amdgpu driver
Ranked 4 of 8 graphics drivers by recommenders
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.
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.
26 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 15
- criticize it
- 11
- approval share
- 58%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 15 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Open source and in mainline kernel
“because the amd drivers are opensource. Heroic people in the obsd dev community are able to make it work there.”
Comment from 13 May 2026 in “Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features” “their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2” “amdgpu is baked into mainline DRM, therefore you have better support than Nvidia”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux” - Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux”
- Comment from 15 Nov 2025 in “HipKittens: Fast and furious AMD kernels”
Works on new hardware quickly
“their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Asahi Linux with Sway on the MacBook Air M2” “i'm actually so happy we get good working drivers mere weeks after new hardware launch”
Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux” “AMD on the other hand is amazingland and works perfectly”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “Loss32: Let's Build a Win32/Linux” - Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Arm Mali G2-Ultra NX GPU: desktop-class mobile gameplay with AI-native graphics”
Better support than Nvidia or Intel
“amdgpu is baked into mainline DRM, therefore you have better support than Nvidia”
Comment from 5 Oct 2026 in “The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux” “Software support is better than intel and nvidia”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Linux gaming is faster because Windows APIs are becoming Linux kernel features” Valve and Mesa improving the driver
“Valve's work has been exceptional and supplementing AMD's own ROCM/OpenCL and Vulkan team”
Comment from 4 Oct 2026 in “The work by Valve's Timur Kristóf on improving old AMD GPUs on Linux” “improvements in the graphics stack (Mesa, amdgpu drivers)”
Comment from 16 Nov 2025 in “I don’t need a Steam Machine” “Valve is doing an amazing job on AMD drivers.”
Comment from 12 Aug 2026 in “Mark Zuckerberg attacks 'closed' AI rivals as Meta returns to open models”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Crashes and system freezes
“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”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?” “your amdgpu will entertain you with little nice crashes when you run something heavy on a scaled display”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?” “Personally I have had a lot of crashes as a result of this stuff”
Comment from 19 Mar 2026 in “Nvidia greenboost: transparently extend GPU VRAM using system RAM/NVMe” - Comment from 28 Jan 2026 in “Microsoft forced me to switch to Linux”
- Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?”
Unplug, suspend and resume bugs
“Every unplug is a gamble with amdgpu driver, you might get a working system, you might not”
Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “I'm a laptop weirdo and that's why I like my new Framework 13” “had a major issue resuming from suspend a few months ago”
Comment from 7 Apr 2026 in “Every GPU That Mattered” “AMD iGPU driver is broken for me right this very moment”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Can I start using Wayland in 2026?” Regressions merged into releases
“every few months they merge a serious regression into amdgpu and sometimes even backport it into stable”
Comment from 7 Jul 2026 in “AMD Ryzen AI Halo – $4k AI Dev Kit” “amdgpu being the most common offender”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Interview with Kent Overstreet (Bcachefs) [audio]” Hard to maintain and port
“but the disadvantage that now volunteers had to maintain hundredthousands of LOC of code”
Comment from 19 Sep 2026 in “Android 17 is the first since 3.x to add new APIs without releasing to the AOSP” “amdgpu has way too many linuxisms that make it impractical to port it to non-Linux”
Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Half-Life 2 running natively on HaikuOS”
Other graphics drivers people recommend
The four most recommended other graphics drivers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA proprietary Linux drivers | 40 | 49 | 45% | 10 | 20 yrs9 owners | — |
| Mesa | 30 | 9 | 77% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Nvidia drivers | 25 | 53 | 32% | 9 | 14 yrs4 owners | — |
| amdgpu driverThis page | 15 | 11 | 58% | 6 | — | — |
| ntsync | 11 | 3 | 79% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 26 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“amdgpu is baked into mainline DRM, therefore you have better support than Nvidia”
“You pretty much have the best possible experience on Linux right now.”
“i'm actually so happy we get good working drivers mere weeks after new hardware launch”
“AMD open sources all its stack, making this possible.”
“Valve's work has been exceptional and supplementing AMD's own ROCM/OpenCL and Vulkan team”
“but the disadvantage that now volunteers had to maintain hundredthousands of LOC of code”
“amdgpu is a shitshow for years”
“Amdgpu and mesa is working out fairly well for amd”
“New device drivers like amdgpu when it was massive news”
“Valve is doing an amazing job on AMD drivers.”
“amdgpu has way too many linuxisms that make it impractical to port it to non-Linux”
“every few months they merge a serious regression into amdgpu and sometimes even backport it into stable”
“Software support is better than intel and nvidia”
“because the amd drivers are opensource. Heroic people in the obsd dev community are able to make it work there.”
“had a major issue resuming from suspend a few months ago”
“Personally I have had a lot of crashes as a result of this stuff”
“The built-in amdgpu drivers are awful, constantly crashy”
“your amdgpu will entertain you with little nice crashes when you run something heavy on a scaled display”
“AMD iGPU driver is broken for me right this very moment”
“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”
“AMD on the other hand is amazingland and works perfectly”
“Every unplug is a gamble with amdgpu driver, you might get a working system, you might not”
“their open-source amdgpu driver means I just plonk the card into the system, and that's it”
“amdgpu being the most common offender”
“improvements in the graphics stack (Mesa, amdgpu drivers)”
“Works fine with in-tree somewhat recent kernel.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.