I just got hold of an AMD RX7800 XT to replace my current Nvidia RTX3080.
I’m likely overthinking this but from what I understand I should just be able to swap the cards then uninstall the Nvidia drivers correct?
I’m running EndeavourOS which I installed with the option to include the Nvidia drivers by default so dunno if that changes anything? I’ve been daily driving Linux for exactly a year as of this month but I still kinda feel like a newbie sometimes lmao. Thanks in advance!
(Update) I got my AMD card installed and loaded up Wayland with no issues, only thing I had to install was the AMD Vulkan drivers for Steam.
You shouldn’t need to install anything for the amd gpu
Most distros have a vk package that steam depends on that varies based on hardware, there is a system different package for amd than Nvidia or Intel.
Oh right. Do you have a distro specific example of this?
I’ve encountered the issue on arch and fedora, don’t have the package name off the top of my head but both package managers ask you to pick a package to fulfill the dependency.
I see, appreciate the info. I’ll have a poke around on fedora later today
Here’s what you need for Arch, for more context: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/AMDGPU
Isn’t this the kernel driver included by default?
The wiki tells you what you need on arch, and what you need it for. Those packages also don’t seem to have kernel-specific or dkms versions, so seems like they’re not kernel modules.
Mind you, the setup is clearly not monolithic, with different components for different purposes, including alternative options. On top of that, each distro will make different choices - Arch provides the components as packages and puts the responsibility of installing the right ones on you. Some features might be built into kernel drivers, like working video output, but Vulkan support clearly wants a dedicated driver.