AMD Will Post A New Catalyst Linux Driver Today

For those Linux users that may have their hands on AMD Kaveri APUs early or are just looking for a new Catalyst Linux driver in hopes of new bug-fixes, AMD will release today their "AMD 4th Generation APU launch driver" to the public.

The Kaveri APU launch driver is part of the fglrx 13.30 series and it's what I've been using in my AMD A10-7850K Kaveri Linux testing. It's not too much of a surprise seeing a new driver release for launch day as AMD has been kicking up with same-day support for Linux for several years now -- going back to the Radeon HD 4800 series -- with their Catalyst driver. If you're hoping for some major breakthroughs though with the new Catalyst Linux driver release, you will likely be disappointed.

In my testing of the driver over the past few days there were no major changes in OpenGL performance for existing Radeon hardware, there isn't any official Linux 3.13 kernel compatibility, and I didn't see any major bug-fixes. In fact, for some GPUs the fglrx 13.30.1 driver tested just led to problems with Unigine tests locking up for select GPUs.

Stay tuned for more details when the AMD Catalyst Linux driver is publicly released today. For details on using the open-source AMD Radeon Gallium3D driver with Kaveri, read my earlier article. Stay tuned for the AMD Kaveri Linux benchmark results shortly; coming out today will be Windows 8.1 vs. Ubuntu Linux AMD APU numbers.