Re: Support for latest AMD GPU?

[Quiliro's lists]

El 2019-06-18 00:42, Parker escribió:
> I understand this is a "free as in speech" distro so there's no
> proprietary blobs on here. I also have the latest AMD Vega 56 GPU. On
> Debian, I had to install proprietary blobs to get it to work, but it's
> also my understanding that AMD has free software drivers. But then
> again, they could be throwing the “open source” label on the drivers
> and just release some of the source but require blobs to compile.
> 
> After all of that, I ask if Guix has good support for modern GPUs like
> mine? Are there free drivers for my graphics card on here? Or will I
> have to compile my own from the proprietary blobs?  I'd prefer not to,
> but I'll do it if I must.

Hi Parker.

As you say, probably they have shipped nonfree blobs with their source.
You can only know that by checking the code. The first step is to
downleoad the source and check the licenses and the read the source
itself.

It would be great if you could reverse engineer your video card's binary
blobs. That would be the only step forward for you freedom and it would
be an enourmous contribution. It is not an easy task. But if you start
now, it would teach you a lot and advance free software. If you install
the binary blobs only to get their functionality, you will only be
backward steps. Commitment to freedom brings about much knowlegde.
Functionality will not.

Ĝis revido!
Quiliro