Will upgrading to Zorin 16 also update my graphics drivers?

I am using Zorin 15 and want to play games, but the Mesa drivers I had didn't allow me to use Vulkan. I tried updating the Linux kernel as well as the Mesa drivers manually (by using a PPA that had more up-to-date versions of the drivers, I think I did it right), but it didn't work right because Vulkan is much slower than OpenGL for some reason. Does Zorin 16 come with more up-to-date Mesa drivers?

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Hi and welcome to the forum :slight_smile:

Since I do not have AMD graphics card I am afraid I cannot answer your question. I hope other volunteers who use AMD graphics will pitch in to help you.

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Is that the Oibaf ppa?

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FrenchPress now that you mentioned it I remembered, I have a 2nd Generation Intel Integrated Graphics Controller. I should have mentioned it earlier :nerd_face:

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Thank you for the reply Aravisian, I'm aware of the one you're talking about but I got it from Kisak PPA because I was told it's less bleeding edge (more stable)

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Well, for the record...

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade

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Generally, a new kernel does bring new drivers yes. And Zorin OS 16 uses a new kernel, and thus, you will have a newer set of drivers after install.

Weather or not the OS will run on your computer is in question these days, because were having a lot of issues with these latest kernels, and some people's computers.

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Sorry for the late reply and for possibly bumping this old thread, but since you developers took your time to help me I feel I owe an answer or a follow-up of sorts on this problem.

Since I created this thread I switched to Zorin 16 and started using the Oibaf PPA for the latest Mesa drivers and I noticed games were running around 20% faster. What I mean is that games that were running at 9 FPS were now running at around 18 FPS, which is something I suppose :sweat_smile: I learned that I can't use Vulkan because I have a Sandy Bridge processor and iGPU "combo" and it lacks compute shaders, which are necessary for Vulkan, so the maximum I can get (with my current setup that is) is OpenGL 3.3. I also learned that what I was referring to in the original post of being able to run Vulkan but it being a lot slower than OpenGL is because I was using LLVMpipe, which is a software renderer (and thus I wasn't actually even using the GPU at all), but I had no idea at the time of that post.

StarTreker mentioned that updating the OS will also update the kernel and it could potentially bring problems, but thankfully I had only one problem with Zorin 16 so far, which is, gasp, that if you try to copy-paste or cut a file that is in the trash bin it won't actually work, you have to restore the file from the trash first (and you don't get a warning about this, although it's easy to figure out). :exploding_head: Again thankfully that is the only "problem" I had, so far the experience has been completely smooth to me.

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@space-jump

Hello Space-Jump!

I just wanted to issue a quick correction. We are not developers, we are volunteers, providing support, for the developers. There are 2-developers, Azorin & Zorink. They primarily work on Zorin OS and APP tools, and as such we rarely see them here.

We super appreciate the fact that you came back to update us though. As we do volunteer our time to help others, and I really love it when people come back, to let us know how it all went.

I am glad to hear it all went well, minus a few miner hickups along the way. You took your first space jump, and it was a successful one. Way to go Space-Jump! :+1:


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