Ubuntu 15.10 Is Coming This Week & AMD's Catalyst Chokes On Its Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu 15.10 Is Coming This Week & AMD's Catalyst Chokes On Its Kernel

Ubuntu 15.10 is set to be released on Thursday, but those dependent upon the AMD Catalyst proprietary graphics driver for Linux gaming or the like might want to hold off on upgrading... While there is the latest Catalyst driver packaged and it's been patched to work against the Wily Werewolf's default Linux 4.2 kernel, it doesn't seem to work reliably...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-15.10-4.2-Cat-Not-Ready

[andre30correia]

no big news, catalyst is a nightmare for linux users

[raonlinux]

Well there is no reason to go fglrx best go with the open source less headache at the end. I only see avaible if you are opengl as workstations usign the fgrlx but anyway I bet they should be using a stable release. Not need a new kernel.

[Michael]

Well there is no reason to go fglrx best go with the open source less headache at the end. I only see avaible if you are opengl as workstations usign the fgrlx but anyway I bet they should be using a stable release. Not need a new kernel.

Or if you want to run games that don't yet run on Mesa R600/RadeonSI, if you want to use Tonga/Fiji at full performance, if you want useful OpenCL, are affected by an open-source driver bug, etc.

[humbug]

Well there is no reason to go fglrx best go with the open source less headache at the end.

No fglrx is still faster in games and can run all games.
Would love to switch when Mesa is actually faster and keeps up with API advancements.

[callen92]

I experienced both the fglrx and radeon driver issues a month ago via the Wily daily build..

If you look at the bug report on cchtml, you will find that the issue happens on any distro when trying to use the 4.2 kernel and not just Ubuntu. The issue was first reported last August...

When I got the kernel panic from a compiz/radeon issue, I created a bug for it on launchpad and the ticket was closed on the Ubuntu side. The person who closed the ticket said that these kinds of issues were too low on the totem pole to be addressed. Hopefully that will change as more people report it.

I have been both an ATI and AMD user since the days of the K6-2 and Rage Pro, but I am really starting to reconsider. Conversely, I am concerned that there are only 3 big players in the PC GPU market because when one starts to falter, a large group of users are affected, and one of the other two has the potential to become a monopoly.

[MoonMoon]

no big news, catalyst is a nightmare for linux users

AMD simply doesn't support kernel 4.2 with Catalyst yet, so blaming them for Catalyst not working correctly with kernel 4.2 is somewhat pointless, you could only blame them for taking ages until new kernel versions are supported. Blame Canonical/Ubuntu instead for closing those bugs with a statement like "too low on the totem pole" (as callen92 pointed out) and for, as it seems to happen, don't caring about once again releasing a version with known serious bugs.

[zanny]

Or if you want to run games that don't yet run on Mesa R600/RadeonSI, if you want to use Tonga/Fiji at full performance, if you want useful OpenCL, are affected by an open-source driver bug, etc.

Having played Bioshock infinite on my 290 with radeonsi, what games do not run on Mesa that run on Catalyst now? And in many titles Mesa 11 is beating or tying Catalyst in performance in many titles, there is no significant performance gap to use as an excuse to use horribly undersupported blob drivers. OpenCL is about the only good reason.

[Scellow]

FUCK YOU AMD, don't censor this comment, let AMD read our feelings

[mendieta]

I used not to understand why people would hang on to LTS releases, but now I get it. My main machine acts as a file and printer server, and is always using latest. Printer serving has been a complete disaster. A laptop I have, a chromebook really, is running latest Ubuntu. I upgraded to 15.10, and NetworkManager dies on login. I reported a bug, two weeks ago, so it could be fixed for the release. No answer, whatsoever. My wife's beautiful Dell XPS 13 running Kubuntu latest, same thing. KDE functionality drops from one release to the next one, I need to find a substitute, or just give up, stuff like that. Constantly. My son runs 14.04 LTS on his low cost AMD gaming rig, no issues whatsoever. Everything works. We tried a more recent release, lots of issues. I am looking forward to 16.04, and intend to keep all computers on it. I completely appreciate Ubuntu and Canonical. But I learned the hard way that only LTS are production level.