Updated and Optimized Ubuntu Free Graphics Drivers

[oibaf]

Note: Phoronix disabled editing forum posts some time ago, so check the main PPA page for updated informations!

0 - Introduction

Some year ago I wrote a guide on Installing latest Open Source ATI drivers under Ubuntu to provide the new - at the time - Radeon R500 support with free drivers.

Now Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) just get released shipping latest official mesa release 7.10.2. However current mesa snapshots have a huge amount of new features which make feel old this official release. Ubuntu 10.10 (maverick) ships an older pre-release snapshot of mesa 7.9.

So I am now providing a PPA with updated mesa and X drivers as an easy way for users to try all the new features developed in the past months and early detect eventual bugs to report to developers. This is somewhat inspired by the xorg-edgers PPA but it only provides graphics drivers to lower the risk of breakage. Also I want to provide some packaging improvements and possibly new features (e.g. integrate testing branches like glsl-130 or pipe-video) when they'll be sufficient stable.

Supported Ubuntu versions: 10.10 (maverick) and 11.04 (natty).

1 - Improvements

Mesa improvements:

• 7.11 snapshot from git master
• lots of new OpenGL extensions and almost complete OpenGL3 support
• improved games support (e.g. Humble Frozenbyte Bundle games and Unigine 3D engine)
• performance improvements, especially on the gallium drivers (e.g. over 2x in TORCS on r300g)
• bug fixes

Note that being snapshots they may also have new bugs.

Mesa packaging improvements:

• support for S3TC texture compression* (Recommends included libtxc-dxtn)
• support for floating-point textures*
• llvm support (for faster gallium drivers)
• gallium llvmpipe as the default software renderer rather than classic swrast
• i915 and nouveau gallium drivers in the experimental package
• --enable-debug flag (to better debug mesa and games bugs)
• better package compression with 50% binary size reduction (for faster download)
• custom OpenGL version string to make sure you are running drivers from this PPA

*these are patented features that can be used after agreeing the related IP: ARB_texture_float and EXT_texture_compression_s3tc. They are provided here for testing purpose only, anyway.

For more details check the changelog.

Updated drivers and libdrm from git:

• xserver-xorg-video-ati
• xserver-xorg-video-intel
• xserver-xorg-video-nouveau
• libdrm

Only free drivers will be provided. No binary fglrx and nvidia drivers.

2 - Installing
Just type this in a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Alternatively, add:

ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

to your system's Software Sources and update the package from here.

If all goes well, and if glxinfo is installed, typing in a shell:

glxinfo | grep OpenGL

will print the driver type and version with the PPA custom string.

3 - Using alternative drivers
Examples on how to run your OpenGL program (in this case glxgears -info) with non default drivers.

To force the use of gallium llvmpipe software render:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 glxgears -info

To force the use of old non-gallium software render:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri-alternates glxgears -info

To force the use of old non-gallium r300/r600 radeon drivers:

LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri-alternates glxgears -info

Experimental drivers:
If you want to use the gallium nouveau or i915 driver install also the experimental package:

sudo apt-get install libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental

The gallium nouveau driver will then be used by default rather than using llvmpipe.

To force the use of gallium i915 driver (classic driver will still be the default):

LIBGL_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri-alternates glxgears -info

4 - Debugging and reporting problems

If you have some problem with the drivers try running the application from the command line and see if there are any graphics related warnings (note that mesa is built with --enable-debug which can provide useful debug informations). Also type dmesg to see if there are other related informations here. If you get crashes install the relevant -dbg pacakges (libgl1-mesa-dri-dbg or libgl1-mesa-dri-experimental-dbg for 3D drivers and xserver-xorg-video-intel-dbg , xserver-xorg-video-nouveau-dbg or xserver-xorg-video-radeon-dbg for X drivers) and reproduce the crash with gdb. Example:

$ gdb glxgears
[...make your application crash and then get a backtrace with:]
(gdb) bt

If X.org crashes look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log (or /var/log/Xorg.0.log.old when a new X session is started after the crash).

With the gathered informations try querying freedesktop bugzilla for similar bugs (also try with google). If no bugs were already reported, you may want to report a new one:

• 3D drivers bug
• X / 2D driver bug

5 - Revert to original drivers
To revert to standard Ubuntu drivers (strongly suggested before an Ubuntu release upgrade) type the following in a prompt shell:

sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

6 - Requests and suggestions
Feel free to request new features or propose any suggestions here!

[oibaf]

Could you, please, package AMDVLK?

It would be nice indeed, but it's unlikely I will do, I don't have free time and I am not motivated enough.

[tichun]

Could you, please, package AMDVLK?

[Dukenukemx]

I tried to install libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 and libwayland-egl1-mesa and this is what it tries to do. I didn't continue cause I don't know what'll happen if it removes libwayland-egl1.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following additional packages will be installed:
  libwayland-egl1-mesa retroarch
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  libwayland-egl1
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libwayland-egl1-mesa libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386
The following packages will be upgraded:
  retroarch
1 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 1 to remove and 37 not upgraded.
Need to get 2,325 kB/2,428 kB of archives.
After this operation, 115 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.

[Ruediix]

Is that a good thing? I did this and it also removed PCSX2, but when I reinstalled PCSX2 it would reinstall those files but remove libwayland-egl1. So essentially I can't use these drivers with PCSX2?

BTW the files removed are " libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libwayland-egl1-mesa libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 pcsx2:i386".

Due to packaging changes you may need to install libwayland-egl1-mesa and libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 manually.

[Dukenukemx]

I can confirm that after manually installing libwayland-egl1 (libwayland-egl1-mesa was forced to be removed) and update other packages all works fine. Thanks all involved for help.

Is that a good thing? I did this and it also removed PCSX2, but when I reinstalled PCSX2 it would reinstall those files but remove libwayland-egl1. So essentially I can't use these drivers with PCSX2?

BTW the files removed are " libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libwayland-egl1-mesa libwayland-egl1-mesa:i386 pcsx2:i386".

[Dukenukemx]

I installed this PPA on Linux Mint 19 and I can't boot into Cinnamon. Had to ppa-purge to get back functionality. Is this PPA broken for weeks now?

[oibaf]

Next month Ubuntu 17.10/artful will be End Of Life, so I'll drop support for it. If you are still using it consider upgrading ASAP: make sure to purge the PPA, upgrade to 18.04/bionic and add again the PPA.

Also I'll stop supporting 16.04/xenial once upgrade to 18.04/bionic are enabled, August or so.

[nadro]

I made some fixes, can you try it again?

I can confirm that after manually installing libwayland-egl1 (libwayland-egl1-mesa was forced to be removed) and update other packages all works fine. Thanks all involved for help.

[Ruediix]

I have been reading that both oibaf and padoka are causing issues on the latest Ubuntus. I think it's due to a change in packaging policies or mismatched dependencies. Should be ironed out in a few days I guess.

I figured that was the case. Hopefully it can get sorted out.