I'm switching from an NVIDIA GPU (1650S) to an AMD (RX 6600) very soon, so I was wondering if there is anything driver-wise that I need to install (or uninstall) to make sure it'll work. I've heard generally that AMD is a much better Linux experience than NVIDIA (one reason I'm switching), so I'm not expecting too much trouble.

I looked this up in a few places, but I just wanted to check in with Slackware specifically to see if there's anything specific to my distro I've missed. I have mesa and mesa-compat32 installed and up to date on -current, and as far as I've been able to find I think that should be enough? Currently I'm running the NVIDIA proprietary driver, so I wasn't sure if I need to uninstall that or not before switching?

I also saw some people mention stuff about deleting xorg.conf, though I'm not sure where to find that file (or if I do even have to remove it?). In etc/X11 I have an xorg.conf-vesa, and an (empty) xorg.conf.d folder. Not sure if either of those are what I'm looking for, though.

Thanks in advance for whomever helps!

The xorg.conf would be /etc/X11/xorg.conf if it's not there then you don't have one.

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Most likely you will need to go to /etc/modprobe.d/
and delete, nvidia-installer-disable-nouveau.conf

Then you should probably uninstall your Nvidia driver.

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AFAIK, there is no need to uninstall anything as long as xorg.conf, if it exists, calls for the appropriate driver, perhaps unless you require modesetting in runlevel3.

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I switched to AMD when Slackware-current (pre-15.0) added kernel 5.4 with Polaris 10 (Raden RX590) and Navi (Radeon RX 5700 XT). Never looked back. This was after 10+ years maintaining the Nvidia buildscripts on Slackbuilds.org (new guy doing a GREAT job!).

Although you "can" just leave the nvidia bits installed, I recommend that you uninstall them and clear out all the debris from /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ and /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/ ; also, that way the initial linux framebuffer goes back to normal. You can leave nouveau blacklisted since it doesn't matter. Don't leave random unused shit on the hard drive is my preference. Clear out anything you may have added to rc.local.

Make sure that /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-amdgpu.conf still exists. This is what X11 (X.org) actually will look for by default, and is all that is needed for Xfce, KDE and other DE stuff to paint pretty GUI pix. The monitor applets in these DEs is pretty much all you need even for most multimonitor setups. No need to futz with mode line settings. If nvidia buggered things up, just reinstall mesa, xorg-server and xf86-video-amdgpu. You can leave /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ empty untill you need to tweak monitor or driver settings. For example, for AMD freesync monitors (kinda working on 5.15.38 kernel, almost, but not for dual monitor) my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/xorg.conf:My dual 28" 2560x1440 IPS LCD/LED panels look very pretty. Bonus when swapping/upgrading kernels it just works. OpenCL (for compute such as Boinc etc) is still lacking. I'm working on getting the ROCm runtime sorted for that hopefully eventually- or maybe Mesa will finally finish there Clover OpenCL implementation.

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I don't use xorg.conf anymore since Xorg can handle devices automatically using udev, upower, libinput, libdrm, kernel kms, etc. I think, the last time I'm using xorg.conf was in 2018. Now I prefer using wayland-based desktop instead of Xorg.

Sorry, misread. Need more coffee.

Thanks for the help everyone!

Reporting back with the RX 6600 installed and running very well. Lovely to finally be able to run Witcher 3 at a smooth 60FPS, and OBS VAAPI recording finally works.

Only small hiccup is that Folding@Home doesn't seem to like the new GPU or driver (complains about missing OpenCL support) -- is this a separate thing I'd need to install? If it's proprietary-driver-specific that's fine, I'm not too invested in having F@H.

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@murdo,
as I mentioned above, OpenCL is still lacking for the open source amdgpu. The "clover" platform included in Mesa (essentially a partial OpenCL 1.1) doesn't really work for F@H and BOINC. To get that you'll need either open source ROCm or the proprietary AMDGPU-PRO drivers. As I said I'm still working on getting ROCm OpenCL runtime compiled. Their build system and dependencies are absolute chaos.

If you want, you can try the OpenCL stuff from the older AMDGPU-PRO-20.40 repack. You can read about it here: https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ng-4175672690/

To save you some time, you can download the buildscript files here: https://www.linuxgalaxy.org/files/sb...-opencl-20.40/

This is the one I'm still using while I bludgeon the ROCm into submission. Works on the RX5700XT (Navi) but I'm not sure about your Navi 2.

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Oh, I must have missed or just mindblanked that part of your reply.

Thanks for the info, I'll fiddle around with these resources and see what comes of it. =)