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Ever since I last upgraded my Ubuntu system, believe it was to 16.10, I've had severe overheating issues. Now I've upgraded again to 18.04.1 and I still have the same issues. I thought it was simply because my laptop was getting old and it was hardware related. I then tried running Fedora 28 and realized that I had no issues at all when it came to temperature. After some digging I'm thinking it might be because of Ubuntu moving to using a more modern Intel modesetting driver that renders 2D on the GPU as well as 3D. I have an older laptop using Intel HD Graphics 3000 which I believe is overheating because of this.

I'm not all too familiar with how this is configured and what options I have. All I seem to be able to find is info on how to tweak the active Intel driver for performance but none on how to enable the legacy driver.

Any ideas on how I can enable the legacy driver to see if this is what's causing the problem?

Update 1

More background: According to what I've found when researching, Ubuntu switched DDX driver to using x86-modesetting instead of x86-intel-video which I believe is considered deprecated now, but since Intel support is deprecated for Sandy Bridge (HD Graphics 3000) it's not being supported officially in the new driver.

LSHW output:

  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: 3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 2
       bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
       version: 09
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
       configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
       resources: irq:31 memory:f0000000-f03fffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:3000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

Update 2

There's more information about the switch from the legacy DDX driver to the modesetting driver in Linux land at this Arch wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics#Installation

I added this intel config file for xorg and I think it might have fixed things since it's no longer overheating as easily. Can anyone confirm if this configuration is what forced the legacy driver to be used, and if so, I can write an explanation that can be marked as accepted answer to help other users with similar issues?

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
        Driver      "intel"
    Option      "AccelMethod" "sna"
    Option      "TearFree" "true"
    Option      "DRI" "3"
EndSection
Niklas
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  • What legacy driver? Where does this come from? – mikewhatever Aug 04 '18 at 19:17
  • 16.10 is not supported since mid 2017 and therefor off topic here. Please upgrade to a supported version, latest one is 18.04. – Soren A Aug 04 '18 at 21:02
  • @SorenA The question mentions the upgrade to 18.04.1. I've tagged it accodingly. – Elder Geek Aug 05 '18 at 17:28
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    Please [edit] the output of sudo lshw -C display into your post. This will give us useful information that is likely to help. Thank you for helping us help you! – Elder Geek Aug 05 '18 at 17:34
  • I believe Ubuntu 16.04.5 or Ubuntu 18.04 with Unity desktop will be less taxing on your hardware. You'll find better performance and less heat from the HD3000 graphics. As far as "tweaking" your graphics goes you can read this: https://askubuntu.com/questions/895446/setting-kernel-options-for-the-i915 you can find more Q&A's with google search. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Aug 05 '18 at 17:47
  • WinEunuuchs2Unix: that is irrelevant since I have always used GNOME-Shell. mikewhatever: according to what I've found when researching, Ubuntu switched DDX driver to using x86-modesetting instead of x86-intel-video which I believe is considered deprecated now, but since Intel support is deprecated for Sandy Bridge (HD Graphics 3000) it's not being supported officially in the new driver. ElderGeek: I'll be adding the output of lshw in an hour when I'm by the computer again. Thanks for all the feedback guys! – Niklas Aug 05 '18 at 18:47

0 Answers0