Installing the Proprietary AMD Catalyst 14.12 (fglrx) Driver on Fedora 21

Update:  See the next post in this series for information regarding the installation of the fglrx 14.12 driver in Fedora 21 with kernel version 3.19.1-201.fc21.x86_64.

The release of Fedora 21 and the productization of the operating system has resulted in some new details to which an AMD GPU owner must pay attention:

Prerequisite Discussion

Universal Package Prerequisites

As stated by the “installer.html” document provided by the driver, the prerequisites are as follows:

• GCC version 3.3.3 or higher.
• Kernel headers or kernel sources matching version of the kernel you’re running.
  Please consult to documentation for your distribution how to get and install this.
• XFree86 version 4.1.X, 4.2.X, 4.3.X, or XOrg version 6.8.X (Fedora 20 does not use XFree86) or higher.

Heed the warning:

• If you have multiple version of X Window System installed on your computer the installer will try to detect the default X, and install the driver for the detected version. However, you could experience problems trying to run other versions of X after this. Also, if your X Window System is installed into a nonstandard location, installation of the driver could be either problematic or incomplete.

With a fully up-to-date Fedora 21 installation, perform the following command to acquire the requisite packages:

yum install gcc kernel-headers kernel-devel

Fedora 21 Products and the Proprietary AMD Catalyst Graphics Driver

So, as you are likely aware, the Catalyst driver does not work with GNOME.  As you may also be aware, Fedora 21 Workstation, the product designed for the purposes you’re most likely to have in mind if you’re using your system like a normal person, integrates GNOME into the OS more than previous Fedora iterations.  In fact, if you’re using Fedora 21 Workstation, you won’t even see the GNOME Desktop Environment group in yum – it’s hidden by default.  Removing the GNOME Desktop Environment from the Workstation implementation is difficult and attempts to install alternate Desktop Environments currently meet with package conflict issues.

Using GNOME with the AMD Catalyst Driver on Fedora 21

Thanks to reader Fox for directing me to Red Hat intern Levente Kurusa’s guide which allows users to install the Catalyst driver on a system running GNOME.  The problem is, as you might expect, it’s quite the burdensome process.  In my estimation, it’s easier to simply use KDE, but if you’re really attached to GNOME, you might give his method a try.

I’d also like to point out that he uses my exact patch (same timestamps and everything) without attribution, but here I am spreading the good word about his work.  NO HARD FEELINGS OR ANYTHING.  =)

Using KDE With Fedora 21

The best course of action for someone interested in running KDE in Fedora 21 is to either install the KDE Spin or upgrade from a version of Fedora 20 already using KDE with the nonproduct product option.

Now, if you’re like me and you accidentally upgraded to Fedora 21 Workstation (and therefore now have GNOME on your system), you’ll find that certain issues occur (see the link above) and changing Fedora 21 products is not easy.  I haven’t yet really dug into the product architecture so I don’t have the best answer regarding the move from Workstation to Nonproduct, but you can still install KDE (see the “changing Fedora 21 products is not easy” link above) and keep GNOME on your system for times during kernel upgrades (and therefore the required uninstallation and reinstallation of the Catalyst driver) when you need a GNOME fix or something.  Just make sure you use KDM as your Desktop Manager (I haven’t tested the procedure on Fedora 21, but I suspect it’s identical to the procedure I laid out in the original post on this subject way back in March of 2014 – let me know if it doesn’t work for you), ’cause the GNOME Desktop Manager (GDM) breaks with the Catalyst driver, as well.

Once you’ve set yourself up with KDE and KDM on Fedora 21, you’re in good shape to simply install the driver using a slightly modified version of the Fedora 20 procedure which has been presented on this site for some time:

Installation Instructions

1)  Download the AMD Catalyst 14.12 (fglrx) driver from AMD’s site.

2)  Change your working directory to your ~/Downloads directory and extract the amd-catalyst-14-4-linux-x86-x86-64.zip file (it will extract into a directory named fglrx-14.501.1003 in the current working directory):

cd ~/Downloads
unzip amd-catalyst-omega-14.12-linux-run-installers.zip

3)  Change your working directory to the fglrx-14.501.1003 directory and extract the driver file:

cd fglrx-14.501.1003/
sh amd-driver-installer-14.501.1003-x86.x86_64.run --extract

Here, you’ll see a message which reads something like:  “Created directory fglrx-install.wIhzk3″ and then “Verifying archive integrity… All good.” followed by a “Uncompressing AMD Catalyst(TM) Proprietary Driver-14.501.1003″ followed by a lot of dots.

4)  Now, you should see a newly created folder called fglrx-install.whateveryourcomputernamedit (mine, for example, was fglrx-install.wIhzk3).  Change your working directory appropriately and apply the 3.17_kernel.patch:

cd fglrx-install.wIhzk3
mv ~/Downloads/3.17_kernel.patch ./          #this is not necessary, but I do it for sanity's sake
patch -p0 < 3.17_kernel.patch

If you are successful, you will see the following output:

patching file common/lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/kcl_acpi.c”

5)  Now that you’ve patched the installation package, run the installation:

sudo ./ati-installer.sh 14.501 --install

7)  Choose the “Install Driver 14.501 on X.Org 6.9 or later 64-bit” option from the Setup Wizard, and then simply follow the prompts.

Ensure that you do not select “Generate Distribution Specific Driver Package (Recommended)”.  This will only work if you use one of the officially supported Linux distributions listed on AMD’s site (Fedora is not included).

8)  Reboot your machine and enjoy!