Linux Viewer Issues

[Noodles]

Ok, maybe someone has some.suggestions. And my issues may be Linux more than Viewer.

My laptop, its older, its not great, it works. I used to run SL on it in Windows with Firestorm alright. Lower settings, sometimes it got a little warm, but it worked.

I switched it to Linux, a year or so ago, its running Mint. I am not entirely opposed to switching if needed. I can run SL, but it basically just, crashes, very quickly. Like, 5-10 mimites of use. I have tried Firestorm, and Cool Viewer (I think), and one other I can't remeber, same issues.

Any suggestions, I am using the Nvidia drivers for video, maybe I need to use something else. It has a Geforce 940mx, which isn't amazing, but it worked in Windows well enough.

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

How much RAM?

 

[Noodles]

How much RAM?

16 GB total, Video shares the base ram I think. Its been a bit since I looked into that for this laptop.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Look into ~/.firestorm_x64/logs/Firestorm.log for errors. Sometimes the crash reason is noted there.

 

[Noodles]

Look into ~/.firestorm_x64/logs/Firestorm.log for errors. Sometimes the crash reason is noted there.

I'll check there, good idea.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Do you know if you're using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or the open source Nouveau drivers?

 

[CronoCloud Creeggan]

Do you know if you're using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or the open source Nouveau drivers?

Ah, good question! That would be my next guess, making certain you're using the right proprietary driver for your card which will be the Legacy driver 470 series for you.

Another question, what CPU? Standard firestorm builds require AVX2 support so if the CPU is older it might not have it.

 

[Noodles]

Do you know if you're using the Nvidia proprietary drivers, or the open source Nouveau drivers?

It should be the Nvidia drivers.

 

[Noodles]

Ah, good question! That would be my next guess, making certain you're using the right proprietary driver for your card which will be the Legacy driver 470 series for you.

Another question, what CPU? Standard firestorm builds require AVX2 support so if the CPU is older it might not have it.

I would have to check on the CPU, though it worked with Windows.

I did some other troubleshooting and adjusted some settings and I think the core issue is that my laptop is simply, too old at this point.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Did anything noteworthy show up in the Firestorm logs?

 

[Noodles]

Did anything noteworthy show up in the Firestorm logs?

I fed it to Claude.

The previous session definitely crashed
Line 3 confirms it right at startup: Exec marker '/home/ramen/.firestorm_x64/logs/Firestorm.exec_marker' found; last exec crashed. So whatever you're investigating happened before this log, and Firestorm detected it on relaunch.
The most likely culprit: Intel integrated GPU
This is the biggest red flag. Line 118 shows Firestorm classified your GPU as Class1 (the lowest tier), and line 119 confirms it's applying the Intel feature mask. Line 374 then logs VRAM detected: 0 — it literally can't read your VRAM, which is classic Intel iGPU behavior on Linux. The hardware is an i5-6200U, a Skylake-era laptop chip from ~2015 with Intel HD 520 integrated graphics.
Running Firestorm on an Intel iGPU on Linux is a notoriously crash-prone combination. The driver (Mesa/i965 or iris) has historically had issues with the deferred rendering pipeline that SL viewers use heavily. The viewer was configured for deferred rendering with shadows, PBR materials, reflections, and a massive pile of loaded shaders — that's a lot to ask of an iGPU.
Memory pressure is building
Tracking Committed_AS across the three memory snapshots in the log:
Startup (~20:39:48): ~12.5 GB committed
Mid-login (~20:40:20): ~15.3 GB
Post-login (~20:40:42): ~17.7 GB
The system only has ~16 GB RAM with a tiny 2 GB swap. Committed_AS was already exceeding physical RAM + swap well before the end of the log. Firestorm is notorious for being memory hungry, and the texture cache was configured for a whopping 7448 MB. That's almost certainly too large for this machine given everything else running.
Wearable/avatar appearance loop at the end
Lines 1251 onward show a flood of Stale appearance received #4436 attempt to roll back from #4436... dropping warnings. These happen right as the viewer is trying to rez Thrax's avatar. While this usually isn't a crash cause on its own, it suggests the avatar appearance system was stuck in a loop — and combined with the memory/GPU pressure, could be what pushed it over the edge.
What to try
The most impactful fixes, in order:
Lower graphics settings — drop to the Low or Medium preset. Definitely disable shadows, reflections, and any PBR/deferred rendering options if they're on.
Reduce the texture cache size — 7448 MB is enormous. Drop it to something like 512–1024 MB in Preferences → Network & Files.
Try the --norender or software render workarounds — on Intel Linux, launching with LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 or MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=3.3 can sometimes help with driver-specific crashes, though performance suffers.
Check if the prior crash left a minidump — look in ~/.firestorm_x64/logs/ for a .dmp file from the previous session, which would give a much more specific stack trace.
The hardware is honestly at the low end of what SL/Firestorm can reasonably run on Linux with the current viewer generation. The Intel iGPU + memory overcommit combination is the most probable crash cause.

And as suggested I checked drivers and such, which gave this response.

Mesa 25.2.8 — that's very recent, basically current
iris driver — that's the modern Intel driver (replaced the old i965 driver around kernel 5.x), it's the right one to be using
OpenGL 4.6 — full version support, no fallbacks
Xorg has no errors related to the GPU at all, just font directory warnings

The graphics are at the lowest setting. It suggested the cache was set too high so I lowered it to 1024 from like 9000

 

[Noodles]

Ok, I am.checking why it lists Intel 520, when the sticker shows Nvidia 940mx

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

Your laptop has two GPUs, which, under Windows, are selected automatically by the system for performance (Nvidia) or power savings (Intel). The legacy Nvidia driver in Linux recognizes this, and allows you to switch from one to the other manually (requires a session restart), but can't do it automatically. It looks like your laptop is using the Intel GPU.

There is an app you'll need to install that runs in your system tray that allows you to switch GPUs, but I don't remember what it's called - I think nvidia-prime-applet. I have a Dell laptop that is like this. I leave it in performance mode and still get a few hours of battery life when I'm just diddling around on the Internet.

 

[Katheryne Helendale]

I found an old thread in the Mint forums from someone with a similar setup trying to get the nVidia proprietary drivers set up. It might help you.

https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=59&t=380103&p=2220284#p2220284