Arch Linux

ArchEr9

Member

Registered: 2025-03-18

Posts: 39

Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

I am using Firefox on Linux LTS Kernel on a Intel TigerLake CPU with integrated GPU. I have noticed that Firefox does not utilize hardware encoding. When I look at Help > More Troubleshooting information in the Failure Log section I get the error message
RenderCompositorSWGL failed mapping default framebuffer, no dt

Also the Webrender section has the following values which lends to the conclusion that HW acceleration is not used.

WEBRENDER	
default	available		
user	force_enabled	Force enabled by pref	
env	blocklisted	Blocklisted by gfxInfo	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DDX_INTEL
WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR	
default	disabled	Disabled by default	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DISABLED
user	available	Enabled via gfx.webrender.compositor	
env	blocklisted	Blocklisted by gfxInfo	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR_DISABLED
WEBRENDER_PARTIAL	
default	available		
WEBRENDER_SHADER_CACHE	
default	disabled	Disabled by default	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DISABLED
WEBRENDER_OPTIMIZED_SHADERS	
default	available		
WEBRENDER_ANGLE	
default	available		
env	unavailable	OS not supported	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_OS_NOT_SUPPORTED
WEBRENDER_DCOMP_PRESENT	
default	available		
user	disabled	User disabled via pref	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DCOMP_PREF_DISABLED
env	unavailable	Requires GPU process	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_NO_GPU_PROCESS
runtime	unavailable	Requires ANGLE	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DCOMP_NOT_ANGLE
VP8_HW_ENCODE	
default	available		
env	blocklisted	#BLOCKLIST_FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING
VP9_HW_ENCODE	
default	available		
env	blocklisted	#BLOCKLIST_FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING
H264_HW_ENCODE	
default	available		
AV1_HW_ENCODE	
default	available		
env	blocklisted	#BLOCKLIST_FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_VIDEO_ENCODING_MISSING

I have a 12th generation TigerLake processor and in this processor VP9 and AV1 support is enabled for both encode and decode. But in both of these the support is shown as blocklisted, as can be seen above for the section VP9_HW_ENCODE and AV1_HW_ENCODE.

The output of the command glxinfo -B is

name of display: :0
display: :0  screen: 0
direct rendering: Yes
Extended renderer info (GLX_MESA_query_renderer):
    Vendor: Intel (0x8086)
    Device: Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (TGL GT2) (0x9a78)
    Version: 25.2.1
    Accelerated: yes
    Video memory: 7567MB
    Unified memory: yes
    Preferred profile: core (0x1)
    Max core profile version: 4.6
    Max compat profile version: 4.6
    Max GLES1 profile version: 1.1
    Max GLES[23] profile version: 3.2
OpenGL vendor string: Intel
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (TGL GT2)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 25.2.1-arch1.2
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile

OpenGL version string: 4.6 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 25.2.1-arch1.2
OpenGL shading language version string: 4.60
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile

OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 3.2 Mesa 25.2.1-arch1.2
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 3.20

What should be done so that Firefox starts to use Hardware decoding? i.e. WEBRENDER, WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR, WEBRENDER_SHADER_CACHE support is enabled as well as support for VP9 and AV1? VP8 support has been dropped from the 12th generation Intel processor.

All help and suggestions would be welcome.

Last edited by ArchEr9 (2025-09-17 13:18:34)

lilydjwg

Member

Registered: 2010-06-20

Posts: 69

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

FEATURE_FAILURE_DDX_INTEL => You've installed xf86-video-intel, which would cause you all kinds of weird issues if your display card isn't ancient. Try uninstall it.

ArchEr9

Member

Registered: 2025-03-18

Posts: 39

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

I do not have xf86-video-intel installed.

Xephon

Member

Registered: 2024-12-22

Posts: 189

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

Do you have intel-media-driver installed?

If you do take a look at this:
https://github.com/intel/media-driver/b … imitations

ArchEr9

Member

Registered: 2025-03-18

Posts: 39

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

Yeah I have Intel Media driver, i.e. intel-media-driver package installed.

Now according to an Arch Wiki entry for Intel_graphics,

For the DDX driver which provides 2D acceleration in Xorg use one of the following drivers:

    The modesetting driver included in the xorg-server package is the recommended choice for Gen 4 hardware and later. It uses the DRI driver for acceleration via glamor.
    The xf86-video-intel package provides the legacy intel DDX driver from Gen 2 to Gen 9 hardware. This package is generally not recommended, see note below.

I have a Gen 12 hardware. And I am running KDE on Wayland. Please see the output of the inxi command below

$ inxi -G
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Tiger Lake-LP GT2 [UHD Graphics G4] driver: i915 v: kernel
  Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.21.1.18 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.8
    compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: modesetting dri: iris gpu: i915
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,swrast
    platforms: gbm,wayland,x11,surfaceless,device
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa v: 25.2.2-arch1.2
    renderer: Mesa Intel UHD Graphics (TGL GT2)
  API: Vulkan Message: No Vulkan data available.
  Info: Tools: api: clinfo, eglinfo, glxinfo, vulkaninfo
    de: kscreen-console,kscreen-doctor gpu: gputop, intel_gpu_top, lsgpu
    wl: wayland-info x11: xdpyinfo, xprop, xrandr

For the WEBRENDER, as can be seen from my initial post, the error that I am getting is

WEBRENDER	
default	available		
user	force_enabled	Force enabled by pref	
env	blocklisted	Blocklisted by gfxInfo	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DDX_INTEL

So how do I get DDX enabled on Wayland ?

Then for WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR I get the error FEATURE_FAILURE_DISABLED. So why is WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR also disabled? My existing compositor is kwin_wayland. Please refer to the output of the inxi command given above.

WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR	
default	disabled	Disabled by default	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_DISABLED
user	available	Enabled via gfx.webrender.compositor	
env	blocklisted	Blocklisted by gfxInfo	Blocklisted; failure code FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR_DISABLED

Xephon

Member

Registered: 2024-12-22

Posts: 189

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

You do not need DDX enabled on Wayland. WEBRENDER is blacklisted probably because you were messing with settings
And WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR is for Windows and macOS, it's not supposed to work on linux

https://github.com/mozilla-firefox/fire … fxInfo.cpp

    // Bug 1710400: Disable Webrender on the deprecated Intel DDX driver
    for (const nsCString& driver : mDdxDrivers) {
      if (strcasestr(driver.get(), "Intel")) {
        *aStatus = nsIGfxInfo::FEATURE_BLOCKED_DEVICE;
        aFailureId = "FEATURE_FAILURE_DDX_INTEL";
        return NS_OK;
      }
    }

    ////////////////////////////////////
    // FEATURE_WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR
    APPEND_TO_DRIVER_BLOCKLIST(
        OperatingSystem::Linux, DeviceFamily::All,
        nsIGfxInfo::FEATURE_WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR,
        nsIGfxInfo::FEATURE_BLOCKED_DEVICE, DRIVER_COMPARISON_IGNORED,
        V(0, 0, 0, 0), "FEATURE_FAILURE_WEBRENDER_COMPOSITOR_DISABLED", "");

Post the entire contents of about:support and

pacman -Q | grep intel

Last edited by Xephon (2025-09-18 06:04:46)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,158

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

Make that

pacman -Qs intel

to not capture random descriptions out of context resp. losing the related package.

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

ArchEr9

Member

Registered: 2025-03-18

Posts: 39

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

Yes I have been playing around the settings to get Hardware encoding to work. I have set the following parameters till now to get it to work

gfx.webrender.all = true
gfx.webrender.compositor.force-enabled = true
media.mediasource.vp9.enabled = true
dom.media.webcodecs.h265.enabled = true

The output of the command

pacman -Qs intel

is given below.

$ pacman -Qs intel
local/intel-gmmlib 22.8.1-1
    Intel Graphics Memory Management Library
local/intel-gpu-tools 2.1-1
    Tools for development and testing of the Intel DRM driver
local/intel-media-driver 25.2.6-1
    Intel Media Driver for VAAPI — Broadwell+ iGPUs
local/intel-ucode 20250812-1
    Microcode update files for Intel CPUs
local/libmfx 23.2.2-5
    Intel Media SDK dispatcher library
local/libva-utils 2.22.0-1
    Intel VA-API Media Applications and Scripts for libva
local/libvpl 2.15.0-1
    Intel Video Processing Library
local/linux-firmware-intel 20250808-1
    Firmware files for Linux - Firmware for Intel devices
local/onetbb 2022.2.0-1
    oneAPI Threading Building Blocks - a high level abstract threading library
local/presage 0.9.1-3
    An intelligent predictive text entry system
local/vpl-gpu-rt 25.2.6-1
    Intel VPL runtime implementation for Intel GPUs (Tiger Lake and newer)
local/whois 5.6.4-1
    Intelligent WHOIS client

For the about:support from Firefox, please give me more time, I am trying to see if I can save it as an HTML or pdf or something similar. Otherwise it is going to be too big.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,158

Re: Firefox does not use HW Acceleration despite supported Intel iGPU

There should be links to copy the text of the support page (or the json data)
You might want https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=vulkan-intel but idk whether FF uses that for encoding.
Also as sanity check:

vainfo

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc