Issues with ngl GTK 4.0 renderer on google-kukui

Describe your issue

What's the expected behaviour?

Apps using GTK 4.0 (like Nautilus, Gnome Settings or Newsflash) render without issues.

What's the current behaviour?

Apps using GTK 4.0 have graphical glitches, like disappearing or blinking text and icons.

Video kindly shared by Dirusy on Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@Dirusy/113403170316847330

How to reproduce your issue?

Open a GTK 4.0 app. Scroll somewhere.

What device are you using?

google-cozmo @Roboe

google-krane @Dirussy

Seems like it might affect all google-kukui users or other devices based on the MT8183 SoC. Similar report about google-kodama (@sado1): #3212 (comment 454355)

On what postmarketOS version did you encounter the issue?

• edge (master branch)

• v24.06

• I confirm that the issue still is present after running sudo apk upgrade -a

On what environment did you encounter the issue?

Environments

• GNOME Shell on Mobile (google-cozmo)
• Phosh (google-krane)
• Plasma Mobile
• Sxmo (Wayland/Sway) Please post the output of sxmo_version.sh
• Other: Please fill out

How did you get postmarketOS image?

• from https://images.postmarketos.org
• I built it using pmbootstrap
• It was preinstalled on my device

What's the build date of the image? (in yyyy-mm-dd format)

Additional information

Related upstream Panfrost issue: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa/-/issues/11892

Related upstream GTK 4 issue: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/issues/7012

Resizing the window might stop the issue temporarily.

Changing the renderer from ngl to the old one, gl, as indicated in https://postmarketos.org/edge/2024/02/05/gtk4-new-renderers/, fixes everything:

$ echo "export GSK_RENDERER=gl" | sudo tee /etc/profile.d/gtk4-old-renderer.sh

A less invasive fix, using ngl seems to be:

$ echo "export GDK_GL_DISABLE=base-instance" | sudo tee /etc/profile.d/gtk4-fix-rendering.sh

changed the description

added chromeos graphics labels

Is there a way to readout which renderer is used?

I don't really know. Although the variable can be toggled between gl and ngl values, according to this GTK blog post, to force a renderer.

you can also change the rendering by adding GDK_GL_DISABLE=base-instance in the .profil file in the home directory so you don't have to use sudo

changed the description