I’m getting a refurbished Thinkpad with an Intel i5 1135G7 soon which includes the integrated iris xe graphics.
I currently use Mint on most things but I understand that irisxe driver is evolving per kernel version at this point, but I have no idea how good or ‘needs improvement’ it still might be.
I’m just not sure what kind of experience to expect other than ‘not great sometimes’
Does anyone using an irisXE igpu have any advice to offer?
I’m unsure if keeping mint on the bleeding edge of kernels is the answer or if moving to another distro entirely would be easier.
I don’t have one unfortunately, so can’t comment from personal experience. I expect performance will be comparable to Windows, most of the time, when the game works on Linux at all. I expect low-demanding indie and older games will be playable. You should research the specific games you intend to play. Get a rough idea of what the performance is like on Windows, and check compatibility databases such as ProtonDB for Linux compatibility.
And for optimizing the performance on Linux, yes, Kernel (and Mesa) version matters, though probably not that much for what is now older hardware. Personally, I would still prefer a more up to date distro, e.g. Fedora.
p.s. The driver name for Intel graphics is i915. There is a new “Xe” driver that has been experimental (not recommended) for a while now, but will finally be in use by default by Xe2-based GPUs. Yours should still use the i915 driver.