Differences between video-linux and video-modesetting

Hello all,

I have a new laptop that I recently installed Manjaro. The machine has a Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 graphics chip. When running mhwd, I noticed that there are three separate graphics drivers I could be using:

$ mhwd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  NAME               VERSION          FREEDRIVER           TYPE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
            video-linux            2018.05.04                true            PCI
      video-modesetting            2020.01.13                true            PCI
             video-vesa            2017.03.12                true            PCI

From what some digging up online showed me, video-linux is Intel’s own graphics driver and video-modesetting is the open source one provided by XOrg. Is that correct?

video-linux appears to be more than 2 years old, would it be better if I used video-modesetting instead? I heard some horror stories online where people had trouble booting after switching to the modesetting driver. Is there a way I could test this safely without bricking my install?

My graphics card details are below:

$ inxi -G
 Graphics:  Device-1: Intel Iris Plus Graphics G7 driver: i915 v: kernel 
            Device-2: Chicony Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
            Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 driver: intel resolution: 1600x900~60Hz 
            OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel Iris Plus Graphics (ICL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.3.1
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video-linux is the best of the three, better don’t try the other ones, they have usually a worse performance. Having options not always tells to use them. If you want to know more about them use a search engine of your trust - there is billions of pages covering this subject.

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