Update drivers with hardware change without reinstalling whole OS

[F_style]

Say, if I begin having a AMD GPU, then I change it to an Intel Arc GPU in a bare metal PC, how can I tell openSUSE Leap to update to the needed new drivers without wholly reinstalling Leap?

Thanks.

[deano_ferrari]

You don’t need to reinstall Leap. Simply replace the AMD GPU with the Intel Arc card and boot normally.

The kernel and Mesa packages provide the required open-source Intel graphics support.

If NVIDIA, it is a little different. The kernel includes the open-source nouveau driver, but if the proprietary NVIDIA driver is installed, that needs to be dealt with when changing GPUs.

[F_style]

But shouldn’t I install at least new packages for the new GPU?
And what if working with virtual GPUs, such as going from QXL to virtio-vga-gl?

[deano_ferrari]

I was talking about the kernel graphics drivers. You can install or update any required packages after changing the GPU.

The same applies to changing from QXL to virtio-vga-gl - change it, boot, then install/update anything that is actually required.

[F_style]

How can I know which packages are needed for virtio-vga-gl?

[malcolmlewis]

It’s installed in the vm, not the host…
https://docs.mesa3d.org/drivers/virgl.html

“libvirglrenderer1 | Virgil3D renderer”

[malcolmlewis]

For changing a GPU, just the OS libraries as required…

This is on Tumbleweed (Intel ARC A380)

zypper se -si intel
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...

S  | Name                       | Type    | Version            | Arch   | Repository
---+----------------------------+---------+--------------------+--------+----------------------
i+ | intel-gpu-tools            | package | 2.5-1.2            | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | intel-media-driver         | package | 26.2.2-1.3         | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | intel-opencl               | package | 26.27.39122.11-1.1 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i  | kernel-firmware-intel      | package | 20260728-1.1       | noarch | Main Repository (OSS)
i  | libdrm_intel1              | package | 2.4.134-2.2        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libvulkan_intel            | package | 26.2.2-1.1         | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libze_intel_gpu1           | package | 26.27.39122.11-1.1 | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i+ | libze_intel_gpu_raytracing | package | 1.2.4+0-1.3        | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)
i  | ucode-intel                | package | 20260812-1.1       | x86_64 | Main Repository (OSS)

You likely don’t need the libze ones, I maintain libze_intel_gpu_raytracing and it’s not in Leap…