@nico198x For AMDGPU, the driver in Linux is only half of the driver, as if you just install that and modprobe it, it's nonfunctional.

You need to install the other half of the driver too, which for each line of cards consists of several programs that are extensions to Linux, except those programs happen to run on microprocessors in the GPU;
https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/LICENSE.amdgpu
https://web.git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tree/amdgpu

It's a popular lie to claim that such software is "firmware", but such programs lack any firmness as they're software (although to differentiate it between software that runs on the main CPU, I refer to it as peripheral software, although loading a proprietary program on the main CPU or an auxiliary CPU are equally ethically tainted).

Furthermore, to use AMD cards, the BIOS (or UEFI) needs to execute a Option EEPROM stored in the VBIOS chip to init the card, and no free init software exists for that.

Meanwhile Nouveau up to 780 Ti is 100% free software, including peripheral software and free Option EEPROM init software (there is also Vulkan support for the 700 series and later, although it's written in Rust, thus it's unusable).


AMD could easily become the superior option by releasing the source code and the installation information of their derivative works under the GPLv2-or-later, or a compatible license (they could even partially continue their copyright infringement by continuing to withhold the sources of the hardware accelerated encoding and decoding software (at least there some excuse when it comes to patents for that part), as it's not like you need hwdec) and init tables for each GPU (so they can be inited without needing to run any Option EEPROM), but they won't.