I ran into a recent crashing issue with both integrated and discrete amdgpus on my Linux box:

https://battlepenguin.com/technology/i-try-sway-wayland-about-once-a-year/

..and in switching things around I can confirm some things. Yes, `amdgpu` has a bunch of binary blob firmware (usually in `/lib/firmware/amdgpu`) for each generation of card. Also, AMD use to have closed source drivers for Linux as well. I remember around 2014 I switched from the closed source to the open source drivers on Linux and was shocked at how bad the closed source drivers were! Like the open source drivers were light and day better ... AMD eventually abandoned their own drivers and started contributing to the open source project, only after they had gotten a bunch working on their own.

I'm not sure if nVidia is just more complex or not enough people care, but the noveanu drivers still kinda suck. They crashed all the time on a 970 I tried recently and they didn't work at all on my work laptop. If noveanu got to the point where amdgpu was a few years back, nvidia might have taken the same course with Linux.