interesting article on phoronix, a linux portal always well informed about the evolution of gpu drivers on linux
Blender Developers Find Old Linux Drivers Are Better Maintained Than Windows
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Blender-2.80-GPU-Requirements
Is yours still broken like in your bug report? I’ve got a similar card. I can’t decide if I should wait and see if it’ll start working again, or just buy a new card.
the radeons pre-gcn work well both on linux and on windows, but the dev have decided to “deprecate it” on windows because the drivers contain bugs that are not corrected for years …
means that they have created workarounds but the support is not guaranteed (on windows)
the situation on linux is a bit different, it works correctly, but eevee is clearly slower than windows.
there would be an acceleration using the “shader backend acceleration” for graphics shaders … but at the time it was buggy … honestly I didn’t check if they solved (linux-r600 driver devs)
in my case I have a laptop that works too well for me, and I don’t want to set it aside entirely just for this reason …
so I’m forced for now to be choked to the edge of the razor
I have a Radeon HD 7600 on Manjaro. The only thing that doesn’t work is lights. And even those work with volumetrics. Everything was working back in December. I’ll probably just buy a new GPU but it annoys me when this one almost works. 
start blender in this way
R600_DEBUG=nosb,hyperz,llvm,sisched mesa_glthread=true ./blender
if you use the last mesa build it is better
Awesome, that works. I’ll never know how you guys figure out these cryptic commands. Thanks so much.
yes, it’s a solution …
but I hope they solve with the acceleration of the compilation of the shaders …
on windows, eevee is 3 times more powerful
Interesting, but not really a factor most people will see; The unsupported GPU’s were the Radeon HD7xxx and below, which were released in 2010 (though sold later).
I’d be more interested in how quickly new GPU’s are supported by each OS, IMHO, though that situation is generally a lot better than it used to be for Linux
in these radeons based on the r600 drivers, “shader backend acceleration” it exists and is working, there is only a bug or something broken that does not allow the correct display … so much so that a few months ago it worked well
it is hoped that someone who has the right skills understands where it is a problem and corrects it
Any idea if this would work on a Radeon HD 8570m? I’m using it on Manjaro but it actually works slower then my Intel HD 4400 graphics both on Eevee and some benchmarks when I use the DRI_PRIME=1 command before opening it (I heard it was supposed to help, to activate the AMD gpu or something, I have a Intel/Hybrid laptop).
Sorry if I’m hijacking your thread, but I haven’t find any solution for this and yours seems a bit similar.
no, your gpu probably doesn’t have these problems, if I’m not mistaken it uses radeonsi gallium drivers, and not r600 gallium
so you just need to use dri_prime = 1 and it should work the best way
maybe you should just use the last mesa build
I guess I already have the most updated Mesa drivers (Manjaro usually keeps this pretty up to date), but I’ll double check and see if these commands help me anyway, hehe.
Thanks a lot!
type DRI_PRIME = 1 glxinfo
I have to call BS on this thread title. My Windows and Nvidia drivers are updated all the time. Nvidia is every couple of weeks.
There is more than nvidia cards, further they talk about old cards, and I’m sure that nvidia cut off windows support for anything older than 4xx 6xx series.
The 5xx series has been cut off now too. I anticipate the 6xx series will be cut off sometime in the next year or so.
The less advanced cards seeing the end of support actually benefits Cycles, as it simplifies code and opens the door for larger kernel sizes (which means things like more procedural texturing options).
Support for new GPUs on Linux has gotten better quickly since Valve, Feral, Aspyr, and other companies started to port games, contacting with manufacturers to fix things, or hiring engineers to work on Mesa, SDL, Proton, etc.
When AMD Vega cards were released, it only took a few months to get them supported on the Linux kernel, but Radeon VII was supported the first day it was released.