Update: I previously indicated to use the “xorg-edgers” PPA. But it’s far too brutal since it will update a lot of other things (such as the X server) and it might just break. I now recommend using the Oibaf PPA to update only the drivers.
Following my article about a few “out of the box” fixes for the XPS 13 “Developer Edition”, I wanted to upgrade the Intel graphics driver and Mesa. Indeed, I noticed some issues with 3D apps:
- most games were incredibly slow, or at least a lot slower than what ohter got with the same hardware on Windows (and OpenGL performance are supposed to be on-par or close – if not better – on Linux now);
- WebGL was not available neither on Chromium nor Firefox, even through their latest stable version.
The pre-installed version of Mesa (10.1.3) is pretty old (May 2014). You can upgrade it to the latest version along with the latest Intel drivers using the “xorg-edgers” PPA the Oibaf “Updated and Optimized Open Graphics Drivers” PPA.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get upgrade
Updating the i915 drivers and Mesa should give you a very important performance boost on 3D apps. I noticed “Counter Strike: Global Offensive” went from barely playable to completely smooth. I also noticed WebGL is now properly available on both Firefox and Chrome.