3D acceleration broken on ARM Linux with Apple Mac M1

[iverberk]

I noticed that 3D acceleration seems broken on (recent?) Linux versions. I made a demonstration video showcasing the problem. Basically the screen redrawing is totally broken, to a point where it's basically unusable. Sometimes the issues are more subtle but in general there are all sorts of weird drawing artifacts visible. I created a default VM with 3D acceleration enabled (8192 MB) and booted from the Lunar ARM Ubuntu Live CD ISO. I'm on a MacBook Pro 16" M1 Max with 64 GB RAM, 5 cores and 32 GB of that is assigned to the VM.

The kernel version is 5.19.0-21 but I've tried with more recent kernels (6+) on NixOS and the issue remains. I've also installed open-vm-tools but it doesn't resolve the issue of erratic screen redraws. Mesa version is 22.2.4 and I've attached a screenshot with the OpenGL settings. It's 100% an issue with hardware acceleration because if I disable it, the problem disappears (and the speed also of course). Also disabling the hardware acceleration in something like Chromium resolves the issue immediately.

I can't imagine that I'm the only one experiencing these issues and if so, I'd like to get some help on how to figure out what's wrong. Also, let me know if you need more information. I bought Fusion specifically for the awesome 3D acceleration support on Linux, so I'm disappointed that I run into these issues. Hopefully someone can help resolve it

[ColoradoMarmot]

I didn't notice that when I was working with a Lunar VM last week, but didn't push the envelope.  Are you only running the live CD or have you actually installed it in the vm?

[iverberk]

Hi @ColoradoMarmot,

I did both, but in the video it's just booting from the live CD. In both cases I see the same issue. Like I said, if it were this broken surely someone (at VMware) would have already noticed it. I can't think of anything that's wrong with my system though, it's just a plain VMware Fusion install (Professional Version 13.0.0 (20802013)) so I'm not sure what I can change and it should surely be reproducible by anyone with the same version.

[ColoradoMarmot]

Have you tried it with the previous version (the name escapes me at the moment).  You'd need the last release of that version.

Wouldn't surprise me if Ubuntu broke something in lunar.....

[iverberk]

Kinetic Kudu (22.10) you mean? I think I tried it with that one as well but I will give it another go. They removed the desktop ARM ISO I think, so it's a bit harder to get going. This issue is definitely not only related to Ubuntu. I'm running a NixOS setup as well (https://github.com/iverberk/nix-config/blob/main/machines/vm-shared.nix#L42) and I'm seeing the same kind of artifacts, although not nearly as severe. Chromium is the best example where I can switch off the hardware acceleration in the app and everything is fine.

If you are able (meaning you have a Mac(book) with Apple Silicon), would you mind trying to load the Lunar Live ISO as well in VMware Fusion 13.0 and see if you experience the same issues with hardware acceleration?

[iverberk · Accepted solution]

Ok, so the live CD is picking X11 as the windowing system for whatever reason. This seems to cause the severe graphics artifacts because when I install it activates Wayland, which seems to work just fine. Testing with glxgears and disabling the vertical sync show the expected FPS. Sorry for the noise on this, should have checked better. I have a final issue with my Kitty editor that does not want show mouse selection when selecting text in the terminal but I'll investigate further or create a separate ticket (Kitty author says it's a GPU driver bug).