# amdgpu driver 15 Hacker News commenters recommended amdgpu driver and 11 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 6 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Open-source AMD graphics driver built into the Linux kernel, so it works on new AMD cards with little setup. Common caveat: crashes and freezes, especially around suspend, unplugging and scaled displays. ## Why people recommend it - Open source and in mainline kernel (5 comments): "because the amd drivers are opensource. Heroic people in the obsd dev community are able to make it work there." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48126105)) "their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390931)) "amdgpu is baked into mainline DRM, therefore you have better support than Nvidia" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49962894)) - Works on new hardware quickly (4 comments): "their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46390931)) "i'm actually so happy we get good working drivers mere weeks after new hardware launch" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49953814)) "AMD on the other hand is amazingland and works perfectly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46447716)) - Better support than Nvidia or Intel (2 comments): "amdgpu is baked into mainline DRM, therefore you have better support than Nvidia" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49962894)) "Software support is better than intel and nvidia" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48130333)) - Valve and Mesa improving the driver (3 comments): "Valve's work has been exceptional and supplementing AMD's own ROCM/OpenCL and Vulkan team" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49949925)) "improvements in the graphics stack (Mesa, amdgpu drivers)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45949600)) "Valve is doing an amazing job on AMD drivers." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49268870)) ## What people warn about - Crashes and system freezes (5 comments): "2-3 years ago there used to be a amdgpu bug that froze my entire laptop randomly with no recourse beyond the 4 second power button press" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46487884)) "your amdgpu will entertain you with little nice crashes when you run something heavy on a scaled display" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46492003)) "Personally I have had a lot of crashes as a result of this stuff" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47445831)) - Unplug, suspend and resume bugs (3 comments): "Every unplug is a gamble with amdgpu driver, you might get a working system, you might not" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396292)) "had a major issue resuming from suspend a few months ago" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47673252)) "AMD iGPU driver is broken for me right this very moment" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46490000)) - Regressions merged into releases (2 comments): "every few months they merge a serious regression into amdgpu and sometimes even backport it into stable" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48813062)) "amdgpu being the most common offender" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46270769)) - Hard to maintain and port (2 comments): "but the disadvantage that now volunteers had to maintain hundredthousands of LOC of code" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49765784)) "amdgpu has way too many linuxisms that make it impractical to port it to non-Linux" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49041363)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [NVIDIA proprietary Linux drivers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-proprietary-linux-drivers.md): 40 recommend - [Mesa](https://hackerapproved.com/p/mesa.md): 30 recommend - [Nvidia drivers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nvidia-drivers.md): 25 recommend - [AMD graphics drivers](https://hackerapproved.com/p/amd-graphics-drivers.md): 9 recommend - [Nouveau driver](https://hackerapproved.com/p/nouveau.md): 8 recommend ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "amdgpu driver", https://hackerapproved.com/p/amdgpu/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).