Ubuntu – How to change Graphics Driver in 16.04 from i915 to open source driver

16.04graphicssuspend

Noob Question, so please don't get annoyed!

I upgraded from 15.04 to 16.04 LTS, and now my system reboots often for no reason, doesn't "suspend" etc..

I have a Lenovo with Intel Core i5, and AMD Radeon Graphics. I checked the forums for solutions, but I haven't got a solution. I checked (lshw -c video) and got the following:

*-display               
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 09
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:48 memory:d0000000-d03fffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff ioport:5000(size=64)

How do I "use the open source graphics driver" as suggested by Ubuntu Forums?

I am on the verge of downgrading to 15.04 until a proper solution is found and annouced. It's going to be a pain, so I thought I'd ask here before proceeding.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions…
Rajan

Best Answer

I was finally able to fix the i915 problem by updating from kernel 4.4.0-22 to 4.5.1. On my 64 bit machine with ubuntu 16.04 xenial I ran:

    % wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.5.1-wily/linux-headers-4.5.1-040501_4.5.1-040501.201604121331_all.deb

    % wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.5.1-wily/linux-headers-4.5.1-040501-generic_4.5.1-040501.201604121331_amd64.deb

    % wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.5.1-wily/linux-image-4.5.1-040501-generic_4.5.1-040501.201604121331_amd64.deb

    % sudo dpkg -i *.deb

DEAR UBUNTU DEVELOPERS, the DRM issue with i915 appears to be fixed as from kernel version 4.5.1. I tried version 4.4.10 and it did not fix the DRM issue. I would appreciate if the changes to DRM in connection with i915 were backported into the official xenial kernel.

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