AMD's open source driver is fully usable for normal usage (including gaming), and in general more performant than the closed source version.

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx590-li...

Still behind the proprietary Windows driver or Nvidia's proprietary Linux driver.

They are not behind their windows driver on OpenGL. And neither for Vulkan, I think. AMDVLK scores a few wins here and there, but RADV is generally more stable, performant, and compatible. Plus being open-source, it is easily extended, like valve is doing with their AC0 experiment [1].

Last I heard, people were installing Linux to use the AMD OpenGL drivers to play emulators (it might have been Cemu, actually ran trough wine).

[1]: XDC2019 slide deck https://xdc2019.x.org/event/5/contributions/334/attachments/...

Can you share some source of your statement?

It doesn’t have “all” the headaches on the closed source version, afaik - it still implements the standard APIs and thus works with systems that were designed to work with every other driver from AMD to Mali, unlike the nVidia proprietary driver.

Because it is NOT the same driver. AMD, just like nVidia, want to keep their own secret sauce secret, because that's where the money is.

Is so much of their profit bound up in their software?

I thought these were hardware companies.