Ubuntu Version:
25.04
Desktop Environment (if applicable):
GNOME
Problem Description:
Ever since installing 24.10 I noticed that Firefox’s web rendering is worse than in my dual-boot Windows 11. Searching for a possible reason I found some topics, sometimes pointing to obscure Firefox settings, sometimes blaming the snap core version…but honestly I could not understand all the talk and possible interdependencies. What I do experience is: on one of my main sites (https://www.inktable.net, a card game simulator) the graphic elements are rendered slowly and bumpy. Chromium works fine in contrast.
Relevant System Information:
NVidia RTX 2080 Super (570 drivers)
Screenshots or Error Messages:
None
What I’ve Tried:
Currently, Firefox hardware acceleration is set to use recommended settings. I changed some values in about:config, but as I said I merely fiddled with that stuff. I once has Firefox (137.0.2) running very smoothly, but I do not know why that what lost.
Any guidance is appreciated.
Does it make any difference if you disable hardware acceleration in Firefox?
If not, then as a test, does it make any difference if you run Firefox with LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 environment variable set?
Which specific values did you change?
I tried both, I disabled hardware acceleration as per your first suggestion and I started Firefox from bash after setting the environment variable. Rendering is still rather slow.
Honestly I do not recall what I changed (I know, I know…). I reset the profile before following the suggestions above. The problem remains.
EDIT: Chromium works fine in contrast.
Please try:
sudo apt install libnvidia-egl-wayland1
and log in again. Because if that package is missing then the Nvidia driver won’t work correctly in Wayland sessions. We thought we had fixed this (it should be installed automatically). But I’ve seen a couple of bug reports in recent weeks that would be explained by the absence of libnvidia-egl-wayland1.
A second potential issue is access to the correct drivers from within snaps. So a very simple way to test that theory is to download the raw Firefox release and try launching that.
We a heading the right direction:
libnvidia-egl-wayland1 is already installed, but testing the “raw” release showed that the raw fox is running very, very smoothly. So driver access might be the issue here.
In case you are using the snap version, there has been a problem with Nvidia GPU hardware-acceleration access for the firefox snap for a while now. You can check this by going to “about:support” and scrolling down to look for the WebGL driver firefox is using. It’s probably using “llvmpipe” in your case instead of your Nvidia GPU.
A few months ago, it was recommended in the bugzilla forums to switch the snap to the latest/candidate/core24 channel because that one magically supported the GPU again and apparently it was promised that his change would be applied to the main channel as well.
I never switched back to any main channel because it was working so well, but the upgrade to 25.04 switched the channel back to the main one automatically - and broke GPU acceleration again.
So I simply switched channels again back to latest/candidate/core24 and then hardware acceleration was back:
sudo snap refresh --channel=latest/candidate/core24 firefox
1 Like
I can confirm that the snap refresh to core24 fixes the issue. Thanks you friendly people.
1 Like