If you need to find out which driver is being used by your X server in Linux, you can easily find that out by giving the following command:

debian-:~# cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Output
X.Org XInput driver : 2.0
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//vesa_drv.so
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 2.0
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 2.0
(II) VESA: driver for VESA chipsets: vesa
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 2.0
(II) Synaptics touchpad driver version 0.14.6 (1406)

From the above output you can see that your X server is using generic “vesa” driver for your graphics card. Generally it is recommended that you use a native driver instead of a generic driver for performance reasons. You should only use “vesa” driver if you are having trouble with your X server.

Now let’s see an example in which the X server is using a native driver:

debian-:~# cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log
Output
X.Org XInput driver : 2.0
(==) Matched nv for the autoconfigured driver
(==) Assigned the driver to the xf86ConfigLayout
(II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//nv_drv.so
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 2.0
ABI class: X.Org XInput driver, version 2.0
(II) NV: driver for NVIDIA chipsets: RIVA 128, RIVA TNT, RIVA TNT2,

As you can see from the above output we are using the native “nv” driver for our graphics card.

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