{"id":158175,"date":"2016-03-10T09:54:53","date_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=158175"},"modified":"2016-03-10T09:55:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T07:55:51","slug":"ubuntu-dropping-support-for-amd-catalyst-binary-driver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/software\/158175-ubuntu-dropping-support-for-amd-catalyst-binary-driver.html","title":{"rendered":"Ubuntu dropping support for AMD Catalyst binary driver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ubuntu is deprecating the proprietary AMD Catalyst (fglrx) driver in its next Long Term Support release, Ubuntu 16.04, according to an early mention <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/wiki.ubuntu.com\/XenialXerus\/ReleaseNotes#fglrx\" target=\"_blank\">in the release notes<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>Instead of the binary driver, Ubuntu recommended that users install its open-source alternatives, radeon and amdgpu.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAMD put a lot of work into the drivers, and we backported kernel code from Linux 4.5 to provide a better experience,\u201d said Ubuntu.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.phoronix.com\/scan.php?page=news_item&amp;px=Ubuntu-16.04-Dropping-fglrx\">Phoronix reported<\/a><\/strong> that this will cause a regression in features and performance, which may affect users.<\/p>\n<p>The open-source Radeon Linux graphics stack only supports OpenGL 4.1 rather than OpenGL 4.5, and the open-source OpenCL compute stack isn\u2019t up to scratch\u00a0yet.<\/p>\n<p>Other limitations in the existing open-source AMD drivers may also contribute to performance regression, said Phoronix.<\/p>\n<p>Users can\u00a0download AMD\u2019s binary driver from its website and install it on Ubuntu 16.04, but it won\u2019t be officially supported.<\/p>\n<p>Ubuntu said upgrading to Ubuntu 16.04 will result in the fglrx driver and the xorg.conf being removed.<\/p>\n<p>The system is then set to use the amdgpu or radeon driver, depending on the hardware.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on Ubuntu and AMD<\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/gadgets\/154272-ubuntu-tablet-pc-launch-window-and-specs.html\"><strong>Ubuntu tablet PC \u2013 launch window and specs<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/hardware\/150797-new-amd-14nm-finfet-polaris-gpu-architecture-demonstrated.html\"><strong>New AMD 14nm FinFET Polaris GPU architecture demonstrated<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The proprietary AMD fglrx driver will be deprecated in the next release of Ubuntu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":150881,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[36,577,36023,36025,36021,967,36019],"class_list":["post-158175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-software","tag-active","tag-amd","tag-amd-catalyst-binary-driver-fglrx","tag-amd-catalyst-drivers","tag-amd-radeon","tag-ubuntu","tag-ubuntu-16-04-xenial-xerus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158175"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158175"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158181,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158175\/revisions\/158181"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}