Improve video performance for Intel graphics
6. Does your computer have an Intel video card? If it's not too ancient (2008 or newer), then you can probably improve its performance noticeably. Namely by replacing its obsolete and outdated driver (xserver-xorg-video-intel) by a newer one.
That old driver is only present to keep Linux Mint compatible with ancient Intel GPU's of the i8xx and i9xx family of chipsets, but it decreases the performance and stability of newer Intel video chipsets. Also it might be the cause of screen tearing.
Removing it will force your system to use the far better new modesetting driver instead. This modesetting driver is already present in your kernel; removing the obsolete driver will wake it from its sleeping state.
This is how to do it:
a. Launch a terminal window.
(You can launch a terminal window like this: *Click*)
b.
Copy/paste the following line into your terminal, in order to check your current graphics card and driver:
inxi -G
(if you type it: note the space after inxi and note that G is a capital letter)
Press Enter.
The output should show an Intel video card,
not being of the ancient i8xx or i9xx family of chipsets (i915, i965, etc.). The reported driver should be:
intel.
c. Only proceed when the inxi check has confirmed that your Intel graphics chipset is modern enough! If so, copy/paste this line into the terminal:
sudo apt-get remove xserver-xorg-video-intel
Press Enter and submit your password. Please note that the password will remain entirely invisible, not even asterisks will show, which is normal.
d. Reboot your computer.
e. Check again with this terminal command (use copy/paste to transfer it to the terminal):
inxi -G
The reported driver should now be:
modesetting. Any previous screen tearing should be gone.
Note: Isn't that driver being reported by inxi, or does it report that modesetting has failed? Then execute this command in a terminal window (use copy/paste to transfer it):
grep modesetting /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Does the last line (or the last line but one) of the output it produces, look approximately similar to the blue line below? Then you're probably OK after all:
[ 7.302] (II) modesetting: Driver for Modesetting Kernel Drivers: kms
If there's no such line, it might be safer to re-install the old driver. For that, see item 6.1 below.
