[sf-lug] Intel graphics chipsets (was /firmware/radeon)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting The Doctor (drwho at virtadpt.net):

> On Mon, 21 Dec 2015 15:28:11 -0800, Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> wrote:
> 
> > Yeah, still pretty vague, isn't it?  
> 
> Not really.  It told me exactly what I needed to know when I set up
> this laptop - I needed the xf86-video-intel package from the Pacman
> repository (I run Arch) to get x.org up and running.  It was trickier
> to make the default sound output the speakers and not the HDMI port
> because that required adding an argument to one of the ALSA modules.

To be sure, the lspci output is enough to get the right X.org server.
It's only 'vague' if you're curious about what your specific video
chipset is -- which was, for example, the data Akkana was curious about,
and it's a good point that Intel's information is a bit non-specific.

For hardware reports to my former employer, I always attempted to give
detailed chipset information on all significant chips in a test unit:
ethernet, video, sound, wireless (if any), Bluetooth, USB, IRDA, SATA or
SAS.  Thus the tools I mentioned.

Addtionally, using the most cutting-edge live-CD image I could find with
the best hardware autoprobing (usually aptosid) meant I _usually_ got
handed for free solutions to otherwise difficult driver problems.  Like, 
say it's a brand-new Lenovo ThinkPad.  (I often tested those.)  Let's
say RHEL3 Update 3 misrecognises the sound chip and loads the wrong ALSA
driver.  Using aptosid's more-advanced hardware autorecognition, I could 
identify the correct module and force the RHEL installer kernel to
preload it.

> It is, yes.  Here's the writeup I did of it:
> http://drwho.virtadpt.net/archive/2015/01/05/linux-on-the-dell-xps-15-9530

Nicely done, and very thorough.  If you haven't yet submitted this page
to http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html and http://linux-laptop.net, I
hope you will.


> > However, it also includes this one: 02:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA
> > Corporation GK107M [GeForce GT 750M] (rev ff)
> 
> It does; it also didn't show up in the output of that command.

Well, if you mean the 'lspci' incantation that greps for 'VGA', it
wouldn't.  That's one of the things I was trying to warn people about.