When we first got to Linux one of the most frequent topics that they tend to frequent is the installation of the drivers video on the system. Since in addition to this, also for those who have desktop computers have the possibility of being able to add or change the video card.
And that is when the need arises to be able to install the video drivers of our card, in this case we are going to focus on the installation of the AMD video drivers.
To perform a correct installation of the video drivers in our Linux distribution It is necessary to first know the model and chipset of our card.
How to know the model of our video card?
For this We must open a terminal and execute this command in it:
lspci | grep VGA
When executing this command the data of our video card will be printed on the screen, in my case I get the following:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] [Radeon R5 (PCIE)]
As I have an AMD processor with integrated GPU this has the Radeon R5 model. With this information in hand we proceed to download the appropriate driver for our system.
Video Driver Download
We must go to the official AMD page to download the driver. The link is this.
Here I put a little note for Ubuntu and derivative users (Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Lubuntu, etc) as well as for Arch Linux users and its derivatives.
In the case of these distributions we can perform an alternate installation without having to resort to using this general method, these methods will be described below.
Installation of the AMDGPU Pro drivers
With the downloaded file, we proceed to decompress it with:
tar -xJvf amdgpu-pro _ *. tar.xz
Now we must access the newly created directory, where the XX are replaced by the version corresponding to your download:
cd amdgpu-pro-XX.XX
Here in this part, both users of Debian, Ubuntu and derivatives of these it is necessary that we enable the 32-bit architecture in the system, we enable this with:
sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 sudo apt update
We proceed with the installation by executing the script that is inside the folder we do this by typing:
./amdgpu-pro-install -y
Although some of the recommended ones may be:
./amdgpu-pro-install –px
Or they can also use:
./amdgpu-pro-install --opencl=rocm
After the installation, we just have to restart our computer for the changes to start at system startup.
How to install AMD GPU PRO drivers in Ubuntu and derivatives?
For those who are Ubuntu users or a system derived from it, We can facilitate the installation of the drivers, by using a third-party repository.
This repository is maintained by a team of users who constantly update it and offers us an easier method to obtain the drivers.
Just add it to the system with:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers sudo apt-get update
And we proceed to install with:
sudo apt install xserver-xorg-video-amdgpu
And if you want to install support for Vulkan:
sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers
How to install AMD GPU PRO drivers on Arch Linux and derivatives?
In the case of Arch Linux, Manajaro, Antergos or any derivative users installing these drivers can be both simple and a bit complicated and this is because It depends a lot on the configuration of your pacman.conf file as well as the software on your system.
I explain to you, since AMD video drivers are not always compatible with the latest version of Xorg and the linux kernel, plus it requires you to have the multilib repository enabled on it.
Here to install the drivers in the simplest way is by using a pacman graphic manager, as is Octopi, so you must have the AUR repository enabled and have an assistant.
You install this with:
aurman -S octopi octopi-notifier
Done this you can look for the package amdgpu-pro in Octopi and install it with the help of it.
Because this Arch Linux driver installation topic is a bit more open, I'll share its installation in a dedicated post for it.
Because to complicate your life, install Manjaro and the AMD driver and whatever it is, it installs itself. When you install Manjaro it asks you if you want the free driver or the owner and if later you want to change, for example, you have the owner installed, with a single click the owner is uninstalled and the free driver is installed and the same thing happens with the kernel one click and you have the kernel installed and the modified grub and the applications are installed in a very short line in the terminal and there is no repository to add. Head over to Manjaro and enjoy your time and don't waste time installing drivers.
The two drivers are free, therefore you cannot choose the "official" one.
good, I have read your post, and I see that you had thinking about how to do the installation in arch-linux, I am not very clear that I can do it, because I am afraid that it is not compatible with the latest xorg, I am writing to ask you If you know something about it, if it is very complicated and especially if it is worth it with respect to the free driver.
In my case, I do not see that it is worth the time to install the amd-gpu driver since it has not been updated in some time and the version they offer is very late.
The advantage you have with Arch Linux and derivatives is that you can get old versions of Xorg, it is only a matter of looking for which version is compatible with the version of the driver in your case.
The last question, I'll be frank, Vulkan is doing better.
It happens to me with xubuntu 18.4 that it does not recognize the two screens from the beginning, if I start in window $ 7 yes; but in order for the two screens to be recognized, I have to unplug the vga cable from one screen and plug it back in after a while (the other monitor is via DVI)
no matter how much I follow the instructions on the console, there is nothing to do
Thank you, you are a love, I took a long time searching until I found this post and restart and see through that second screen
i have kubuntu and kde uses xorg?