Artix Linux Forum

Broken menus and mouse pointer after updating Mesa

19 January 2023, 10:45:38

First of all I apologize if this might not be the best place to post this issue. I am running Openbox and tint2, no DE, and using the latest 5.15 LTS kernel and linux-firmware. My GPU is an AMD Radeon Barcelo and my CPU is a Ryzen 7. After the latest mesa update (22.3.3) I have a lot of problems:
1) my Openbox menu has black borders around each entry;
2) my mouse pointer disappears when hovering on icons but reappears as soon as I right-click on the Desktop to open the Openbox menu. However, it's almost impossible to click anywhere because the pointer disappears again;
3) some app icons in the tint2 systray won't show anymore but if I right-click where they are supposed to be, the app menu shows up.

If I downgrade mesa to 22.3.2 the problem vanishes but I wouldn't really want to keep this version forever, since the updated version has a lot of bugfixes and I don't really know how long the old version would be compatible with future xorg updates and the like. I submitted the issue to the mesa gitlab but they don't have an answer.
How could I try to fix, or, at least, properly debug this? Thanks in advance.

Re: Broken menus and mouse pointer after updating Mesa

Reply #1 – 19 January 2023, 18:38:43

If you want to keep that Mesa version, also keep the vulkan-radeon version at the same number, and the 32-bit lib packages if you use any. There should be no issue, I did that with the 19.x series for months.

Regarding the bug, you can try a few things:
Switch to a non lts kernel (linux/linux-zen/etc)
You can also use a different window manager since it should also fix cursor issues (i encountered them before), assuming you use lxde/lxqt install xfwm4, icewm or kwin as drop in replacement of stacking window managers, then switch it under Preferences-Session.

Re: Broken menus and mouse pointer after updating Mesa

Reply #2 – 19 January 2023, 20:51:45

Thanks for your reply, actually I don't use any DE, I just use Openbox as WM and picom on top of a minimal installation (btw uninstalling picom has no effect). I have tried to use the latest linux 6.1 but it didn't help either.

Re: Broken menus and mouse pointer after updating Mesa

Reply #3 – 19 January 2023, 21:01:05

You can try IceWM as a full session too
Possibly, with picom, if you have some damage, glx or transparency settings put weirdly it can also screw with window elements, try tweaking those, cause --experimental-backends was made the default option, it went smooth for most people but who knows.