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Intel Arc Graphics Driver - Linux

ayon
Novice
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Description: What I have learned so far that, in Linux most of the drivers are open-source and most of them are not limited to one particular piece of hardware. Which means, you can use the same graphics drivers for your Intel's Arc A750, B580 and iGPUs. But, there are also a few special drivers that are provided by the major chip makers in this case Intel, which are closed source. 

Disclaimer: The initial message is not to guide someone to do this or that. I am sharing my experience and wanted to learn more about it. Please mention the mistakes I have made and if there is any false information.

Requirements:
Intel Arc Graphics Card
Enable Resizable BAR | link 
A Linux distribution that provides a kernel of 6.12 or higher | link 

Graphics Drivers
Kernel display drivers: it is the one who handles the what your display resolution will be and using an older kernel version will cause significant impact on your performance. As newer kernels tends to perform better in arc graphics cards. For example, Debian out of the box, does not have support for arc graphics cards because it uses a stable kernel, which is too old.

Mesa: It is an open source implementation of several graphics APIs including Vulkan, OpenGL, OpenCL, VDPAU and VA-API. | link 

OpenGL and Vulkan: I assume you are coming from Windows, where you used DirectX to play games most of the time but in Linux it does not use DirectX by default rather it uses Vulkan or OpenGL. That does not mean DirectX is not available or cannot be used in Linux. By default they are installed in many of the distributions but here and you always do not need them explicitly mentioned. For example, NixOS enabled both of these by default. 

Intel: Whatever we mentioned before some of them are somehow made with the collaboration of Intel. And, Intel does contribute on the open-source drivers. But, Intel also provides some of their proprietary packages and drivers for Intel GPUs. Check out the website attached to know more in details,  here you can see it explicitly mentions the distribution which is ubuntu. I don't know the specific reason but it is what it is. Almost every software releases their builds for Ubuntu/ Debian. But someone/ a developer can yoink them to and make it available for another distribution, only if it is open-source. | link 

Some Extras

Hardware acceleration: What I understand is that, It uses your GPU to load certain things like videos and graphical interface instead of using the CPU. So, it reduces the pressure from you CPU. | link 

Proton: Imagine you have a book written in Spanish, but you only understand English. Proton is like a special translator that helps you read that Spanish book. There are a few version Proton, but in Linux gaming community ProtonGE is the one which is highly used and a community driven. link 

Important Considerations
Driver Updates: Regularly updating your kernel and Mesa drivers is essential for bug fixes and performance improvements.
Wayland and Xorg: Wayland is compositor and Xorg is display server. I don't really know what are the difference between a compositor and a display sever, sorry for making things complex. But, what i can say is that, wayland is the one that is on hype and actively developed. It also have features that xorg doesn't. But, xorg is more matured if you willing to use older software.

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