I’ve just got my hands on a 9070 GPU and I’m wondering if I should go ahead and install Linux. From what I’ve seen in recent forum posts, I’m not feeling too confident about how well RDNA4 performs on Linux. Should I hold off on switching from Windows for a bit longer, or are things improving? I’m not tied to a specific Linux distribution, but I’ve been considering Bazzite and Garuda. Any advice? Cheers!
7 Answers
I’ve been using my 9070 since launch. As long as you have Mesa 25+ and Linux 6.14+, you should be all set! Fedora 42 comes with both out of the box, which is nice.
It works well, but I’ve had some stability issues even with the latest Mesa and kernel. I’ve dealt with occasional session freezing though, so keep that in mind.
Just make sure your kernel version is after the release date of the 9070. That’ll help ensure compatibility.
I’ve been using Fedora with my 9070 XT and it’s been awesome! Ray tracing works pretty well too. Unless you have a specific game in mind that doesn’t run well on Linux, I’d say go ahead and ditch Windows!
That’s great to hear! I’m hoping Bazzite will be just as good.
Thanks for the encouragement!
You mainly need the latest kernel and Mesa drivers, which are available on most major distros, especially Fedora. From my experience, it works easily.
I love this community! I don’t have hands-on experience with RDNA4 yet, but I believe it’s supported natively in the Linux 6.14 kernel, so as long as you’re running an updated OS, you should be good to go!
Sounds promising! I’m moving my stuff to my server tonight to prepare.
You can test it out using a bootable USB drive. I suggest making a boot USB with KUbuntu 25.04 and selecting the ‘try’ option instead of installing. It should have the updated kernel you need, and you can run benchmarks to see if everything works before committing.
Tumbleweed has those too, just in case!