Despite the rapid pace of GPU evolution and the hype around AI hardware, Linus Torvalds — the father of Linux — is still using a 2017-era AMD Radeon RX 580 as his main desktop GPU here in 2025. The Polaris-based graphics may be almost a decade old, but it’s aged remarkably well in Linux circles thanks to robust and mature open-source driver support. Torvalds’ continued use of the RX 580, therefore, isn’t just boomer nostalgia. It’s a statement of practicality, long-term support, and his disdain for unnecessary complexity.
Spotted by Phoronix, this revelation came during a bug report around AMD’s Display Stream Compression (DSC), which was causing black screen issues in Linux 6.17. Torvalds bisected the regression himself, eventually reverting a patch to maintain kernel progress. Ironically, DSC is what allows his Radeon RX 580 to comfortably drive his modern 5K ASUS ProArt monitor, a testament to how far open-source drivers have come.
“… same old boring Radeon RX 580,” Torvalds wrote in an email to the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML), reverting the patch for now so development can continue uninterrupted. That one line from the man himself speaks volumes about his preference for stability over novelty.
Damn an RX 580 is now considered “outdated”?
It has been an goat-tier supported gpu on linux. Still plays doom (2016) era games at nearly max settings. Since last year i have startted calling it a potato that never rots.
Ohhhhhh I might have to steal that phrase
Is that really surprising? It’s old as shit as far as computer hardware goes.
it runs games perfectly fine if you don’t mind turning down the graphics. and its way overkill for software development on linux.
gaming sometimes has this elitist attitude to it.
He’s using it because it fits his purpose. If you replaced my laptop GPU with a 580 a lot of my games would stop working.
which ones? id definitely be turning the graphics way down and that would suck, but i’m struggling to think of something i straight up wouldn’t be able to play.
My laptop due to MSIs poor decisions and my not knowing better is 4k so uh… Most games, but definitely cyberpunk, probably Baldur’s gate 3, CS2 probably has issues on some maps because other people removed about nuke and train.
I played cyberpunk originally at 1080p medium on a 1070 and it wasn’t the greatest experience, but I’ve had worse. I can probably provide a more updated list when I get home, just requires scrolling because I have too many games installed.
yeah, 4k gaming is probably not good on a 580. you can always do integer scaling for 1080p.
I tried 1080p and it looks like shit on the 4k, I don’t really understand why.
Lesson learned though, next laptop is 1440p. I always learn 1 major lesson from a new computer, last time it was ‘hyperthreading matters’ and this time it’s ‘4k laptop is dumb’
maybe you are using panel scaling, which sucks. its been a while, so i dont remember how to fix this on windows, but iirc its fixable.
Ugh, laptops without hyper threading should be illegal. At least core 200 series has E cores, but still you’d need 2 more P cores to make up for the lack of HT.
“perfectly fine” 👌🤣 you’re just being argumentive and completely ignoring the purpose of 98% of non OEM commercial gpus.
Congratu fuckin lation on not buying a Porsche for your 5 minute commute. Elitist 🤣
Dude go outside
i don’t get how enjoying games even on old computers makes me elitist?
No it’s ml jackasses being pedantic and starting shit as usual.
🙄
Naw fuck you ,🙄 me you 🤡.
Everything Nvidia/Amd/Intel makes on the external side including this is targeted at gamers. You know exactly what you’re doing and it makes you look dumb as fuck.
“I’m going to buy a $300 GPU to fucking run ssh” - pedantic moron Tankie.
please chill with this shit.