Intel

intel is the open source graphics driver for Intel GMA onboard graphics cards, starting with the Intel 810.

Hardware detection
To choose the right driver, first detect the graphics card. can be used for this task:

This should show something like this:

Feature support
A full list of Intel CPU graphic capabilities can be found here.

Firmware
If you are using Kabylake, Skylake or Broxton Intel Graphics, install sys-kernel/linux-firmware.

Otherwise you might see errors such as kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: Direct firmware load for i915/skl_dmc_ver1_26.bin failed with error -2 kernel: i915 0000:00:02.0: Failed to load DMC firmware, disabling runtime power management. in dmesg. Include the files required for your GPU in the kernel, in this case:

It’s possible to add GuC firmware too, but there are problems with it, so it won’t be loaded by default (passing additional parameters is needed). It’s actual for kernel 4.8.7 at least.

Please note that firmware file name should match one from MODULE_FIRMWARE in the source tree. Now it’s  (not  ) for DMC firmware. To check this for GuC and DMC firmwares you can type the following command within linux source tree:

Kernel
The following kernel options need to be activated:

The legacy fbdev support is required since kernel 3.14.14 at least for i915. For hybrid Intel/AMD system, follow also the steps of radeon (opensource) or fglrx (closed binary) drivers.

Since kernel version 4.4 the driver has been moved and the legacy fbdev support is now.

Driver
Portage uses the VIDEO_CARDS variable, which expands into the USE_EXPAND variable, for enabling support for various graphics cards in packages. Assuming has already been installed, setting VIDEO_CARDS variable in  will pull in the correct video driver: (see the feature matrix)

"intel" is for and   resp. are for media-libs/mesa.

Beginning with x11-base/xorg-drivers-1.19, also includes the   USE flag. This will omit in favor of the more advanced   driver built in to.

Check the USE flags of :

After making any changes update the system so the changes take effect by running the command with the   option:

VAAPI
Intel GMA X4500HD / G45 / GM45 and newer supports VAAPI hardware video acceleration.

Vulkan
Vulkan is currently not supported in the Gentoo tree, but there is a ebuild on the bugtracker which adds a vulkan USE flag to : https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=580148

Please note, that this will build a working Vulkan driver, but it will not provide a "libvulkan.so.1", but a drivers-specific "libvulkan_intel.so".

xorg.conf
Choose one of the following configuration options:


 * Classic Driver --
 * As xorg is not aware of i915 or i965 they will need to be addressed as Driver.




 * Alternate Driver for Gen 4+ -- Modesetting




 * As of xorg-server-1.17, the modesetting driver was moved into . This driver has more features than the classic driver, such as GLAMOR.


 * This configuration is the default for  beginning with x11-base/xorg-drivers-1.19. If you wish to use the classic driver, you will need to install xf86-video-intel manually:


 * xorg-server is easily configured to prefer  over the older   driver.



The X server is designed to work out-of-the-box, with no need to manually edit X.Org's configuration files. It should detect and configure devices such as displays, keyboards, and mice.

However, the main configuration file of the X server is the xorg.conf.

Troubleshooting

 * How to file a bug report
 * How to file a bug report
 * How to file a bug report
 * How to file a bug report

html5/vaapi gpu hangs
If your GPU hangs up when watching vaapi-accelerated video e.g. on youtube, you can try enabling your IOMMU:

Related upstream bug report.

KDM freezes
A workaround is to set  in all sections of the file, which starts with.

KDE's plasma eating CPU
If /usr/bin/plasmashell is always consuming several percent of CPU, perhaps this is related to a vsync problem. QT Quick Animation seem to loop too fast when vsync is not managed by the driver (Reference)

A way to enable vsync with SNA is to enable "TearFree" Option in xorg.conf

thanks to mint doc

Black screen

 * According to this Debian wiki, CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE must be set to y (aka built-in to the kernel). Otherwise, it is possible to always have a black screen unless nomodeset is passed to the kernel, thus disabling kernel mode setting (KMS).  can be passed to the kernel command line to try to solve this kind of issue. This is usually done through the bootloader.
 * Kernel with version 4.2 or newer is needed with some gen8 chipsets.

Brightness doesn't change with keyboard shortcuts
First, make sure vendor compatibility is on in the kernel configuration. Toshiba for Toshiba, etc.

If it is, or when the brightness buttons are working, the issue is that the kernel can not detect where the brightness control is located.

Luckily, this is easy enough to modify, as long as the kernel version is >= 3.13.x and < 4.2.

Add to the kernel command line.

On kernels >= 4.2, the option is no longer available. You should use one of the following instead (experiment to see which works on your system):

Do your key bindings map to actions viewable in xev? Can you adjust the screen brightness using xbacklight, then you can always do a work around via a keyboard remapping. For LXDE it can be done via

External resources

 * X.Org Wiki