How to Install AMD Radeon Drivers on Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Linux

Objective

The objective is to install AMD Radeon Drivers on Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Linux. The article will also explore a possible driver upgrade to a latest amdgpu-pro driver version.

Operating System and Software Versions

  • Operating System: – Ubuntu 18.10 Cosmic Cuttlefish Linux

Requirements

Privileged access to your Ubuntu System as root or via sudo command is required.

Conventions

  • # – requires given linux commands to be executed with root privileges either directly as a root user or by use of sudo command
  • $ – given linux commands to be executed as a regular non-privileged user

Other Versions of this Tutorial

Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa)

Instructions

Open Source Drivers

Unless you have a specific requirements, the open source AMD Radeon drivers available as part Ubuntu’s standard repository Mesa releases is all you need to get your AMD Radeon VGA up and running. This means that the AMD Radeon drivers are most likely already installed on your system.

The following command will provide you with an information about your AMD Radeon VGA card:

$ lspci -vnn | grep  'VGA'
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Tobago PRO [Radeon R7 360 / R9 360 OEM] [1002:665f] (rev 81) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

To check for the installed AMD Radeon driver version first install the mesa-utils package:

$ sudo apt install mesa-utils

Once ready, run glxinfo command to retrieve more information about the AMD Radeon driver installation on your current Ubuntu system:

$ glxinfo -B


Mesa AMD Radeon graphic card driver support on Ubuntu 18.10

Mesa AMD Radeon graphic card driver support on Ubuntu 18.10

As alredy explained above, in most cases the Ubuntu default open source AMD Radeon graphic card driver support via Mesa release is all that is needed.

PPA Repository

If from some reason the Ubuntu default open source AMD Radeon graphic card driver support is not up to your desires you may wish to upgrade the driver to a newer driver version using third-party PPA repository.

WARNING
Upgrading your Mesa packages via 3rd-party PPA repository is not recommended and you may end up with a broken system.

To add 3rd-party PPA repository execute:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

Once ready all is needed is to upgrade and reboot your system:

$ sudo apt upgrade

For more information visit ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers repository page.



Official AMD Radeon support

In case that you have a specific requirements you may attempt to install AMD Radeon drivers using the official amdgpu-pro driver.

Head over to AMD Download Page and check for an availability of amdgpu-pro driver support for your AMD VGA card.

Official AMD driver download page

amdgpu-pro driver will be available in a form of the amdgpu-pro-*.tar.xz package. ALso check for a release date.

Once you have the official AMD amdgpu-pro driver downloaded, extract and proceed with installation by execution of the ./amdgpu-pro-install executable:

$ tar -xf amdgpu-pro-*.tar.xz
$ cd amdgpu-*/
$ ./amdgpu-pro-install -y

Once ready reboot your system:

$ sudo reboot 

For more information about how to install amdgpu-pro driver on Ubuntu system, visit the official AMD documentation page.