Arch Linux

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

xf86-video-intel

I've been experiencing this issue intermittently for a while. In setting up my laptop I had read all the Arch wiki to configure Xorg and as much hardware acceleration as possible. However, being honest, it's difficult to understand without a visual aid to place everything in context: SNA, DDX, modesetting, 2D, 3D rendering, i915, drivers for this and that, and so on.

• Basically, how would removing xf86-video-intel impact my system?

The test at Phoronix shows pretty clearly the xf86-video-intel driver performs much better than xf86-video-modesetting and I just wonder what I'll lose vs gain. Is any way to toy with xf86-video-intel configuration to reduce the frequency of this problem - perhaps changing /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf parameters?

For me, when this bug is triggered, one of my monitors goes into sleep as no signal is detected from the dock/laptop. All applications on that display are "there" but I can't see them so "lose" them. Only restarting X resolves the issue, but that means losing whatever I was working on. Maybe there is an Xorg tool like xrandr that I can use to restore the signal without restarting X?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,620

Re: xf86-video-intel

The only real answer to this for your own usecase is try it and see, try removing it, check how modesetting behaves and whether the "drawbacks" are noticable to you .

xf86-video-intel is a 2D acceleration driver for xorg. It's pretty fast at that, but it has many weird bugs not unlike what you are describing on modern chipsets. Modesetting is not a dedicated chipset driver but simply uses OpenGL to emulate these 2D xorg draw calls. If that is what you are focusing on then indeed xf86-video-intel is faster. But you need to look at it from an actual usage standpoint rather than syntethic benchmarks. Most  modern toolkits use 3D acceleration anyway thus they bypass the 2D acceleration entirely, as soon as you bring in a compositor most of the 2D xorg calls are bypassed. Even if you were to use a program that relies on 2D acceleration the chances that these are actually perceptible beyond some benchmark numbers entirely depend on what it's doing/you are expecting from it.

The benchmark is also three years old there likely has been more work on this in the meantime.

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

Re: xf86-video-intel

Thanks. Removing the xf86-video-intel driver means removing the 20-intel.conf yes? Just curious where the multiple parameters for setting 3D acceleration, e.g. Option DRI, AccelMethod, and Accel would go if so, and also if 20-intel.conf is used by an additional driver?

Last edited by miomio (2020-06-26 14:37:47)

Lone_Wolf

Member

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 11,910

Re: xf86-video-intel

Yes, you should remove 20-intel.conf when you remove xf86-video-intel .

The modesetting driver comes with xorg-server and requires very little configuration , see man modesetting for possible options .

Note that disabling glamor / lowering DRI below 3 should only be done for troubleshooting.

Last edited by Lone_Wolf (2020-06-26 14:55:32)

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

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)