Valve Sponsors Work Bringing Open-Source RADV Driver to Windows

DDemiGuru about 2 hours ago 14 commentsRead Article on phoronix.com

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Discussion (14 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

coderbants•about 1 hour ago

This is a net good for Linux.

Most of the PC gaming audience is on Windows, so Windows is still the primary target being developed against. Having better Vulkan on Windows means more support for Vulkan in games in the pipeline, which means better Linux support in those games over time, which ultimately benefits Steam and their hardware.

GCUMstlyHarmls•about 1 hour ago

The developer writes here, https://www.collabora.com/news-and-blog/news-and-events/crac...

> users are still served only by the proprietary driver [...] An open source Vulkan driver on Windows opens up a number of possibilities: a shared codebase across platforms, easier debugging and experimentation, faster turnaround on fixes, and a path for the community (e.g., game developers) to report problems or contribute improvements that benefit everyone regardless of operating system.

To me, the argument against a proprietary driver seems extremely weak if you're running Windows anyway, but I guess they see it more that if more game devs can run the RADV driver, they can get wider testing (or a simpler story for devs to test at least) and backdoor improvements into the Linux side?

I guess I dont understand the "a shared codebase across platforms, easier debugging and experimentation," comment. Shared RADV codebase? Or shared game engine code, at least the specific parts of the engine that target Vulkan x Radeon (how big is that really?). Similarly I guess "debugging" here is tracking down odd ball RADV bugs where you could then run it in windows to see if its a linux thing or a RADV thing?

akazantsev•38 minutes ago

> To me, the argument against a proprietary driver seems extremely weak if you're running Windows anyway, but I guess they see it more that if more game devs can run the RADV driver, they can get wider testing (or a simpler story for devs to test at least) and backdoor improvements into the Linux side?

Are you using an AMD driver?

Let me share my experience. One day, you wake up and your GPU driver is gone for no reason. I'm not even joking here—the recent driver update broke the driver for many users. Launch Battlefield 6, and your driver is... gone. A new driver update comes out... Launch Battlefield 6, hard freeze. Improvement. I'm still running an older "blessed" driver version for this reason, and I'm scared to update.

pohuing•19 minutes ago

I had an rx 5700xt where one version worked on bf4 but it didn't work on doom eternal. Meanwhile the version had unusable performance when streaming my game to friends. So any time I wanted to play games with friends I had to reinstall an older version. This stayed an issue for months with no communication from AMD.

My current rx6900xt meanwhile has quite a few other stalls and crashes, and doesn't get any of the cool rocm support the 7000series gets.

So my next gpu will be an nvidia. Paying over a thousand euros for a gpu, only to get your support dropped after 2(two!) years of shoddy drivers is just unbearable.

I understood shoddy drivers in the R series, Vega(another lemon i bought) as well, AMD was flat out broke. But by now they surely have some money left over from the ryzen success to make their gpus at least stable.

HHalvi•34 minutes ago

Game devs testing against the same driver on both platforms would probably surface RADV issues faster than the current Linux-only audience does, and as a linux gamer I couldn't be more happier.

artisinal•35 minutes ago

This gives me hope that one day the Steam Controller will have a native Windows driver.

Razengan•about 2 hours ago

Can we please let Windows die already

pjmlp•39 minutes ago

First lets get Linux on computer stores so that normies actually care it exists, outside Android, ChromeOS and WebOS powered devices.

GuB-42•about 1 hour ago

Most gamers are still on Windows, I expect it to be the case for quite a while, even though Linux support is improving.

Bringing an open source driver to the most popular platform is a way to get more contributors interested, which in turn may help the Linux driver.

Rohansi•about 2 hours ago

Say that to the 95% of people using Windows to play PC games.

simoncion•about 1 hour ago

Many or most of those 95% who are just using Windows for PC games and using a web browser would be well served by either trying out or having a tech-savvy neighbor help them try out a Linux distro like Bazzite.

I used to boot into Windows regularly to play video games. I haven't booted into Windows in ages. Proton is really good, and the major web browsers work the same on -at minimum- Windows, OSX, and Linux.

Plus, it's been my experience that drivers for AMD's graphics cards just work better on Linux... especially for older games. It helps that the folks writing them aren't working for "AI"-crazy companies that have probably massively slashed the resources they're giving the driver programmers for their consumer-grade cards. (After all, why spend any money on software for video games when you can spend that money on software for "AI" stuff and get a much larger ROI?)

nessguy•43 minutes ago

Last time I tried out linux (Earlier this year) I had to give up on it because my system would occasionally freeze to the point I needed to do a hard reset.

I thought it was a hardware issue, but it ended up being a linux amd driver issue. I haven’t had a problem since switching back to windows.

NDizzle•about 1 hour ago

From what I can tell, gaming with an nvidia card on Linux is still rough. Is that incorrect?

Razengan•about 1 hour ago

Well millions of people are still smoking cigarettes doesn't mean that shit is good