KDE Plasma with wayland on Thinkpad x200 graphics processor: llvmpipe?

sarahquartz

sarahquartz

Hi, everyone! I'm relatively new to FreeBSD, installed it about a month ago on Thinkpad x200, and I've noticed some weird quirks with Wayland using Plasma DE, not sure if it's my user error in setting something up or if wayland has some bugs with graphics on FreeBSD on this exact machine, but, despite having drm-kmod package installed and with i915kms included in kld_list, the info center sees my graphics processor as llvmpipe (which means software rendering IIRC).

it is also confirmed by vulkaninfo output:
GPU id : 0 (llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.7, 128 bits)) [VK_KHR_xcb_surface, VK_KHR_xlib_surface]

even though the gpu itself is detected just fine I think? Via pciconf command:
pciconf -lv | grep -B4 VGA
Code: 
vgapci0@pci0:0:2:0:     class=0x030000 rev=0x07 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x8086 device=0x2a42 subvendor=0x17aa subdevic
e=0x20e4
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller'
    class      = display
    subclass   = VGA

System works okay, but I do notice some crashes from apps that expect GPU acceleration working.
For example, the terminal output of konqueror launching:
[51434:37113925793808:0130/193554.827264:ERROR:gl_display.cc(495)] EGL Driver message (Error) eglCreateContext: Requested version is not supported
Trace/BPT trap (core dumped)

I'm using FreeBSD 15.0 RELEASE with quarterly packages, KDE version is 6.5.5. The expected behaviour is that it should be able to use the iGPU just fine.

I'm not quite sure what other logs would be appropriate and useful to provide, so the main question is: can or should I do something about that? Is maybe driver not loaded correctly or some additional configuration is required? I've heard that Wayland support on FreeBSD is experimental, so that's why I am asking if anything even can be done. Thanks in advance!
 
I've done some research, and this is what I found:
- It seems that the Intel Mobile 4 Series GPU is no longer supported by modern Mesa for accelerated OpenGL on Wayland.
- You should have more luck with X11.
- Probably you should choose a lighter DE like MATE (lighter but very cool and modern) or XFCE (the favorite of many people) on X11.
 
AlfredoLlaquet said:
I've done some research, and this is what I found:
- It seems that the Intel Mobile 4 Series GPU is no longer supported by modern Mesa for accelerated OpenGL on Wayland.
- You should have more luck with X11.
- Probably you should choose a lighter DE like MATE (lighter but very cool and modern) or XFCE (the favorite of many people) on X11.
Click to expand...
Ah damn that's weird, cause I swear that on Debian 13 trixie it was working just fine, although maybe debian just still has some old unsupported stuff present in their repo for compatibility's sake?... Not sure. Anyways thanks for clarification tho! You saved me from enabling my hyperfixated mind to keep on trying to fix something that can't be fixed on such an old hardware due to legacy reasons :D

Yeah, XFCE is pretty cool and it is my second favourite DE for sure. I've installed it as a second "backup" DE exactly due to this issue, so I can easily switch to it in case something freaky happens with plasma due to GPU quirks :)
 
If your graphics card is older than the models integrated with ivy bridge you will not have vulkan support (only software like you checked). For ivy bridge and above, up to gen 7, you need the amber branch of mesa and specificaly the crocus vulkan driver. For opengl also go with that. And you will probably should use x11 with the appropriate driver.

Time has not been kind for users of old hardware that wish to have some manner of hw acceleration.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top