Acer Aspire ES1-521 AMD Drivers?

[rich matrix]

I used the search for drivers program but it told me there were any, but I need graphics drivers for my R5 Integrated Graphics, and I know they aren't the latest ones

[frozen plinth]

System specs

And no, you don't install drivers. You update your kernel instead

Also what distro

[rich matrix]

AMD A8 processor with R5 Graphics, 8GB ram, Linux Mint XFCE latest version

Laptop

[frozen plinth]

Then no. You don't install drivers. Mint is not windowz

[rich matrix]

Okay, I'm new to this

[frozen plinth]

It just works ootb

[rich matrix]

Okay

I heard about mesa drivers and stuff like that

[frozen plinth]

You may like to setup dxvk, lutris and bottles instead

[rich matrix]

Im not gonna play anything intensive on this, it barely runs firefox

[frozen plinth]

That way you have the latest packages and support for dxvk and games

[rich matrix]

But ill research, thanks

[frozen plinth]

Ik how bad is the AMD A series

[rich matrix]

Its worse than FX

[frozen plinth]

Until they made ryzen

[rich matrix]

So you can imagine lol

[frozen plinth]

Ryzen is the goat

[frozen plinth]

https://github.com/lutris/docs/blob/master/HowToDXVK.md
docs/HowToDXVK.md at master · lutris/docs - GitHub

Follow this guide

[rich matrix]

Okay, thanks so much

So no worries about mesa drivers or anything right

[frozen plinth]

You could run mint cinnamon on it but if you went xfce because performance you're good too

[frozen plinth]

That guide should update all the packages needed

Update your kernel if you want latest hardware support

The dxvk guide will update mesa too

But don't expect the latest as mint is always way behind distros like arch

Mint ships with kernel 5.15 up to 6.2 while arch is on 6.8

[rich matrix]

I prefer pure speed, i have another system already which is miles ahead, i just use this for light emulation and gaming

I will do this asap, thanks for all the help

[frozen plinth]

You may like then to try arch/EndeavourOS xfce for better game support and more lightweight. Explore the options beyond mint. The most lightweight is alpine Linux.

Close to mint there's mx linux, which is similar but way more lightweight

Up to you what you use

Ik mint xfce is nice, but explore other options too

[rich matrix]

Sure, I'll stick with this in the meantime, i installed it yesterday

[hot nova]

If you have an older RDNA GPU, the system will likely default to the old radeon driver instead of the (also supported) amdgpu. There should be not much difference, but Vulkan support is better with amdgpu, so you may want to make sure you have that. Use inxi -Gxxxz on a terminal to find out. If you cannot understand the output, post it here and we will have a look.

[rich matrix]

Its not even an RDNA GPU

This is from 2014 i think

[hot nova]

My bad, I actually meant GCN. The RDNA cards and iGPUs are all covered by amdgpu, but 2014 is GCN. You need to add some boot option to force amdgpu. I have done it on an old system like this myself, it works. Cannot find the guide right now.

[frozen plinth]

I think curunir refers to adding amdgpu as a kernel parameter on your grub config or as a module on mkinitcpio

like this

[rich matrix]

Uhh okay, ill look into that

[hot nova]

This article discusses the issue, the how-to is at the end. https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMDGPU-GCN-1.0-Analog-Block