"This driver is deprecated in favor of the server builtin modesetting driver." that means that I can remove xorg-intel driver?

Question

While upgrading my system packages I noticed an entry on the changelog that reads:

xserver-xorg-video-intel (2:2.99.917+git20160127-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream snapshot.
  * control: Document build-depends for dri3info and tests, benchmarks.
  * control: Update description to mention that this driver is
    deprecated in favor of -modesetting.
  * rules: Use upstream-unstable branch to build a snapshot tarball.
  * control: Add libxss-dev to build-depends for intel-virtual-output.

 -- Timo Aaltonen   Wed, 27 Jan 2016 14:56:38 +0200

Sure enough, the description does says this:

Description-en: X.Org X server -- Intel i8xx, i9xx display driver
 This package provides the driver for the Intel i8xx and i9xx family
 of chipsets, including i810, i815, i830, i845, i855, i865, i915, i945
 and i965 series chips.
 .
 This package also provides XvMC (XVideo Motion Compensation) drivers
 for i810/i815 and i9xx and newer chipsets.
 .
 This package is built from the X.org xf86-video-intel driver module.
 .
 This driver is deprecated in favor of the server builtin modesetting
 driver. <- here

This means that I can remove the xorg-intel driver if the modesetting driver is installed? If not, what does it means then?

Answer 1

I just removed xserver-xorg-video-intel, and rebooted.

My /var/log/Xorg.0.log says :

[    17.662] (II) modeset(0): using drv /dev/dri/card0

My Xorg driver is modeset.

My 3 screens setup is working well.

The modesetting driver is builtin. So no need to install extra driver.

Answer 2

For me on Debian-Jessie-testing/KDE I have had problems with repainting in Thunderbird, PyCharm,.. When I removed (apt purge) xserver-xorg-video-intel, GUI has no longer started. To save this it was neccesary to switch to other console (Ctrl+Alt+F1), reinstall (apt install) xserver-xorg-video-intel and restart.

To solve it finally I did what follows.

• I needed /etc/X11/xorg.conf, but it was not on my machine, so:

• in /etc/X11/default-display-manager I can read the used display manager (like dm,.., in my case it was slim)

• switch to other console (not to the terminal / Ctrl+Alt+F1 or so)

• systemctl stop dm where dm is the manager mentioned above, in my case: slim

• Xorg -configure ; this will create xorg.conf (or .conf.new), but maybe in different location (see output text)

• now you can reboot as usually

• rename/move the created configuration into /etc/X11/xorg.conf

• in /etc/X11/xorg.conf in Section "Device" change to: Driver "modesetting"

• apt purge xserver-xorg-video-intel

• reboot