Portal 2's level editor

I believe they just took Portal 2, put a newer engine under the hood and added a bunch of tools so that people can make mods way easier. One nice side effect is, that it now looks a bit better if you just want to play the campaign.

I think the video I linked in the post would demonstrate the benefits better than me writing here. I agree that the look of Portal 2 has long-lasting appeal, but P2CE introduces improved lighting and graphics rendering inspired by Source 2 while still being Source 1. Otherwise, the improvements are mainly technical, like removing signature "Source spaghetti" engine limitations.

The real killer feature is that it reorganizes Portal 2 under the hood to be very mod- and custom campaign-friendly, so it will be the Portal enthusiast's dream platform.

Here's a video from the P2CE channel that shows the lighting changes in a bit more detail.

I don't think it's necessary, even from a story perspective (the game does a great job of filling in the blanks for you). It's definitely worth playing Portal 1 though, it's a fantastic game with perfect design even nearly 20 years later. I mean apart from engine and graphics tech, I don't think the game could be improved upon much. Same is true for Portal 2.

Another thing about Portal 1's story is that it's barely there at all. Almost all of it is incidental to the puzzles, and the story that is there is either passive exposition from the antagonist, or some very minimal environmental stuff. With that in mind, you could easily get yourself up to speed on the story going into Portal 2 just by glancing at a one or two paragraph summary, maybe with a couple of screenshots (you could probably convey everything in the story in one sentence if you're creative with the punctuation). Portal 2's story is much more fleshed out and interesting, though.

Portal 1 is so old and undemanding that you could probably run it smoothly inside a VM even on a meagre PC. I don't know what OS you're running, but I presume it's not Windows?

Portal 1 is in many ways better. Even without the second, its worth playing.

its very light on story if you want to skip anyway

Honestly, not really. You’ll miss out on some of the backstory but nothing that would impact your enjoyment. You could watch a play through to get the details, it’s pretty short.

You'll miss out on the plot of 1 that sets up for 2, but for gameplay, you would be fine. But if 1 crashes, you better hope 2 works well.

It's like 40 min long, it's worth it but maybe not if you have to debug

To add on to what silverchase said, I played 2 first and got the gist of what happened. I do recommend playing Portal 1 if you can get it working, but you won't be lost without it.

Iirc adding -vulkan to the game options worked for me, might be worth a shot.

I would. They are both short games so it’s a no brainer honestly.

Have you tried an older system? I got one to run well on a little 2gb netbook with an atom processor. But also never had a problem on any other system.