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Open source Linux GPU drivers Mesa 21.1 released

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Developer Eric Engestrom has announced the availability of Mesa 21.1, the latest release for Linux open source graphics drivers powering Intel, AMD and more.

In the very short announcement, Engestrom mentioned Mesa will now be back to regular releases with a point release for bug fixes "every other week" which will see Mesa 21.1.1 on May 19. If you want stability, it's usually best to wait for at least that first point release.

As for what's new, as expected there's quite a lot including: RADV (AMD Vulkan driver) Variable Rate Shading, lots of RADV optimizations, Zink (OpenGL over Vulkan) saw a lot of expanded progress to bring it up to scratch and many smaller features and added hardware support.

See more about Mesa on the official site. How soon you get an update will be distribution dependent. Arch pulls it in quite quickly, while the likes of Ubuntu would need a PPA added like the kisak-mesa fresh PPA.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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15 comments
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Zappor May 6, 2021
I have a ppa that tracks release candidates if someone's interested: https://launchpad.net/~ernstp/+archive/ubuntu/mesarc
(it's on the commit right before they tagged 21.1, should be updated in a bit...)
BielFPs May 6, 2021
Which version of Mesa has the fix for Metro Exodus?
x_wing May 6, 2021
Quoting: BielFPsWhich version of Mesa has the fix for Metro Exodus?

Seems that it was only merged to 21.1.0:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/commits/mesa-21.1.0?utf8=%E2%9C%93&search=Fix+memory+leak
BielFPs May 6, 2021
Quoting: x_wingSeems that it was only merged to 21.1.0

Nice, I'll try to run it again once this version hit Manjaro stable
drlamb May 6, 2021
Quoting: BielFPsWhich version of Mesa has the fix for Metro Exodus?

Well the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
BielFPs May 6, 2021
Quoting: drlambWell the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
Mine doesn't even start, first it was crashing without anything, them I've forced the game to run once using steam runtime (so it could download some files) and try to run without it again.

It still crashes, but now it open a black screen before crashing, instead of not opening at all.
ripper81358 May 6, 2021
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: drlambWell the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
Mine doesn't even start, first it was crashing without anything, them I've forced the game to run once using steam runtime (so it could download some files) and try to run without it again.

It still crashes, but now it open a black screen before crashing, instead of not opening at all.

The MESA Fix for Metro Exodus has nothing todo with the game crashing on startup. It fixes a memory leak that appears after playing for 10-30 minutes.

For fixing crashes on startup you could try the following.

1. Avoid Wayland
2. Set the right native displayresolution in the games user.cfg file
3. Make shure that libibus is installed
DebianUser May 6, 2021
Quoting: ripper81358
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: drlambWell the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
Mine doesn't even start, first it was crashing without anything, them I've forced the game to run once using steam runtime (so it could download some files) and try to run without it again.

It still crashes, but now it open a black screen before crashing, instead of not opening at all.

The MESA Fix for Metro Exodus has nothing todo with the game crashing on startup. It fixes a memory leak that appears after playing for 10-30 minutes.

For fixing crashes on startup you could try the following.

1. Avoid Wayland
2. Set the right native displayresolution in the games user.cfg file
3. Make shure that libibus is installed

Same here, game is crashing at startup.. i have a black window... 1/4 of a second.

- i'm on wayland with XWayland i think: "WaylandEnable=false" in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
- libibus-1.0-5 installed
- no user.cfg in game folder
- weird thing, but i have tried to rename the .webm files into the game folder (i heard this could help, but not in my case, so i have renamed them back to their original name)
- i have tried "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/run-in-soldier %command%" with no success
- i have tried "SDL_VIDEODRIVER=x11 %command%" to force use of X11


In syslog, i see this when i try to launch the game:
kernel: [28873.954999] traps: A3 :: worker[592167] general protection fault ip:7f863fcdaad1 sp:7f85577fb138 error:0 in libc-2.31.so[7f863fba0000+14b000]


Last edited by DebianUser on 7 May 2021 at 8:02 am UTC
ripper81358 May 6, 2021
Quoting: DebianUser
Quoting: ripper81358
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: drlambWell the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
Mine doesn't even start, first it was crashing without anything, them I've forced the game to run once using steam runtime (so it could download some files) and try to run without it again.

It still crashes, but now it open a black screen before crashing, instead of not opening at all.

The MESA Fix for Metro Exodus has nothing todo with the game crashing on startup. It fixes a memory leak that appears after playing for 10-30 minutes.

For fixing crashes on startup you could try the following.

1. Avoid Wayland
2. Set the right native displayresolution in the games user.cfg file
3. Make shure that libibus is installed

Same here, game is crashing at startup.. i have a black window... 1/4 of a second.

- i'm on wayland with XWayland i think: "WaylandEnable=false" in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
- libibus-1.0-5 installed
- no user.cfg in game folder
- weird thing, but i have tried to rename the .webm files into the game folder (i heard this could help, but not in my case, so i have renamed them back to their original name)
- i have tried "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/run-in-soldier %command%" with no success

In syslog, i see this when i try to launch the game:
kernel: [28873.954999] traps: A3 :: worker[592167] general protection fault ip:7f863fcdaad1 sp:7f85577fb138 error:0 in libc-2.31.so[7f863fba0000+14b000]

The user.cfg is located in an hidden folder in your home directory not in the games folder itself. Take a look into the
.local or.config folder.

Please login into a prober X11/X.Org session before launching the game. Wayland is not ready for gaming at this point.
DebianUser May 6, 2021
Quoting: ripper81358
Quoting: DebianUser
Quoting: ripper81358
Quoting: BielFPs
Quoting: drlambWell the game crashes for me on Mesa-git so...
Mine doesn't even start, first it was crashing without anything, them I've forced the game to run once using steam runtime (so it could download some files) and try to run without it again.

It still crashes, but now it open a black screen before crashing, instead of not opening at all.

The MESA Fix for Metro Exodus has nothing todo with the game crashing on startup. It fixes a memory leak that appears after playing for 10-30 minutes.

For fixing crashes on startup you could try the following.

1. Avoid Wayland
2. Set the right native displayresolution in the games user.cfg file
3. Make shure that libibus is installed

Same here, game is crashing at startup.. i have a black window... 1/4 of a second.

- i'm on wayland with XWayland i think: "WaylandEnable=false" in /etc/gdm3/custom.conf
- libibus-1.0-5 installed
- no user.cfg in game folder
- weird thing, but i have tried to rename the .webm files into the game folder (i heard this could help, but not in my case, so i have renamed them back to their original name)
- i have tried "~/.steam/steam/steamapps/common/SteamLinuxRuntime_soldier/run-in-soldier %command%" with no success

In syslog, i see this when i try to launch the game:
kernel: [28873.954999] traps: A3 :: worker[592167] general protection fault ip:7f863fcdaad1 sp:7f85577fb138 error:0 in libc-2.31.so[7f863fba0000+14b000]

The user.cfg is located in an hidden folder in your home directory not in the games folder itself. Take a look into the
.local or.config folder.

Please login into a prober X11/X.Org session before launching the game. Wayland is not ready for gaming at this point.

Too bad, i'm just to dumb to make a proper Xorg configuration with my two screens...


Last edited by DebianUser on 7 May 2021 at 7:23 am UTC
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