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Why gpu acceleration suddenly stops working for flatpak apps? (sopuli.xyz)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
9 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

I have an nvidia gpu, and run some apps through flatpak. And there is weird problem of gpu acceleration suddenly just stops working in flatpak apps.

Normally when i for example run zoom, i can stream my screen no problem, blender gets full performace from gpu. But if run these programs some time later, zoom just shows black screen, and blender lags so much.

In between this time, i did not do anything to installed packages. I did not do a system update, i did not update flatpak packages. Everything should have been working as it worked earlier but it doesnt.

I found out that in between that time, new nvidia driver version is released on flathub, and updating nvidia driver package specifically, fixes gpu acceleration in flatpak apps. But now i have a question, why does already installed driver suddelnly stops working, until i update it?

all 9 comments

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[–] 7 points 7 months ago (5 children)

Have to see it live to be sure, but it sounds like potentially you're getting an update while the machine is running, and you haven't rebooted to load the new GPU module.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    I dont have an auto update enabled on my system, and i always reboot system after update. For flatpak specifically, when i hear people complaining about me streaming the black screen, i just update flatpak nvidia package, and dont even need to restart zoom to be able to start streaming again. And as i said, it realy does happen suddenly. I can stream video normally, but few minutes later, while still in meeting, i start streaming again and it shows black screen, while i did absolutely nothing.

    Really weird stuff.

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    Wait a minute, what is the Flatpak Nvidia package? Do you need that for GPU acceleration for Flatpak apps on Nvidia? How do you even know whether GPU acceleration is working?

    (I recently got a new laptop and it's the first time I have a dedicated GPU, and I have no idea how it all works. Sorry for hijacking your thread.)

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago

    If you have an Nvidia GPU, run nvidia-smi in your terminal and it will show with prices are engaging the GPU.

    For AMD any process monitor should show GPU usage for procs, or there is radeontop for more detailed info.

    I think nvtop now just supports all the GPUs as well, but haven't used it in a long time.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    Kind of sounds like you have a rogue process engage the Wayland API to take exclusive control over something. Maybe you're running multiple video apps that take input from your camera or streaming device at the same time, like Discord, Zoom, and OBS all running at the same time. One has exclusive access while you stream, but then another engages the same device and takes control for a split second, killing the other apps access.

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    • [–] 6 points 7 months ago* (1 child)

    Had that problem recently, apparently the (nvidia) gpu driver version of the system and the one within the flatpak need to be exactly the same. Ran a flatpak update and it worked again.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 7 months ago

    I dont know, maybe its some kind of mandela effect i got, because i do need to update flatpak after system update. Maybe i just didnt update flatpak and didnt noticed everything not working until hours later, because lightweight apps didnt run as slow or had graphics bugs.

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    • [–] 0 points 7 months ago

    That's the main reason I created desktop launchers that use Nvidia together with the program no matter if it's needed or not, maybe you should try it

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