Software rendering fallback #6073
Replies: 3 comments 27 replies
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I don't think it's feasible to port all of our rendering infrastructure away from OpenGL to CPU rendering à la foot. Do software rasterization layers like llvmpipe help? |
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it would yes, it was the solution i had in mind |
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Yes, I developed Ghostty on Linux with llvmpipe for ~6 months while M-series processors were new and VMware enabled GPU acceleration for them. They should work. |
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as another note the gpu requirements for both linux and macos are very light, not being able to create a gl context is very likely indicator of buggy gpu drivers my assumption is this relates to nvidia which ghostty can do nothing about (which would affect alot of apps?). If the solution above does not work you should install separate backup terminal if its that "critical" (what if any other bug makes your terminal unuseable?) there is also always the tty which you can access with ctrl+alt+fn1 through fn7 if its extremely critical (your graphical env is normally logged in on tty1 so use the others in that case) <----- id say this is your answer right here in the context of criticality on linux it requires opengl 3.3 which is ~15 years old macos metal which goes back even to some intel macs |
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I'm in this state again. gnome-console launches. The journalctl output: ptyxis launches. Has the same journalctl output. blackbox-terminal launches. Same journalctl output. kitty does not launch. Same journalctl output, with stdout/stderr: alacritty does not launch. Same journalctl output, with stdout/stderr: foot does not launch. No journalctl output, with stdout/stderr: when i tried running foot with cage i get a segfault, here with gdb backtrace: ghostty does launch, but with "Unable to create a GL context" instead of a tty, followed by a segault 2 seconds later. Stdout/stderr: I tried some of the "fixes" in that issue, the only thing that changes behavior is |
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Well it's obvious that your driver is malfunctioning, and that needs to be rectified. I'm not sure what we can do if your GPU is flat out defective. Also it's |
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ghostty backtrace on segfault: |
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It's not defective, userspace and the kernel module versions are out of sync and a reboot fixes it. Sometimes i want to postpone rebooting, and if the computer shits itself you kinda need a terminal. lowercase crashes like the rest, i also tried |
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Eureka: |
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I've definitely considered this. It's possible for sure. It's even something I've considered not just making a fallback but making it so that we use the CPU renderer for the first few frames while acquiring a GPU context and resources (since that takes a few frames). Kind of crazy, but cool. In the short term, I think having your system fallback to a software rasterizer as pluie suggested is the much more sane approach. When my GPU driver has been broken, falling back to something like llvmpipe is how I work around this. This helps many more programs work, not just Ghostty. 😄 |
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As a note, I'm planning on playing with a software implementation of the GraphicsAPI layer. No guarantees it will go anywhere, and it wouldn't serve as a dynamic fallback without additional plumbing, it would be a static compilation flag just like OpenGL vs Metal. |
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Please make this happen. 🙏 The current Ghostty release (1.2.0) bumped the minimum required OpenGL version to 4.3, and... |
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FWIW running with As far as I can see no software update will make this work (I've got a laptop with the same software where glxinfo shows OpenGL 4.6), so if we're more than a couple of old farts clinging to old hardware it might make sense to relax the GL version requirement a bit if possible at all -- I'm not clear what in the render rework required 4.3 exactly. (FWIW, this also took me a bit of time to understand -- #1123 is supposed to have added an error message if the version is too old, but for me ghostty just errors saying it failed to acquire a GL context before that so it wasn't obvious why that would fail) Thanks for ghostty anyway :) |
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I had a look at why 4.3 is required and while I'm far from an opengl expert I guess it won't be obvious -- besides the obvious version checks we're missing:
I think I'll stick to llvmpipe for now :)
I opened #9586 to make that more obvious |
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Reuse old hardware! Don't waste ressources! Use what you have/find/gather. Think of schools, makerspaces, clubs etc. Not everybody has access to the latest hardware. Don't buy new too often. Reuse! |
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A terminal is what I consider a critical piece of software. When I update my drivers I sometimes experience that ghostty refuses to start due to not being able to open a GL context. This blocks me from working until I restart. Is it possibly to add a software-rendering fallback (with warnings of course) to smoothen the impact?
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