Arch Linux

vagkaz

Member

Registered: 2020-05-16

Posts: 3

Mesa driver vs something-mesa or mesa-something

when i do: sudo pacman -S mesa. it installs mesa. but what does it mean???
does installing mesa standalone install mesa-vdapu and libva-mesa.
do i have to install this by hand
also do i need to keep the mesa standalone installed or i don't need
i am confused please help

Using an rx 590 nitro+

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,056

Re: Mesa driver vs something-mesa or mesa-something

mesa is the OpenGL implementation it provides you with OpenGL acceleration (for games/desktop effects/graphics programs)

mesa-vdpau and mesa-libva are different implementations for video acceleration (as in, decode/encode movies on the graphics card): https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ha … celeration

They are for distinctly different purposes and you might need all three (or only mesa or none) depending  on what you want to do.

Mod note: Moving to NC...

vagkaz

Member

Registered: 2020-05-16

Posts: 3

Re: Mesa driver vs something-mesa or mesa-something

Thank you. You provided me with all the information i needed and never found online. I don't need anything else

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,056

Re: Mesa driver vs something-mesa or mesa-something

Glad to hear, please mark as [SOLVED] by editing and prepending to the title in the first post.

Also for completeness sake, there are also vulkan implementations from mesa, on Arch that is available through vulkan-radeon for amd cards.

Lone_Wolf

Administrator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 14,786

Re: Mesa driver vs something-mesa or mesa-something

Mesa takes care of a lot of graphics related things, but archlinux devs split the functionality into several packages.

mesa, libva-mesa-driver, mesa-vdpau, opencl-mesa, vulkan-intel, vulkan-mesa-layer, vulkan-radeon are all parts of upstream mesa  .

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Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

clean chroot building not flexible enough ?
Try clean chroot manager by graysky