It has been several years since Ubuntu has entered a controversy from which it seems to be unable to get out. To what extent is Ubuntu Software Free? Even the father of all this movement, Richard Stallman, has come to criticize the distro that gives our blog its name for offering users the possibility of installing proprietary drivers on the system.
Well, it seems that Canonical has taken a big step towards Free Software. And it is that as of Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, the proprietary drivers of Radeon (Catalyst) will become obsolete, so on the other hand, Ubuntu will start using only free graphics drivers, such as AMDGPU.
Last year, AMD has already bet heavily on Open Source and Free Softwarethrough GPUOpen.
We all know the trouble that it had brought CatalystIt is clear that if the programmer can use and view the source code of the system's graphics drivers, and consequently has access to a powerful API, software development can reach a much more optimal level of quality and efficiency. And this is the main mission of GPUOpen, to offer the programmer the possibility of get the most out of the GPU, through a collection of visual effects, and all kinds of free production tools at no cost.
On numerous occasions I have installed Ubuntu to friends or family, and the problems they have ended up having with Catalyst have always been difficult to solve. On several occasions the graphical environment of many applications has suddenly stopped working, or even the desktop environment itself, even having to format in the worst cases. Still, the solution had always been the same; install free drivers, which has usually eradicated the problem completely.
And it is that as we have said, free drivers end up getting much more out of our GPUs. The applications we use the most (from the browser to any video game) can take advantage of certain low-level GPU features, making them much more optimal.
Following the same philosophy, Canonical has decided that Ubuntu 16.04 will carry the AMDGPU 4.4 LTS version in your kernel (Linux 4.5). Although not everything will be advantages. If any negative aspects can be pointed out in this decision, it is that AMD users they will only be supported up to OpenGL 4.1, and with proprietary drivers they would have access up to version 4.5.
Still, from my point of view, this is the path that Ubuntu should follow, always holding hands with Free Software and getting rid of, never better said, all those implementations in the system that give way to the use of Proprietary Software. We hope you liked the news as much as we did. Leave us your opinion in the comments section
I do not understand the article, it is a bit strange. But hey, you can always install the proprietary driver through some .deb, since Ubuntu is debian but crappy.
The truth is that I did not like the news, I prefer the proprietary drivers.
My card is NVIDIA. I just hope, for the sake of users, that the free drivers from AMD are not like the insufferable Nouveau for NVIDIA (slow as the baddie's horse).
I have always had problems in 3d acceleration with the free drivers, both with my HD7770 or my R9 280. If you want to do this. Shouldn't they fix this problem first?
I have an amd apu and after installing kubuntu 16.04 and had a poor performance with the desktop, linux before you were cool, what the hell happened to you? It is a terrible decision to abandon the private drivers without first solving the errors caused by leaving them , I had a good opinion of linux distros but after walking through the most famous and saying that linux has become an operating system garbage, stop that it is still in the alpha phase.