I have been using tumbleweed (with the kde desktop) for about a year, so
far very smoothly (I’m a faithful SUSE user since 1998).
A couple of months ago, during an update, zypper asked whether I wanted
to allow the Mesa driver to be installed, with the warning that it could lead to
instabilities with kde. Since then, I have thus added a lock to Mesa*, so that
the request would not show up anymore.
However, during today’s update, zypper asked me to remove the Mesa lock,
the reason being that kwin5 (kde window manager) now requires Mesa.
Do you know if previous problems between kde and Mesa have been resolved,
and whether it’s safe to remove the Mesa lock? Although I am using snapper
under btrfs for troubleshooting, I’d prefer not to break my system.
Not installed, but updated. The old was 18.1. The new is 18.3.
with the warning that it could lead to
instabilities with kde. Since then, I have thus added a lock to Mesa*, so that
the request would not show up anymore.
However, during today’s update, zypper asked me to remove the Mesa lock,
the reason being that kwin5 (kde window manager) now requires Mesa.
I don’t think Mesa ever wasn’t required by Plasma. Mesa is a layer within the graphics system that AFAICT kwin heavily relies upon.
Do you know if previous problems between kde and Mesa have been resolved,
and whether it’s safe to remove the Mesa lock?
I don’t recall observing any problem, but I don’t remember any warning from zypper about it either.
The only warning I recall seeing relates to “Mesa-dri-nouveau” when using nvidia hardware with the OSS nouveau driver.
If you use the OSS (nouveau) drivers then hardware acceleration is provided by a separate package “Mesa-dri-nouveau”, this is marked as “experimental” with quite a “scary” warning in relation to KDE/Plasma. I’m using it with an eldlerly 8600GTS without problem. If you wish you can remove and taboo just that package, although without it any openGL rendering will be done by software emulation, thus increasing the CPU utilisation.
Note no installed Mesanouveau and no installed xf86-video-nouveau. NVidia gfx is running on newer technology modesetting X driver. Only the kernel is using integrated (non-experimental) nouveau, on top of which the upper level nouveaus would run, and modesetting does run.
Thanks Paul for the clarification. Apparently the nouveau driver is already installed and my kde
is presently fine, so I will accept this update. The warning provided by snapper is indeed quite scary…