This isn’t a request for help, so I posted in Community. I am just looking for information to help my education and my google-fu failed miserably, only returning things related to Intel processors with integrated graphics.
My system is an i7 13-gen with no integrated graphics and a discreet AMD 6600. When running garuda-update I notice that vulkan-radeon installs, which is what I expect. But I also see vulkan-intel being installed, which I wouldn’t expect.
Why would there be a package grabbed to include drivers/instruction sets for a graphics card that’s not installed?
Both of those packages are dependencies of the meta package garuda-video-linux-config.
❯ pacman -Qii garuda-video-linux-config
Name : garuda-video-linux-config
Version : 2:1.1.6-1
Description : Meta configuration package for common open source drivers on Garuda Linux
Architecture : any
URL : https://gitlab.com/garuda-linux/applications/mhwd-db-garuda
Licenses : GPL
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : xf86-video-ati xf86-video-amdgpu xf86-video-nouveau vulkan-intel
vulkan-radeon intel-media-driver libvdpau-va-gl libva-intel-driver
libva-mesa-driver mesa-vdpau vulkan-mesa-layers vulkan-swrast
lib32-vulkan-intel lib32-vulkan-radeon lib32-mesa-vdpau
lib32-libva-intel-driver lib32-libva-mesa-driver lib32-vulkan-mesa-layers
Optional Deps : opencl-mesa
lib32-opencl-mesa
intel-compute-runtime
libva-vdpau-driver
lib32-libva-vdpau-driver
Required By : None
Optional For : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 0.00 B
Packager : Garuda Builder <[email protected]>
Build Date : Sat 27 Jan 2024 09:44:34 PM EST
Install Date : Mon 13 May 2024 09:09:16 PM EDT
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Validated By : SHA-256 Sum
Backup Files : None
Extended Data : None
This meta package gets installed by default if you install with the free driver option (the non-free driver option gets a different set of packages). Bundling all those packages together like that ensures no matter what hardware people have, the packages they need for a good out-of-box experience will likely already be installed.
If you want to remove the packages you don’t need for your hardware, uninstall the meta package with pacman -Rs (the s will remove dependencies).
sudo pacman -Rs garuda-video-linux-config
Then explicitly install the specific packages you want to keep with pacman -S. In your case it is probably safe to drop all the Intel and Nouveau packages.