Preface
I encountered this issue recently with my Dell Inspiron N7110, and I figured for people who think downgrading is unacceptable, they could instead use Tk_Glitch’s modified Mesa to resolve the ongoing graphics problems with their older Intel integrated graphics.
There are three methods which could be used to solve the problem, with two of them basically resulting in the same outcome:
Downgrade
sudo downgrade mesa
sudo downgrade lib32-mesa
Select the version of Mesa which is older than the one you are presently using. 26.1 causes problems, I’ve tested with the most recent release of 26.0 which is binary-compatible and that seems to work well-enough for me so-far.
sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf
Append into IgnorePkg the packages you’ve downgraded, and hold until latest stable, by observance of either yourself or others, is determined to resolve the issue.
Compile
I’m assuming you’ve edited
/etc/environmentto define$aurashttps://aur.archlinux.org.
You’re going to need a little bit of disk space for this. If you’re tight on both storage and time, forget this and just install from Chaotic AUR.
pkg=tkginstaller-git
cd /tmp
git clone $aur/$pkg
cd $pkg
makepkg -si
sudo pacman -S bat glow wdiff
After compiling tkginstaller and fetching its dependencies, execute it and select Mesa as the option to build and install the modified Mesa. Other dependencies should be automatically resolved, unless you encounter issues with other outdated software which could be remedied by synchronising with latest changes from Arch repos.
Once installed, it will show up as a foreign package. You shouldn’t ever have to build it again unless you encounter other, select packaging problems with it that wouldn’t had been experienced with standard Mesa. If you happen to leave the software unattended, and failed to input your password in a timely fashion, you can do the following to install it yourself:
cd $HOME/.tkginstaller/.cache/mesa-git
sudo pacman -U *.zst
You will be prompted about conflicts. Consent action and when finished, reboot your machine.
Install
This should be a last-resort option. If you’re pressed for time and need a solution using latest Mesa now, then this is it, but you may encounter issues with AUR-retrived software previously-installed, since Chaotic AUR provides name-alike packages which Pacman will upgrade due to lacking provision of ignored packages in
pacman.conf.
key=3056513887B78AEB
sudo pacman-key --recv-key $key --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key $key
pkgurl=https://cdn-mirror.chaotic.cx/chaotic-aur
sudo pacman -U '$pkgurl/chaotic-keyring.pkg.tar.zst' '$pkgurl/chaotic-mirrorlist.pkg.tar.zst'
sudo nano /etc/pacman.conf
Add this into pacman.conf under Repositories:
[chaotic-aur]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/chaotic-mirrorlist
Then do the following:
sudo pacman -Sy
sudo pacman -S mesa-tkg-git lib32-mesa-tkg-git
As with the prior method, you will be prompted about conflicts. Consent action and when finished, reboot your machine.
Dependencies
If you have other software which may break due to Mesa being replaced, and if Mesa is a hard package dependency, then you may want to build that software from the AUR, too, and edit dependent packages’ respective PKGBUILD files to replace mesa with mesa-tkg-git.
