No hardware acceleration on LENOVO laptop w/ hybrid grapics

[Hal9000]

My hair turned grey after I installed the latest LMDE Jessie on my LENOVO ideapad 500 notebook with hybrid graphics (Intel Corporation HD Graphics 520 & AMD/ATI Topaz XT Radeon R7).

-> Cinnamon is running only in software rendering mode, scrolling a web page causes CPU spikes, battery consumption is far too high.

Rumors have it that ATI fglrx drivers do the job... I tried... they don't in my case. Ubuntu seems to have something in kernel 4.2 for this particular AMD card, but I am stuck with Debian.

apt-get fullupgrade already done -> no luck

xrandr --listproviders returns 0.

lspci -nn

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00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Skylake Host Bridge/DRAM Registers [8086:1904] (rev 08)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 520 [8086:1916] (rev 07)
00:14.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP USB 3.0 xHCI Controller [8086:9d2f] (rev 21)
00:14.2 Signal processing controller [1180]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP Thermal subsystem [8086:9d31] (rev 21)
00:16.0 Communication controller [0780]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP CSME HECI #1 [8086:9d3a] (rev 21)
00:17.0 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SATA Controller [AHCI mode] [8086:9d03] (rev 21)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:9d10] (rev f1)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #5 [8086:9d14] (rev f1)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PCI Express Root Port #6 [8086:9d15] (rev f1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP LPC Controller [8086:9d48] (rev 21)
00:1f.2 Memory controller [0580]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP PMC [8086:9d21] (rev 21)
00:1f.3 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio [8086:9d70] (rev 21)
00:1f.4 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-LP SMBus [8086:9d23] (rev 21)
01:00.0 Display controller [0380]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Topaz XT [Radeon R7 M260/M265 / M340/M360 / M440/M445] [1002:6900] (rev 81)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 15)
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3165 Plus Bluetooth [8086:3166] (rev 99)

glxinfo | grep "OpenGL"

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OpenGL vendor string: VMware, Inc.
OpenGL renderer string: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 3.5, 256 bits)
OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 10.3.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.30
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL extensions:

[bw123]

Welcome to the forum, be sure and search for answers because there is a lot of good info on here. I found this looking for "debian ideapad 500" at a search engine. Have you tried a newer kernel?

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?p=618767

I installed the latest LMDE...
<snip>
...but I am stuck with Debian.

Well, it's real common to see people confuse derivatives. You will probably still find some good info on here.

[Hal9000]

Thanks for your reply.

Regarding this thread, I have already tried the following:

1) https://wiki.debian.org/AtiHowTo : This didn't work out for me. Got Xserver error on boot.
2) PRIME: I wanted to try, but on my machine xrandr --listproviders return 0, so I thought (without having tried, tbh) it's hopeless.
3) Getting a new kernel from backports... now that is a new planet for me. I did set up my system for backports (following this article https://wiki.debian.org/Backports), but I am lost from there onwards.

[bw123]

I did set up my system for backports (following this article https://wiki.debian.org/Backports), but I am lost from there onwards.

Well, backports is easy on debian, but you're using mint, so I hesitate to tell you what to do. I use debian, and I think mint has it's own repos? You should probably read some mint documentation for how they want you to use backports.

[smoki]

So Topaz PX, you need amdgpu or fglrx drivers for that (it is not supported by radeon driver)...

But Gnome, Cinnamon and blobs has problems on its own

[stevepusser]

LMDE Jessie should be able to use the jessie-backports (j-b) repository, though I would have thought Skylake graphics would be an ever-increasing issue on their forums as they are on Debian. You could install the kernel and header metapackages for your architecture from j-b, those will bring in the actual latest kernel and headers available in there, as well as keep adding new kernels as they become available, and not removing the older ones. So if the kernel metapackage goes from the current 4.7 to 4.8, a new 4.8 kernel will be installed, while retaining the current 4.7.8 kernel for safety's sake. Unwanted kernels must be uninstalled manually. You can also uninstall the metapackages if you don't want these automatic upgrades; in that case, the real kernel packages will still be installed.

Anyway, you really need a recent kernel for your Skylake machine to work well. 3.16 is just too old.

Edit: I have found that Skylake 520 Intel graphics will work fine with the 4.7 kernel , plus firmware-misc-free and Mesa 12.0.3, all from jessie-backports. Note that Debian does not have an AMD fglrx-driver patched to build with the 4.7 kernel, but if Mint does not have one either, I have one somewhere in an OBS repository...hang on, I'll find it. Here it is: https://software.opensuse.org/download. ... lrx-driver