The Comprehensive Guide to Viewing Arch Graphics Drivers

Introduction

Graphics drivers are an essential part of any modern operating system. They allow your computer to communicate with your graphics card and display images on your screen. Without a working graphics driver, you would not be able to see anything on your screen.

Arch Linux is a popular Linux distribution that is known for its rolling release model. This means that new software is constantly being added to the Arch repositories, and users can always have the latest and greatest software available.

However, this can also make it difficult to keep track of which graphics drivers are compatible with your system. In this guide, we will show you how to view the graphics drivers that are installed on your Arch Linux system.

Checking the Installed Graphics Drivers

There are two main ways to check the installed graphics drivers on your Arch Linux system:

1. Use the lspci command

The lspci command lists all of the PCI devices that are installed on your system. This includes your graphics card. To use the lspci command, open a terminal and type:

lspci -k

This will output a list of all of the PCI devices on your system. Look for the entry that corresponds to your graphics card. The output will look something like this:

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v2/3rd Gen Core processor Graphics Controller (rev 09)

The lspci command will also tell you which graphics driver is loaded for your graphics card. In the example above, the i915 driver is loaded for the Intel graphics card.

2. Use the pacman command

The pacman command can be used to manage packages on Arch Linux. You can use the pacman command to list all of the installed graphics drivers on your system. To do this, open a terminal and type:

pacman -Qs xf86-video

This will output a list of all of the installed graphics drivers on your system. The output will look something like this:

local/xf86-video-amdgpu 19.1.0-1
local/xf86-video-ati 19.1.0-1
local/xf86-video-intel 1:2.99.917-1
local/xf86-video-nouveau 1:1.0.16-1
local/xf86-video-qxl 0.1.5-1
local/xf86-video-radeonsi 19.1.0-1
local/xf86-video-vesa 2.4.0-1

Updating the Graphics Drivers

If you need to update your graphics drivers, you can use the pacman command. To do this, open a terminal and type:

sudo pacman -Syu xf86-video-

Replace with the name of the graphics driver that you want to update. For example, to update the Intel graphics driver, you would type:

sudo pacman -Syu xf86-video-intel

Conclusion

In this guide, we have shown you how to view, check, and update the graphics drivers on your Arch Linux system. By following these steps, you can ensure that you always have the latest and greatest graphics drivers installed.