I'm glad it helped, asking questions is the only way to learn. Especially when you can't RTFM because there isn't a fine manual to read.

Yes, Intel and AMDs video drivers are opensource.

> It's really hard to find a tl;dr of how to get your graphics card working.

So I don't know what video card you have, or what the problem is. With something like Debian it could easily be that your video card is too new for the kernel version if you don't have backports enabled.

That is when the AMD website drivers come in, as they are normally for older kernels, so they are used to enable to video card while your distribution gets up to date.

This is why Ubuntu became so popular, it took Debian and made everything slightly more up to date, plus made the Nvidia drivers accessible. Though if you find Debian not quite new enough for your usecase, try something like OpenSuse or Fedora. Make a bootable USB and see if they are any better for you. Or enable backports, I found that didn't work for my usecase as I had kernel panics, and could not get to enable them.

Let me know if you have any other questions or queries.