Goot to read that ! You’re back to tearing issues then (better than crashes ). Installing a compositing manager should fix them, until someone finds why fbdev has those issues without compositing.
i3wm’s faq mentions using compton as a compositing manager. (it’s an old faq, maybe there’s something more recent). Do you think you could give it a try it if you have some time and report back ? (no worries if you can’t). I’m updating the intel gfx troubleshooting community doc and this would definitely help other i3wm users.
@taradiddles I’ve not been a fan of installing software in dom0 so have avoided throwing a compositing package in there. Is there a stable, trustworthy version of compton even out there? I know it’s been forked several times, so you know…
@qub411Ah, I thought it would as simple as qubes-dom0-update compton
Given that i3wm are usually Qubes OS power users maybe someone in the Qubes team would volunteer to build/provide a package.
(Pinging @Demi to see if there’s such interest).
[edit - I see that fedora32 packages picom and compton - I now understand that you prefer not to install additional packages - it’s not about building then installing in dom0 like I originally thought]
Otherwise we’d have to wait until the issue with fbdev is fixed but I have no idea how high it is in the devs’ priorities.
I had that option enabled yesterday too and didn’t encounter a crash for 8+ hours - but it could just be luck. However my laptop then froze on suspend and I had to hard reset it - something I never encountered with fbdev.
If anyone does more tests and/or encounters issues please write (or PM) so that I can update the intel gfx troubleshooting doc accordingly…
Because if I am understanding you correctly, you suggest that this fix put more pressure on intel CPU with graphics processing, which the old thinkpad x220 CPU has troubles with and freezes.
So, I wonder if using Awesome or DWM wouldn’t require that “fix” and thus would result in no-freezes.
This is nice to hear, but without that “intel” fix, you should be seeing graphical artefacts and tears on the screen. Do you see those? If so, do you think using AwesomeWM or DWM instead of i3wm result in no-tears/graphical glithces, but yet still a low-resource tiling manager use with Qubes?
AFAIK neither AwesomeWM nor DWM provide compositing so like i3wm you’d need to install a compositing manager. But more importantly, I don’t think AwesomeWM / DWM are supported by Qubes OS - eg. you won’t see the qubes’ window colors/labels which is a no-go for most security-conscious users.
If you don’t install a compositing manager and you experience tearing, then yes (but then there’s a chance you’ll be hit by bugs/crashes in intel). If you have compositing then fbdev is OK.
To summarize, those are the two workarounds:
fbdev (which is Qubes’ default) with compositing. i3wm users will have to install compton or picom (both are packaged in f32 so can be installed in dom0 as any other package). This should fix tearing (I have yet to read from a i3wm user with this fix - if you give it a try please send a PM or reply here).
intel with “UXA” acceleration method instead of the the default, newer “SNA”. “UXA” fixes some crashes (like the one @qub411 had) but introduces others (eg. when suspending my T450s laptop). YMMV.
Because if I am understanding you correctly, you suggest that this fix put more pressure on intel CPU with graphics processing, which the old thinkpad x220 CPU has troubles with and freezes.
It’s a software bug - overloading your x220 (CPU and/or GFX) should only make your laptop sluggish, not trigger a crash. FWIW I’d expect the intel driver to be more efficient / less resource intensive than fbdev.
One point I would like to ask: I don’t think I understand your point around “compositing.” When I installed i3wm, I don’t remember setting up a “compositor.” Does it get installed by itself, as a dependency to i3wm?
AwesomeWM is supported by Qubes1. DWM is supported thanks to @3o14r4732
i3wm doesn’t provide a compositor like xfce/gnome/kde do (to enable fancy effects), so you’ll have to install a standalone compositing manager. An old i3wm faq mentions compton as compositing manager but there’s also picom (the last fork in a long chain). It seems it’s only a matter of running the manager alongside i3wm (or awesomewm or dwm for that matter).
Sorry, I’m not a i3wm user so I can’t be of more help - I got hit by the same bugs as i3wm users because I had disabled compositing in xfce to decrease bloat a long time ago before an update introduced tearing.
Oh, I stand corrected ; I’ll add those WMs to the troubleshooting doc.
“So, I wonder if using Awesome or DWM wouldn’t require that “fix” and thus would result in no-freezes.”
I don’t have issues with AwesomeWM so far.
Btw it was the first tiling WM to be supported in 3.2. I’m unsure about it’s future though as it will never support Wayland. It might work with XWayland, let’s see…
With me absolutely stable. But as I wrote, in all these months I had only very few crashes and freezes in a several days in a row, and one freeze a month ago.
Still the same here. In normal operations it’s pretty stable (two “unprovoked” freezes in total). However, updating is another story entirely. If there are actual updates (not dom0 but template) a freeze is almost guaranteed.
Sad to say, nothing seems to have changed for me.
Still freezing , random qubes crash, and occasional Qubes restart.
The freeze/Qubes restart, almost always linked to qubes starting, (and
so definitely can be triggered by updating, or other salting.)
Are you aware of any progress that’s being made behind the scenes, or is this not a priority at the moment? Seems like you’ve identified the trigger which is a good step forward.
I had a total system freeze last night. I had left the machine running idle during the night. I was runnig awesomewm on it. And now, in the morning, I cannot wake it up from the i3lock—the OS is completely unresponsive to my keypresses. So, I think these freezes are independent of the type of window manager we are running.
). Installing a compositing manager should fix them, until someone finds why 
