Verification of AMD Radeon cards with Linux
Verification of AMD Radeon cards with Linux
It's likely that AMD Radeon cards such as the 6900XT and upcoming models support full OOB features with Linux and the kernel. Let me know if you need more details.
No assurance exists unless AMD confirms it publicly... the details also vary based on how you define "complete" features. You're likely to receive video output from any card, but full functionality remains uncertain.
Current AMD Cards support everything but OpenCL out of the box via AMDGPU+Mesa. OpenCL Support is provided by AMDGPU-PRO which is AMD's Proprietary driver that sits on top of the open-source implementation, which has a implementation similar to Windows. The Open Source implementation is considered non-standard but is the main target of the Linux Community. AMD Recommends using the open-source implementation for General Use and AMDGPU-PRO for Workstation. Depending on your Distribution, the OpenCL part of AMD's proprietary implementation may be provided by a standalone package. There is however no guarantee that AMD will continue to provide information to the community to continue to support the open-source implementation or that AMDGPU-PRO will always be available. This is pretty much the case with any hardware manufacturer however. In the event of discontinued official support, any recent cards that are currently supported should remain supported and updated in the open-source implementation. Personally I don't see AMD or even NVIDIA backing out of Linux Support in the near future and expect Intel to offer full out of the box support as well when there GPU's launch. I also don't see AMD not contributing to the open-source community as that is what currently gives them a edge in the GPU space on Linux.
An open source AMD GPU driver exists and is expected to function across all AMD GPUs, even without official support. It understands how GPU modules operate internally, allowing it to identify and utilize modules on unknown cards. The driver is also supported by AMD staff, ensuring rapid addition of comprehensive features.
Remember that you must have a working kernel installed. The RX6000 line, for instance, needs kernel 5.13 or newer to operate. A standard distribution like Ubuntu 20.04 LTS won't function without it. You'll need versions such as 21.10 or the upcoming 22.04. Arch and its variants like Manjaro will typically run the latest kernels, along with Fedora. If the RX7000 series arrives, day one support might be postponed by a few days or weeks depending on your distro. The appropriate kernel could even precede the GPU release. Always stay alert when working with cutting-edge hardware.