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Vulkan (default, vendor-neutral)

Vulkan is the default GPU path on InterGenOS. It is vendor-neutral: a single API that runs across AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA hardware through each vendor’s installable client driver (ICD), without committing your machine to one vendor’s proprietary compute stack. This keeps the system understandable and portable. You can read your graphics setup, reason about it, and move the same workloads between machines with different GPUs.

For the vendor-specific compute stacks layered alongside Vulkan, see ROCm for AMD and CUDA for NVIDIA. For how InterGenOS chooses a backend, see Overview & Backend Selection.

Why Vulkan is the default

A from-source distribution favors the path that works everywhere over the path that is tuned to one vendor. Vulkan gives that:

  • One API, every GPU. The same Vulkan code runs on AMD, Intel, and NVIDIA.
  • Open by default. The Mesa-based drivers (RADV for AMD, ANV for Intel) are open source and integrate with the rest of the from-source build, so there is no opaque binary blob in the default path.
  • No vendor lock-in. Choosing Vulkan does not commit you to a proprietary compute runtime. ROCm and CUDA remain available as deliberate, opt-in choices when a specific workload needs them.

Defaulting to an open, vendor-neutral graphics path is part of giving you a machine you understand, can modify, and can trust.

What Vulkan is used for

  • Desktop and display. InterGenOS ships GNOME 49 on Wayland today. The compositor and accelerated applications draw through the GPU’s Vulkan/Mesa stack.
  • Local AI inference. The built-in InterGen assistant detects the host’s GPU and its dedicated VRAM and selects a model tier accordingly — system RAM is reported but does not decide the tier. Its inference engine (llama-server, from llama.cpp) is built with the Vulkan backend enabled, so it accelerates inference on GPUs from any vendor with a working Vulkan driver and falls back to the CPU where no usable GPU is present. This is what makes the vendor-neutral path useful beyond the desktop.

Drivers in the default path

Vulkan support is provided by per-vendor ICDs:

  • AMD — RADV (the Mesa Vulkan driver for Radeon hardware).
  • Intel — ANV (the Mesa Vulkan driver for Intel graphics).
  • NVIDIA — Vulkan is supported through NVIDIA’s driver. The open Mesa path (NVK) and NVIDIA’s proprietary driver differ in maturity and packaging; see CUDA for NVIDIA and Per-GPU Driver Notes for the NVIDIA specifics.

InterGenOS is built from source across seven package tiers (toolchain, core, base, desktop, extra, compute, and ai). The graphics and Vulkan components are built here rather than pulled from an external binary repository at install time:

  • mesa, vulkan-loader and vulkan-headers are desktop-tier and ship on the installed image, which is why the default Vulkan path needs nothing installed.
  • vulkan-tools — the vulkaninfo and vkcube diagnostics — is extra-tier and mirror-only, so it is not on a default installation until you install it.

Checking your setup

Standard upstream Vulkan tooling is the vendor-neutral way to inspect what your machine reports. These tools are not on a default installation — vulkan-tools is mirror-only, so install it first:

sudo pkm install vulkan-tools

# List the Vulkan ICDs, layers, and device(s) the loader can see
vulkaninfo --summary

# Quick visual smoke test that a device renders
vkcube

Their absence on a fresh install is not a sign the Vulkan path is broken: the loader and drivers that actually run your desktop and your inference ship on the image. Only the diagnostics are a separate install.

When to step beyond Vulkan

Vulkan covers graphics and a growing range of compute. For workloads that target a vendor’s dedicated compute runtime, InterGenOS keeps those as explicit choices:

These do not replace the Vulkan default; they sit alongside it for workloads that require them. The vendor-neutral path remains the baseline so that the system behaves predictably regardless of which GPU is installed.

See also