Did my weekly yay -Syu today, rebooted, and found that Cinnamon refused to start.
(Of course I’m probably one of maybe a dozen EOS users using Cinnamon.)
Oddly, the Cinnamon Wayland session did start, but Cinnamon Wayland is still pretty janky.
After digging through my pacman logs, I saw that xorg had updated… likely in response to recent security issues. I downgraded xorg-server and xorg-server-common to 21.1.24, which is a few months old at this point, and that fixed my issue.
I’m posting in the hopes that this a) may help other Cinnamon users and b) may help to shine light on an unfixed bug.
Your downgrade lines up with what others are running into. Since the 21.1.25 update there are startup-crash reports from several directions: an Arch forum thread with multiple users whose Xorg dumps core at startup, and Cinnamon crash reports surfacing on the Manjaro and CachyOS forums as well - so this is not Cinnamon-specific, and not just you.
The Arch packaging tracker has an entry for it: 21.1.25-1 segfaults on start when VariableRefresh and TearFree are enabled (amdgpu driver options). Two documented workarounds from that discussion: downgrade xorg-server and xorg-server-common to 21.1.24 - exactly what you did - or switch off VariableRefresh and TearFree in the Xorg config if you have those options set. The tracker entry is currently marked closed, but the Arch package is still 21.1.25 from October 7, so I cannot tell from the outside whether a fixed build is already on its way.
One thought on your case: if you do not use VariableRefresh or TearFree at all, your crash would be a second variant beyond the one in the tracker entry - then the downgrade is the known workaround until a fixed package lands. I have no Cinnamon install here, so this is from the bug reports rather than first-hand.
VESA Adaptive Sync is one of several different standards to achieve Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). Intel Arc A-Series GPUs are compatible with VESA Adaptive Sync.
In a nutshell VRR adjust its refresh rate based on the frame rate of the video source, including game content, to eliminate the stuttering or tearing of the image and enable smooth display of the source.
In Intel Arc Control you can also set different options for frame-delivery technologies. Check this link for more information.
As for your question on disabling ‘AdaptiveVsyncEnable’ in Regedit - as policy we do not support modifying the Windows Registry as this can lead to system instability or catastrophic results.
You can enable or disable VRR using Intel Arc Control and also via Windows → Settings → System → Display → Graphics.
Best Regards,
Von M.
Intel Customer Support Technician
Type into console/terminal: xrandr --props and have a look at vrr_capable: 1
VRR capability of GPU has nothing to do with display VRR capability.
If your GPU or Monitor/TV does’n support it, you should noch run into the same problems.
The Problem could/should be by X.Org X Server 1.21.1.25.
I’m actually totally relaxed. EOS being the only Arch-based distro that allowed me to do my work each and every day without much tinkering or breakages. It just rocks on, every bloody day—real neat!
But since I use Cinnamon and X.11, I keep an eye on threads saying something is broken.
