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

Question

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

Solution

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.

Comments

[Gayan Weerakutti]

Output of glxinfo | grep render or fglrxinfo | grep render

[Mookey]

You have what I have - a dual graphics system with onboard power-saving GPU that you output in lshw -c, and a discreet ATI GPU, using AMDGPU open source driver, but it's not activated, i.e. it's not being used by the system as primary graphics. Give us a VGA controller of lspci.

[Rajan Nair]

~$ lspci: 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Haswell-ULT DRAM Controller (rev 09) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 0a2e (rev 09)

[Marco Santullo]

I did the update of the kernel but could not solve. The system crashed. I will reinstall 14.04 until a final solution as I can't working having pc crashing random with ubuntu 16 and 945 card using i915 driver

[Juanjo Salvador]

Same issue here with 4.4.0-21 (and 4.4.0-28) kernel on 64-bit Bay Trail-based machine with Lubuntu. Lot of suggests to fix it, but update kernel works for me.

[Luís de Sousa]

Since yesterday I am no longer able to log on to any DE in a laptop with a Sky Lake card and I suspect it is also a drivers issue. However, installing this newer kernel did not fix it in my case.

[Sablefoste]

This is totally the best answer. Out there, most answers recommend the "nomodeset" option in /etc/default/grub, but this IS NOT the long term solution; it will bring an even powerful computer to it's knees, carrying the graphics onboard. Using the kernel update solution, checking "About this computer" your graphics card will be correct.