[Mesa-users] How to completely disable 3D hardware acceleration

[R. Diez]

Hi all:

Can someone tell me how to disable 3D hardware acceleration completely? I guess "glxinfo | grep rendering" would then show "direct rendering: No".

I want to always use software 3D rendering, because my PC is hanging and I suspect it is the 3D hardware rendering. 2D acceleration seems to work fine, so I would like to keep it if possible.

Disabling the desktop compositor in Xfce reduces the problems significantly, but not completely, because some applications use 3D acceleration on their own.

I am aware that you can set LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 in the environment, but I am looking for a system-wide solution for all users that cannot be easily forgotten or overridden.

I found a tool called driconf, and I tried disabling 3D acceleration with it, but it seems to have no effect.

I am using Xubuntu 16.04.2 LTS:


$ uname -a
Linux rdiez3 4.8.0-54-generic #57~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Wed May 24 16:22:28 UTC 2017 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

X.Org X Server is version 1.18.4

OpenGL version string: 3.0 Mesa 12.0.6

The first PC I want to test this solution uses the Intel i965 driver, and the one with the freezing problem has this graphics hardware and software:

VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS780L [Radeon 3000] [1002:9616]
Subsystem: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd RS780L [Radeon 3000] [1458:d000]
Kernel driver in use: radeon
Kernel modules: radeon

Please copy me on the replies, as I am not (really) subscribed to this list.

Many thanks in advance,
      rdiez