Tech

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.