Display Driver Issue on Both ROME and ROCK (Intel-only System)

Support
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Hi all,

I wanted to report a frustrating issue I’ve encountered on both ROME and ROCK editions of OpenMandriva that might be worth looking into for future updates.

System Specs:

  • Intel HD Graphics 530 (no hybrid GPU setup—Intel only)
  • Laptop with standard UEFI setup
  • Tested both ROME and ROCK with fresh installs

What Happened:

After completing a fresh install of ROME, I noticed the system was falling back to llvmpipe instead of properly using the Intel graphics driver. This caused sluggish performance and a generally broken desktop experience right out of the box.

Assuming it might be an issue introduced by a recent update, I tried installing ROCK instead—but experienced the exact same issue immediately after the first reboot, even without applying any updates.

Even worse, upon login I’m often met with a blank screen and a blinking cursor, and I’m forced to switch to a TTY and run startx manually to reach the desktop environment. That’s not something a new user should ever have to do.

Confirmed via:
glxinfo | grep “OpenGL renderer”
OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe (LLVM 19.1.7, 256 bits)

What I Tried:

  • Verified that the i915 kernel module is loaded
  • Tried using modesetting and intel drivers in Xorg config
  • Set AccelMethod to sna, enabled TearFree
  • Blacklisted amdgpu just in case (even though it’s not used)
  • Installed and tested both editions multiple times—same result

Why This Matters:

A new user—especially someone migrating from Windows or macOS—likely wouldn’t have the time or patience to troubleshoot this. They’d probably just assume the distro is broken and move on. That’s a shame, because OM has a lot of potential and polish otherwise.

Suggestion:

Could this be a regression in how the graphics stack is being initialized on Intel-only systems? It seems like the kernel properly loads i915, but Xorg fails to utilize it, defaulting to llvmpipe and not initializing the desktop properly after login.

Happy to provide logs (dmesg, Xorg.0.log, etc.) or test any fixes. I just wanted to raise this in case it helps improve the experience for others down the road.

Thanks for your work on this project—hope this feedback is helpful.

Best,
Justin (JDMorris81)

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@JDMorris81 Thank you for the report.

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can you report

inxi -Fza 
cpupower frequency-info

is there any lines (EE) in /var/log/Xorg.0.log ?

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Hey Stephane,

I’ve set up a new system now and will be testing it out in a VM to avoid the headache of doing another bare-metal install. I’ll let you know how things go and report back with the details once I have more info.

Thanks for your help so far!

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I’m making this post to keep this thread active as I will be doing another bare metal install of OM very soon.