AMD pulls a bait-and-switch on Linux users with Vivado licensing changes

tteleforce about 2 hours ago 28 commentsRead Article on itsfoss.com

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Discussion (28 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

cozzyd•4 minutes ago

I mean perhaps the silver lining is the projects I use are all stuck on 2022.1 for now. I wonder if this is because they want to gate usage by AI agents.

wewewedxfgdf•about 1 hour ago

It's long been said:

"AMD never misses a chance to miss a chance."

In this case, the chance to trash its reputation with customers.

SecretDreams•4 minutes ago

AMD has long been the proof that hardware is easier than software. Apparently, hardware is also easier than marketing.

SSLy•10 minutes ago

especially their marketing dept which made this decision seems to be run by absolute buffoons

spider-mario•13 minutes ago

Should be the first of the two chances for the phrase to work.

fer•40 minutes ago

I'm even surprised they have so much of the console market

Novosell•15 minutes ago

I imagine it's due to having had decent enough GPUs and decent enough CPUs, from a single vendor.

If you want the platform to be x86 but not AMD then your only other choice is Intel, but they've only recently started making high performance GPUs. So then you need another vendor for the GPU, and your only choice is Nvidia.

A lot simpler, cheaper and predictable to go with a single vendor for both I imagine?

dgacmu•44 minutes ago

Large company again makes local decision without considering the effects outside that single product line.

I wonder how many Linux GPU sales their decision to penalize Linux on their FPGA line will cost them.

ginko•20 minutes ago

>I wonder how many Linux GPU sales their decision to penalize Linux on their FPGA line will cost them.

Not many I would guess.

officialchicken•about 1 hour ago

Advanced Marking Disaster original thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254309

donohoe•about 1 hour ago

Discussion from 4 days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254309

zx8080•about 1 hour ago

> Starting with the 2026.1 release

Don't upgrade. It's just that simple.

Do they offer some unique features in the new version or is it a habit to upgrade everything every day?

15155•33 minutes ago

QoR for advanced and large designs can change wildly between versions (for better or worse.)

fer•about 1 hour ago

Yes, working with recent distros. At some point I spun up a vm because there was no way to make it work after an upgrade.

azalemeth•about 1 hour ago

I have specifically chosen AMD _many_ times in the past precisely because of their better linux support and more open toolchain.

This is an absolute foot-gun moment. And the gaslighting PR responses are just unacceptable. I'm very disappointed in them.

wewewedxfgdf•about 1 hour ago

Nvidia supports their cards for many years - even quite old cards often have modern drivers.

AMD just does not see the world this way.

kokada•37 minutes ago

NVIDIA ended support for their 10xx series [1]. To be clear, AMD also moved support for their equivalent 5xxx series to legacy drivers [2], but "supports their cards for many years" doesn't hold value if both companies stopped their respective GPUs at basically the same time.

Also remember that one of those 2 companies has opensource drivers for Linux for their old GPUs, while the other doesn't (newer NVIDIA GPUs have an opensource driver but this isn't the case for the 10xx series). Users of legacy NVIDIA cards needs on Linux needs to use their old driver branches, with results that are less than optimal to say the least.

[1]: https://videocardz.com/newz/nvidia-officially-ends-geforce-g...

[2]: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/11/amd-says-that-its-no...

bigfatkitten•about 1 hour ago

This is about their FPGA tooling. It has nothing whatsoever to do with GPUs.

wewewedxfgdf•about 1 hour ago

So? I'm making a true observation about the companies. I am well aware this is about FPGA and that has nothing to do with my comment.

tux3•21 minutes ago

The rumor on the FPGA reddit is that they're going to walk it back.

Quote: 'The only source I can give at this time is "trust me bro"'

ginko•about 1 hour ago

When AMD bought Xilinx I was hoping they'd open up the software side like they (eventually) did with their GPU drivers. Looks like that isn't happening anytime soon.

It seems silly to put up SW barriers for people to use your fairly expensive HW, but what do I know.

rvz•29 minutes ago

Earlier discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48254309

Also this site (itsfoss.com) is unusable and riddled with hundreds of ads and sets my machines fans to full blast.

At least use another credible source or go to the source instead as per the HN guidelines.

bravetraveler•about 1 hour ago

Incredible, behaving as if they want another CUDA situation.

Meneth•18 minutes ago

That's what you get for using unfree software.

linuxftw•18 minutes ago

This software seems to never have been open source/freely licensed. That's not a bait and switch. They were giving you a commercial product, for free, and now have decided not to.

It's likely a case where maintaining separate builds for the free and commercial tiers was getting complex. Often times, this kind of software requires lots of manual reviewing and adding or removing modules, and they probably decided it's just not worth it.

techcode•4 minutes ago

I don't see how that particular line of thinking applies when: 1) They continue to have a free version for Windows 2) They continue to have a version for Linux

I just can't see that cost of having a free Linux version (on top having a paid Linux version) is big?