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Comment by dunder_cat

1 hour ago

With AMD, most GPUs including the integrated ones will just default to the `amdgpu` module which is maintained by AMD themselves. You pretty much have the best possible experience on Linux right now.

I can't speak from personal experience since my only laptop is an Intel Framework 13 with no dGPU, but there'll be two other main cases both involving Nvidia that tend to bite people.

1. "Gaming" laptops usually with integrated Intel GPU + Nvidia discrete GPU. Not sure what advancements have been made in power management, there. I know there's some incantations one can put in .desktop files to prefer the discrete GPU for like, games, but not much more I can speak to.

2. General fun involving the fact that Nvidia's "gold-standard" drivers are not mainlined in the kernel, but maybe the fact that they are "open source"* means at some point there'll be parity with them. I think that is the goal of Red Hat's Nova driver in development.

* these days, the GPUs got complicated enough they have management processors on them that can actually run most of the complicated algorithms via a firmware blob. So the current open-source drivers basically bridge the gap between the kernel's various subsystems and that little processor to work the magic.

On another note, Intel Xe/i915 have been pretty good, I've used both for integrated GPUs and an Arc Alchemist-generation discrete card of theirs. The framework 13 12th gen intel GPU struggled at the start with a lot of hangs but within a few months of launch, some smart cookies at Intel managed to fix various bugs and it was smooth sailing from there, with the exception of thermals just being in a rough spot on that generation.