to «Xserver-xorg-video-radeon» towards the bottom. Double-click it, then uninstall.
11) ***Your AMD video card should now be good to go! Reboot!
12) If you want Steam, don’t download from the steampowered website. Open the «Software Manager» again. Search «Steam». Double-click and install the Steam application there. Works like a charm.
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 5 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
AMD Radeon RX 480 On Linux
AMD has provided launch-day support for the Radeon RX 480 on Linux in the form of the fully open-source driver stack and the hybrid driver stack.
All Open
This is the first major launch of a graphics card for a completely new generation of hardware where AMD/RTG has been able to provide pre-launch open-source driver support! For weeks now there’s been experimental support for Polaris appearing on mailing lists and Git repositories for the various Linux driver components. It was terrific to see this happen and is similar to Intel with their providing of open-source driver support ahead of product launch. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite so smooth nor was it pushed out far enough in advance where any Linux distributions are currently providing the support out-of-the-box.
I previously outlined the requirements for RX 480 Linux support. Currently you need to use a AMDGPU DRM-Fixes branch of the Linux 4.7 kernel as all of the Polaris fixes haven’t yet been mainlined to Linux 4.7 (Linux 4.7 is going to be the first kernel release with Polaris support), Mesa Git (fixes are being back-ported to Mesa 12.0), Polaris firmware binaries from Alex Deucher’s website until they appear in linux-firmware.git as the ones there are currently out of date, and to be using Git of xf86-video-amdgpu/libdrm. Rolling-release Linux distributions will get these various changes in the weeks ahead while for distributions like Ubuntu it won’t be until Ubuntu 16.10 or Fedora 25 later in the year that there will be this support out-of-the-box.
The current open-source driver support for Polaris is basically on-par with what’s found for previous GCN GPUs on the AMDGPU kernel driver. There is OpenGL 4.3 support via RadeonSI Gallium3D, the basic compute support via OpenCL 1.1 with Clover, VDPAU / VCE, and PowerPlay. With the Linux 4.8 kernel is when the OverDrive re-clocking support is expected to land. There still hasn’t been any communication from AMD when they may be able to open-source their Vulkan driver.
Once getting all of the necessary open-source driver components, everything has been working fine on my end with the Radeon RX 480. I haven’t experienced any crashes, re-clocking failures, or any other major Linux driver issues. Albeit it won’t be easy for novice/casual Linux users to easily get their system in a suitable state for open-source Polaris support right now, but once all of the code is mainlined and in released form picked up by the various distributions, you should be off to the races.
AMDGPU-PRO
AMD should be releasing an updated AMDGPU-PRO hybrid driver today that supports the Radeon RX 480. The AMDGPU-PRO driver I’ve been testing the past few days is marked version 16.30.3. This driver provides complete support for the RX 480 with OpenGL 4.5, Vulkan 1.0, and OpenCL 2.0. All of my initial RX 480 testing was done on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it worked fine there: this AMDGPU-PRO driver is still distributed as a set of Debian packages and outside of the Polaris changes there isn’t any other major alterations to report on with this hybrid driver.
If you want Vulkan support today, better support/performance in select games that don’t yet run nicely with RadeonSI Gallium3D, easy OpenCL 2.0, or want to avoid any headaches with getting the Polaris open-source driver support squared away, you’ll want to initially stick to using the AMDGPU-PRO driver.
Today’s Radeon RX 480 launch has undoubtedly been the best yet for AMD/ATI from an open-source perspective. There’s actually code available at launch time that works and with full capabilities of the hardware (no missing PowerPlay/re-clocking, OpenGL support is in good shape, etc) for this major new generation of GPUs (in the past they’ve had open-source support at launch time just for minor GPU revisions). It’s also great that the complementary AMDGPU-PRO driver is also prepped for launch day, but we’ve seen same-day Linux binary support there generally speaking going back to the Radeon HD 4000 days.
Let’s see how these Linux drivers allow the Radeon RX 480 to perform under Linux!