Graphics Drivers / Mesa help AMD

[clammer]

Currently on Kubuntu 26.04 LTS , installed and only OS, Plasma 6.6.6

I'm on an AMD computer and having what I can only assume are graphics issues- I'm not sure exactly what caused them but I guess either I installed an update that wasn't ready or the program itself updated to become slightly incompatible. A theory I saw is that the graphics card could be dying, but I doubt it since it's fairly new and it only has problems in very specific cases. (I'd rather be optomistic anyway)

I'm getting occasional graphics issues from openGL renderers, and suddenly Deadlock's been stalling after only a couple of minutes of play. Those are the only things I've noticed having problems so far (but that second one could be out of my hands).

Anyway, I've been trying to fix it but I don't understand what to do. I've looked at other help topics and they imply I don't use AMD drivers? I downloaded the .deb from the official website in case I need it but haven't done anything else because these other topics have me confused. I ran glxinfo -B | grep "OpenGL" and Mesa is 26.0.8, which isn't up to date as I checked... running flatpak list | grep Mesa shows it should be 26.2.4 but running flatpak upgrade says "nothing to do." sudo apt upgrade didn't do anything as it was all up to date, allegedly. Also, checking drivers in GUI in driver manager shows "No additional drivers available."

From what I understand Mesa is, itself, a driver for AMD systems using Linux? How would I update it to hopefully fix my problems? Discover also doesn't have a pending Mesa update. Is there anything else I should be doing? Please help, thank you!

[claydoh]

Yes, mesa is the 3D graphics library set used by AMD and Intel graphics, it is not really a driver per se, but for all intents, we can consider it one.

(these libs also being in flathub/snap does make it more confusing -- but these provide a specific library version that a flatpak/snap app might require, so unless you are experiencing issues when using a flatpak or snap app specifically, we can ignore that for the moment)

So, some basics:
Which graphics card do you have?
How long has this been happening?
Can you be more specific about "graphics issues from openGL renderers?"


If this is mostly related to Steam games, have you tried using a different Proton version?
I see many manmy reports on gaming sources that this game frezzes or locks up for a lot of ppeople in recent months, tho most of that involves Nvidia and people on rollin distros


Mesa has not had an update since July, but there was a kernel update about two weeks ago. And there are Proton updates regularly as well.

First thing I'd try is to boot to a previous kernel at your Grub boot menu, and see if that has any effect.

[clammer]

I swapped to Linux 7.0.0-24 briefly and the issues still happened. if that wasn't what you meant by booting to a previous kernel, then I don't think I have that option.

The deadlock issue was happening literally with the latest patch, but it was set to openGL so I thought it was related. After swapping to vulkan it still happened so it could just be a game issue itself. Different proton versions I tried didn't help, but I didn't try all of them yet.

I'm using radeon RX 6600- The problem is very specific- I'm making a small game in Godot and opening an option in my in-game menu started causing bad sprite flickering. It didn't always do this and I didn't change anything in it, nor does the version matter. Changing the renderer off of openGL fixed the issue, but since I'm aiming for a web release it's the only option for when I export it. Also, this problem seems to only be on my end, I got a couple people to try it. I've been chasing this problem down for about a week now with no progress and I can't imagine what else it could be because everything else works. Updating Mesa seemed like the only possible fix.

You said "but these provide a specific library version that a flatpak/snap app might require," is that why mine is on 26.0.8 instead of 26.2.4? I shouldn't try to upgrade?

Also, I thought to test other games in the same engine- Cassette beasts is a godot game, no issues, but team fortress 2 crashed twice in quick succession with "Team Fortress 2 - Vulkan-64 bit" of tf-linux64 is not responding. Deadlock didn't give a crash error for whatever reason, but maybe it just means it's a source issue, but it could also be on my end because tf2 doesn't get big updates.

[claydoh]

I swapped to Linux 7.0.0-24 briefly and the issues still happened. if that wasn't what you meant by booting to a previous kernel, then I don't think I have that option.

In Grub, unless you have a brand new install, and haven't updated, there should be multiple kernel builds/versions to choose from. Up to three are kept around.

You said "but these provide a specific library version that a flatpak/snap app might require," is that why mine is on 26.0.8 instead of 26.2.4? I shouldn't try to upgrade?

If a flatpak app wants and needs a specific version, there will be a flatpak-ed set of mesa libs for that version. The flatpak application will use this instead of the stock Ubuntu Mesa version.


Now, as for the mesa version in Ubuntu, these are mostly static versions, as Ubuntu is a "static" distro. In LTS, these do see upgrades periodically via HWE, but not until ~ April.

There are sources for current mesa, which I did not mention off the bat, as that can be jumping the gun without more detials. And having a very solid, well-tested and not-shiny-fresh GPU (I have had one of the myself) on top of the recent nature of the problems made starting with the things that have changed first more logical. Ubuntu's mesa has not changed.

Which makes me think of another question:
Is Godot a native install or a flatpak or snap? In these latter cases, having the more current mesa could possibly be the bug

But the go-to for using the current Mesa version is the Kisak PPA (I use it myself as it does help on my Intel Arc B580)
It is easy enough to try, and then to revert if needed with ppa-purge.

[clammer]

In Grub, unless you have a brand new install, and haven't updated, there should be multiple kernel builds/versions to choose from. Up to three are kept around.

...

Which makes me think of another question:
Is Godot a native install or a flatpak or snap? In these latter cases, having the more current mesa could possibly be the bug

I did have to do a GRUB fix a few months ago, so that could be why. It showed Linux 7.0.0-(number) and it was I think 24, 28 and 32 for options? I went back to the highest number after testing.

Godot is a native install, from the official site. I should have probably mentioned that the visual bug also happens in exported versions of the game, but only for me. I might try the PPA when I get a chance...

Finding out it's a vulkan crash on tf2 is concerning, it's pretty identical to the deadlock crash and I'm not sure what to do about it. Is there some way to roll back to a previous version or something? CPU is also AMD if it helps.

[claydoh]

You should be on kernel build 7.0.0-38 as the latest, you can check using the About section in System Settings, the kinfocenter application, or in the terminal via uname -r or kinfo

[clammer]

Oops, it is 7.0.0-38. I just remembered there were 3 options.

[clammer]

Okay, I haven't tried the Kisak PPA yet but I decided to double check tf2 out of curiosity and it was actually on vulkan... swapping it to openGL actually fixed the crashing, can't do that for deadlock though. I think I have a vulkan problem but I'm not sure. I'm also getting a random screen glitch just normally, I can't get a picture because there's no obvious cause and it lasts a split second. Maybe I should try using a previous kernel for an extended period of time and see what happens? I'm trying to avoid a reinstall but it's seeming unavoidable the longer this goes on.

[clammer]

drkonqi is refusing to upgrade. Starting in secure boot made the godot glitch stop.