If everything is working run sudo nano /etc/environment and add LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD or LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 (Depending on which driver you installed.) Then add VDPAU_DRIVER=va_gl below save and exit.
Run vdpauinfo to confirm everything is working. Run vainfo to confirm everything is working.
Run export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=i965 - If you install libva-intel-driver Run export LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=iHD - If you installed intel-media-driver
You'll also want to sudo pacman -S libvdpau-va-gl libva-utils vdpauinfo
> "HD Graphics series starting from Broadwell (2014) and newer are supported by intel-media-driver."įor Intel GPU's 2013 and older install sudo pacman -S libva-intel-driver - From Arch Wiki > "GMA 4500 (2008) and newer GPUs, including HD Graphics up to Coffee Lake (2017) are supported by libva-intel-driver." The guide shown below is for Intel GPU's I left the wiki guide for other brands below it should be similar to what is done here.įor Intel GPU's 2014 and newer install sudo pacman -S intel-media-driver - From Arch Wiki. Here is the Arch Wiki guide to early KMS for NVIDIA or AMD users, or if you just want to look into it further.Įnabling hardware acceleration is important it'll use your laptops GPU for stuff like video decoding or encoding instead of your CPU, your laptop run cooler and faster while saving power this can resolve issues like videos stuttering and your laptop being hot while watching videos, I recommend looking into the Arch Wiki guide hardware acceleration for applications below after you've set this up. If you use PRIME GPU with Intel IGP being your primary GPU and AMD as the discrete one, adding intel_agp ay lead to troubles when resuming from hibernation (monitor gets no signal." This may be required for resuming from hibernation to work with a changed display configuration. This is from the Arch Wiki > "Intel users may need to add intel_agp before i915 to suppress the ACPI errors (check the output of lsmod on your running system to see if intel_agp is loaded). MODULES=(i915) > MODULES=(intel_agp i915) - exit and save. Run lsmod | grep intel_agp - if the module is not loaded reboot and continue to step 4, but if the module is loaded continue step 3 below. MODULES=( ) > MODULES=(i915) - then exit and save
I'll show you how to enable early KMS for Intel GPU's I'll leave the wiki page for other GPU's below, you'll need early KMS for step 9, it can also fix hibernation issues for Intel GPU's.įrom Arch Wiki > "KMS also enables newer technologies (such as DRI2) which will help reduce artifacts and increase 3D performance,even kernel space power-saving." Wayland is not a requirement for this guide I personally just found it much better to use. For other desktop environments I'll leave the Arch Wiki page. Wayland has been shown have slight power saving compared to X.org for KDE you'll want to run sudo pacman -S plasma-wayland-session (For NVIDIA it's different check the wiki) then select the session from your login screen, on Gnome it should be enabled by default. Here is the Arch Wiki Guide for Intel drivers. Here is the Arch Wiki Guide for AMD drivers. Here is the Arch Wiki Guide for NVIDIA drivers. Here is the Arch Wiki page to the Linux kernel. Run sudo pacman -S linux-firmware if you haven't installed it already it. When picking what kernel to use (Latest or LTS) the latest will mostly likely have better performance and battery especially on newer hardware, the LTS will have better stability and reliability.
I'll continue updating this guide if I find anything new or if new technologies come out to improve efficiency.Īlso small rant at the bottom of my post and basically my hope for Linux laptop support in the future. (If you do have any power saving packages installed uninstall all of them if you plan on following this guide as they may cause conflicts) I won't be using any power saving packages in this guide, because I don't like them and feel I can achieve better results without them even though they do a lot of similar things you'll see here. This guide can be applied to other distros not just Arch.Įverything I'll show is biased towards my personal laptop with an Intel CPU and GPU, I'll be leaving guides for AMD and NVIDIA devices where it's needed so people with that hardware aren't left out.įor laptops with dual GPU's if you want the most battery life and best thermals you'll want to switch to your iGPU for normal tasks, I left Arch Wiki guides for how to do that at the bottom of this post.
Everything I mention in this post will be taken from the Arch Wiki this guide is geared towards new Arch Linux users who want a practical laptop like they did on Windows or Mac OS.