I'm running KDE Neon, which only exists as version based on Ubuntu 16.04
> Those are entirely reasonable things to want, but you aren't likely to find them with Linux. Linux is monolithic. It sounds like what you want is FreeBSD, with the support from AMD that Linux is getting. Currently, FreeBSD isn't very popular, so AMD chooses to ignore it.
My goal is this:
(a) 100% free software in my life
(b) no compromise on cost, or functionality.
The DAL is the only possible way I can get that.
I want 100% of the functionality, at the cheapest price, with entirely free software.
That's why I've been spending 4 years of my life to build a hacky copy of every single cloud service or proprietary software I might rely on. And that's why I want the same for the drivers, it's why I've been writing hundredthousands (!) of lines of code by now to replace software, cloud services, and android driver modules.
The DAL with an open source, but out-of-tree driver, is the only way I'd ever get close to this. Any other option leads to more proprietary code in my life. Therefore, your actions are the same for me as the actions of Google: they attack my freedoms.
Yet, the kernel dev team do not want this particular compromise. It would go against the design they prefer to work with.
> And yet, where is Ubuntu 16.04 now?
Why are we talking about Ubuntu 16.04? Oh, right, you are trying to run AMDGPU-pro, and that is the specific distro version that AMD chose to support. Are you mad at the Linux devs or mad at AMD?
> I want the in-kernel functionality to be stable and LTS, but additional user-space functionality to be the most recent.
> That kind of modularity is only possible if you actually have a modular system.
Those are entirely reasonable things to want, but you aren't likely to find them with Linux. Linux is monolithic. It sounds like what you want is FreeBSD, with the support from AMD that Linux is getting. Currently, FreeBSD isn't very popular, so AMD chooses to ignore it.
> Yet, with Linux, users get worse software, later, with more breakages, and half their hardware doesn't work.
That has not been my experience during the years I have spent using Linux. In fact, I have experienced better software, sooner, with fewer breakages (especially in NixOS), and the vast majority of my hardware works. The only hardware that doesn't work are sound cards or obscure wifi adapters that have only incompatible proprietary drivers (I actually ran out of those. All my wifi adapters currently work without effort.). So sound cards are the only issue I have left. That's it. I have a nice USB DAC anyway.