Chromium in Slackware64 15.0 not working with nouveau

[Doug Weiman]

I have an old (but still very functional) PC that comes with a
built-in graphics device from Nvidia. This device is quite old, which
implies that the closed-source Nvidia driver are not compatible with the
kernel in 15.0. I therefore had to use the nouveau driver.

Since it is such an old Nvidia device (C61 [GeForce 7025 / nForce
630a]) I thought that the nouveau people would have had the time to iron
out the kinks for it in the nouveau code. That does not seem the case.
Things that used to work before I upgraded from 14.2 (under which I could
use the Nvidia driver) to 15.0 (under which I must use nouveau) just
don't - e.g. glxgears and the 3D hacks from xscreensaver segfault, Google-
Earth launches but it is all messed up (it displays lots of colors and
nonsensical shapes) and, most seriously chromium does not work (in a way
similar to that described for Google-Earth).

Anybody know whether this is a shortcoming in the nouveau driver
itself, which may, or may not, be sorted out in some indefinite future,
or is it the case that the nouveau/X configuration can be tinkered with,
so that chromium will work with nouveau? Obviously, I will be getting a
new PC, but I would be interested in answers to those questions anyway.

[Henrik Carlqvist]

On Mon, 16 May 2022 00:59:36 +0000, Doug Weiman wrote:
> Anybody know whether this is a shortcoming in the nouveau driver
> itself, which may, or may not, be sorted out in some indefinite future,

My guess is that if it hasn't been fixed by now it will not be fixed as
there are only few people still interested in those old cards.

> or is it the case that the nouveau/X configuration can be tinkered with,
> so that chromium will work with nouveau?

On systems where hardware accelerated GLX are unreliable I usually set
the environment variable LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT to 1.

Example bash:

export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1

Or tcsh:

setenv LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT 1

The above can be set in some login script or in the terminal before
starting an opengl application. It will result in slower but hopefully
more stable software openGL rendering.

regards Henrik

[Javier]

Doug Weiman <n...@nyet.net> wrote:
> I have an old (but still very functional) PC that comes with a
> built-in graphics device from Nvidia. This device is quite old, which
> implies that the closed-source Nvidia driver are not compatible with the
> kernel in 15.0. I therefore had to use the nouveau driver.

I am curious about the model of your old PC.

> Since it is such an old Nvidia device (C61 [GeForce 7025 / nForce
> 630a]) I thought that the nouveau people would have had the time to iron
> out the kinks for it in the nouveau code. That does not seem the case.
> Things that used to work before I upgraded from 14.2 (under which I could
> use the Nvidia driver) to 15.0 (under which I must use nouveau) just
> don't - e.g. glxgears and the 3D hacks from xscreensaver segfault, Google-
> Earth launches but it is all messed up (it displays lots of colors and
> nonsensical shapes) and, most seriously chromium does not work (in a way
> similar to that described for Google-Earth).

From my experience another program giving problems may be cool-retro-term.

> Anybody know whether this is a shortcoming in the nouveau driver
> itself, which may, or may not, be sorted out in some indefinite future,
> or is it the case that the nouveau/X configuration can be tinkered with,
> so that chromium will work with nouveau? Obviously, I will be getting a
> new PC, but I would be interested in answers to those questions anyway.

I would suggest that you try to run chromium inside xnest

Xnest -geometry 1000x1000 :800 &
DISPLAY=:800 chromium &

That works for me. The biggest shortcoming is that inside Xnest the
clipboard is not shared with the parent Xserver.