#36 - Firefox on NVIDIA Graphics Card

Using the NVIDIA driver in Linux is quite difficult and it is not so straightforward because it varies depending on what application needs it. Mining Monero was not too difficult but the XMR miner used CUDA and that is another story.

Configuring Firefox to use NVIDIA may be overwhelming option-wise because there are so many unstable outcomes when setting these experimental or unstable options.

NVDIA-related Drivers

Below is a listing of my NVIDIA-related packages on Arch. Packages with * are probably required for this to work, other packages are currently installed but may not be strictly necessary..

• nvidia*
• nvidia-settings
• nvidia-utils*
• mesa*
• mesa-demos*
• opencl-nvidia
• xorg-xrandr
• acpi*
• acpi_call*
• acpid*
• bbswitch*
• bumblebee*
• primus
• primus_vk

Most packages can be easily installed from the official repos, however others may be further configured to use.

For example, bumblebee manual (beware this is not compatible with other methods for using NVIDIA), requires the user to be in the blumblebee group with # gpasswd -a user bumblebee and enabling/starting the service # systemctl enable bumblebeed.service.

bbswitch will work well with bulblebee in switching the card ON and OFF when required, instead of leaving it ON.

That is possible to check if the card state with some commands. Make sure to reboot after installing and configuring these driver packages so far.

% nvidia-smi
[DETAILED CARD STATS] [..PAGED..]

% cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch
0000:01:00.0 ON

% watch -d -t -n1 'cat /proc/acpi/bbswitch'
0000:01:00.0 ON  [..PAGED..]

# tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<OFF
OFF

# tee /proc/acpi/bbswitch <<<ON
ON

Firefox Configuration

With those set, there are two important configurations to be done in Firefox Stable's about:config. The following was taken from Arch Wiki's Firefox#Tweaks and Firefox#Talk.

In about:config, you may want to set one configuration at a time and test:

• Enable OpenGL compositor: layers.acceleration.force-enabled = true*
• Enable WebRender compositor: gfx.webrender.all = true

My current Firefox can run stably and smoothly (under XFCE and Picom) with only layers.acceleration.force-enabled set, as force enabling the webrender makes my Firefox very buggy and unstable..

Alternative (or additionally, you will need testing) to messing with about:config options, Mozilla Firefox can read various environment variables as options.

Below these variables are presented with verbose commentary. You can find more code commentary in my shell script launcher.

#This content should be clarified
#To enable WebRender on Firefox Stable:
export MOZ_ACCELERATED=1        #same as:`layers.acceleration.force-enabled = true'
#export MOZ_WEBRENDER=1         #same as: `gfx.webrender.all = true'
#https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Talk:Firefox/Tweaks

#Enable OpenGL in `pvkrun' and `primusrun'
#export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libGL.so
#export ENABLE_PRIMUS_LAYER=1
#https://github.com/felixdoerre/primus_vk
#https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/65250
#https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=252257
#`layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled' became on by defaults.
#https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/4j0tzz/what_happened_to/

#Do *not* set if using NVIDIA `primusrun'
export MOZ_OMTC_ENABLED=1
export MOZ_USE_OMTC=1
#https://gist.github.com/yuttie/de097d004499adb984bd

Remember to export your environment variables!

As I said, you may need to try various combinations of options until Firefox is running smoothly, without artifacts, visible button icons and legible menu entries..

Performance test: optirun, primusrun and pvkrun

That is probably a good idea to test which package will run faster. Check performance running either glxgears -info, glxspheres64 or glxspheres32 (the latter for 32 bit systems) from package mesa-demos.

• optirun [demo]
• optirun -b primus [demo]
• primusrun [demo]
• pvkrun [demo]

I prefer to run glxspheres64 because it prints the frame rate and buffer size. primusrun and pvkrun used to work a little better than optirun in the past for me, but as those are not working now I am using optirun..

Checking results

Current configuration can be checked at about:support.

Follow instructions from Firefox#Tweaks to check if options are enabled. You can also type CTR+F and search for `Intel' to check whether Intel integrated graphics or `Nvidia' driver is being used as renderer.

Alternatively, some information can be retrieved from test this website.

It is a little time consuming until you get yoru configuration working properly and maybe your system cannot support all features, but they will eventually come the official way and your driver may finally be white-listed for performance improvements by defaults.

As for now, I find it best to launch Firefox with a shell script. My Firefox launcher in XFCE dock and keyboard shortcut in .xbindkeysrc also points to the script.