AMD has released its Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4, which introduces support for the AMD Radeon PRO W7900D and preliminary ROCm support on the Ryzen AI Max 300 platform. Starting with version 25.20, AMD will shift focus to officially supporting the Mesa Vulkan driver, Mesa OpenGL, and multimedia support, while eliminating proprietary drivers from its releases. Users are advised to transition from AMD Media Framework (AMF) to VA-API/Mesa Multimedia for seamless media processing, as demonstrated by the provided ffmpeg use cases. The release also resolves a critical issue with display corruption on Ubuntu 24.04 systems running multi-GPU configurations involving AMD Radeon PRO W7900 Dual Slot cards.
AMD Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4 released
AMD has released its Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4, which brings a host of exciting features and updates to the open-source software. One of the key highlights includes the introduction of support for the AMD Radeon PRO W7900D, a high-end graphics processing unit designed for professional applications.
In addition, preliminary ROCm (Radeon Open Compute) support has been enabled on the Ryzen AI Max 300 platform, further solidifying AMD's commitment to providing innovative and powerful computing solutions. As part of its dedication to open-source software, AMD will be making significant changes to the composition of Radeon Software for Linux releases starting with version 25.20.
The company plans to officially support the Mesa Vulkan driver and Mesa OpenGL as well as multimedia support, while eliminating the proprietary OpenGL and Vulkan drivers from its release. Furthermore, AMF (AMD Media Framework) will no longer be included in future releases, and users are advised to transition to VA-API/Mesa Multimedia for seamless media processing.
To facilitate this transition, AMD has provided some examples of FFmpeg use cases that utilize VA-API/Mesa Multimedia, including hardware decode, encode, and transcode capabilities. Specifically, the commands:
- ffmpeg -hwaccel vaapi for hardware decode
- ffmpeg -vaapi_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -i in.mp4 -vf hwupload,scale_vaapi=format=nv12 -c:v h264_vaapi out.mp4 for hardware encode and scale
- ffmpeg -vaapi_device /dev/dri/renderD128 -hwaccel vaapi - hwaccel_output_format vaapi -i in.mp4 -c:v hevc_vaapi out.mp4 for hardware transcode
are designed to help users migrate their workflow to the new VA-API/Mesa Multimedia framework.
The release also addresses a critical issue where display corruption would intermittently occur on systems running Ubuntu 24.04, particularly when using AMD Radeon PRO W7900 Dual Slot cards in multi-GPU configurations with the --usecase=workstation option enabled.
AMD's stance on its Linux GPU drivers is clear: they are open-source and integrated into popular Linux distributions, making them easily accessible to users. For many use cases, the company recommends utilizing AMD GPU Linux drivers available from Linux distributions, which can be particularly useful for:
- Using AMD APU products with any up-to-date Linux distribution
- Utilizing well-supported AMD discrete GPU products within a popular Linux distribution
- Leverage notebooks or desktop PCs pre-loaded with Linux and/or certified by a Linux distribution vendor
However, there are some exceptions where users may need to use the Radeon Software for Linux, such as:
- Using Fedora 42, Pop!_OS, Linux Mint 22, Arch Linux, or other distributions that are not compatible with Radeon Software for Linux
- Utilizing very recent AMD discrete GPUs that have not yet been well-supported by recent versions of Linux distributions
In these cases, AMD recommends using the most recent release of Radeon Software for Linux to ensure seamless support and functionality.
AMD Radeon Software for Linux 25.10.4
