Linux gamers won't be affected by RX 5000/6000 series driver shift — AMD changes limited to Windows thanks to separated development

AMD confused the gaming community greatly after it announced it would put RDNA 1 and RDNA 2 driver support in "maintenance mode", but later corrected that the two architectures would still be receiving game optimizations regardless. Apparently, this confusion also led some people to believe game optimizations would also stop on AMD's Linux drivers as well. Luckily, Phoronix has published an article reaffirming that Linux support has not changed with this announcement, primarily because Linux AMD drivers are developed separately from their Windows counterparts.

Linux driver support is maintained very differently on AMD GPU drivers compared to AMD's GPU drivers for Windows. Linux driver support for AMD GPUs typically dwarfs what AMD supports officially in Windows. Kernel driver support reportedly dates back all the way to AMD's GCN 1.2 architecture, which includes GPUs such as the R9 390X and R9 Fury X.

Helping matters is that AMD GPU driver support in Linux is heavily reliant on open-source drivers. Up until September this year, the AMDVLK driver was the official open-source Linux driver from AMD and was maintained by AMD directly. Community contributions are also implemented to help improve the driver's functionality.

There is also the exclusively community-driven RADV driver that was started before AMD got into the Linux game with its own AMDVLK driver. Being exclusively community-driven, RADV is maintained completely independently of AMD and is currently the de facto GPU driver for all Radeon GPUs for Linux. RADV is a very robust and well-built driver solution that is supported by many of the industry's tech giants, including Valve, Google, and Red Hat.

This is why, starting on September 15th, 2025, AMD has opted to discontinue the AMDVLK driver altogether. Support for RADV has grown so much in strength that there is no need to have both AMDVLK and RADV co-existing. Performance on RADV also outshines AMDVLK in many situations. Instead, AMD is backing RADV fully and shifting all of its GPU driver development and maintenance to the RADV driver.

All of this is to say that Linux gamers can rest assured that any nasty driver support changes AMD makes on the Windows side won't immediately be copied on the Linux side. Even if AMD wanted to start cutting support on the Linux side, it can't anymore because it has discontinued its own official AMDVLK driver. Pulling the same stunt on RADV would be impossible because too many other companies and individuals are maintaining the driver. (In other words, if AMD stops development for certain GPUs, another company or individual would inevitably take over.)

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