AMD has the open-source driver for Linux for Radeon graphics cards an update that’s a whopping 165 kernelpatches. The main innovation that the driver provides is dynamic power management, which currently only possible with AMD’s closed source driver.
AMD supports the new open-source driver graphics cards from the HD2000 series, which in 2006 was released, to video cards in the HD7000 series. Video cards in the ‘Sea Islands HD8000 series are not yet fully supported, but there is already some support for mode-setting, 3D, compute, and UVD is present, reports Phoronix.
The new driver provides, among others, that the power consumption of the video card drops if it is not taxed, what is particularly interesting for laptops that work longer on a battery charge will last. In april, AMD also an open source Linux driver. This made use of the uvd engine, which video hardware can be decoded.