Just a while ago, I was the same way, sort. The main thing is to get away from
the not-as-good package manager in Ubuntu, and go with Arch like I did. Package
support is amazing because of the AUR, which build source for you, and when you
have to do it yourself like us, most of the time you can just grab the config
from the auto-installer, which should have 99% of the config options in-place.
Like I said, it's screwed ATM, but usually it's pretty painless to compile
anything. You just have to try it out. If you email me, I can get you set up
with a Mesa build configure for RadeonSI. Then all you have to do is learn how
to clone, pull, and patch in git. It's all not too bad. I mean, most LInux
people are devs of some sort, so if you want to have a good time, you should
put a little more time in and learn how the back-end of Linux and how programs
are compiled to have a good time. I'll keep testing, as soon as I find a way to
compile LLVM 3.6.