Best way to get h264 accelerated again?

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66

I’ve created a script that replaces the mesa packages with the ones from arch:

#!/bin/bash
#Problems: Couldn't figure out a way to download package with wget with correct version name.

libdomain="https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/"
multilibdomain="https://archlinux.org/packages/multilib/x86_64/"
packagelist="lib32-libva-mesa-driver
lib32-mesa
lib32-mesa-vdpau
libva-mesa-driver
mesa
mesa-utils
mesa-vdpau
lib32-vulkan-icd-loader
lib32-vulkan-radeon
vulkan-headers
vulkan-icd-loader
vulkan-radeon
vulkan-tools"
#Excluded Packages:
#   lib32-mesa-demos
#   mesa-demos
#   lib32-vulkan-intel
#   vulkan-intel
#   lib32-opencl-mesa
#   opencl-mesa


echo "Warning: This script installs unsupported packages from another linux distribution (Arch Linux) there are many things that could go wrong!
Are you sure you want to continue? [Y/n]"

read REPLY
if [ "$REPLY" = "Y" ] || [ "$REPLY" = "y" ]; then
    echo
else
    echo "Would you instead like to reinstall manjaro's original mesa pacakges? [Y/n]"
    read REPLY
    if [ "$REPLY" = "Y" ] || [ "$REPLY" = "y" ]; then
        sudo pacman -S --noconfirm $packagelist
    fi
    exit
fi

mkdir /home/$USER/.cache/mesa_update
cd /home/$USER/.cache/mesa_update

for package in $packagelist;do
    if echo $package | grep lib32; then
        wget --show-progress -qO $package.pkg.tar.zst "$multilibdomain$package/download"
    else
        wget --show-progress -qO $package.pkg.tar.zst "$libdomain$package/download"
    fi
    sudo pacman -U --noconfirm $package.pkg.tar.zst
done

cd -
rm -rf /home/$USER/.cache/mesa_update

I don’t know if it’s the ‘best’ way, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong by installing packages meant for another distro that could be of a different version than the ones manjaro is meant to be using, and you’d have to re-run the script everytime there’s a system update and manjaro overwrites the packages.

But it seems like currently it works completely.

Best way is definitely not how I would describe it, but a way for sure.

3 Likes
67

Over the past few days I were trying almost all the solutions ( besides changing distro) in order to keep my system fully functional.
Or at least how it was some weeks ago…

Nonetheless : I just want to add that in order to put it work I had to switch to the Unstable branch and followed the mesa-git path …

Both Stable and Testing branch did compile mesa-git but the functionality were not functional …
So for the record perhaps would be better to indicate that one of the “possible solutions” would be to change to the Unstable branch and then recompile mesa-git …
Just my personal opinion though …

68

Oi!, I’m a 71 year old Grandma.

But seriously, I don’t see what the problem is. As far as I (we, my partner, and I) are concerned, nothing has changed. She still watches YouTube, I still process Movies, what ever their encoding, that includes h264, to a smaller format for storage on our file server.

Yep.

3 Likes
69

Fantastic! The reason I mentioned a 66 year old grandma is that describes my wife, she is far from a power user. She uses Manjaro (I live in a linux only house) and still does everything she did before h264 was disabled.

1 Like
70

Me too. The last time I used Windows was Windows 7 running on a VM on Linux, so I could code in C#.

71

I hope this post is just a joke. Solutions like mixing Arch’s mesa with Manjaro is not really a good idea.

Right now, your CPU decode x264/265 movies as did it before GPU acceleration was a thing in Linux… But it is wasting power by doing so.
I have a good CPU with many cores and a big silent cooler, so it is not an issue for me, not even with big 4k HDR files. But if you are trying to do the same on a laptop, it may go brrrrrrrrr like a hair dryer.

73

It was not a joke. You mention one way and dont mention the others in this thread. Solutions exist, even if you dont like them. If those dont work for you, you could always build mesa from scratch with flags to enable h264. This is Linux and you are not limited to what others provide. You have the freedom to change and compile code. If you dont know how, learn.

My last Windows was XP. I was into 3D modeling at the time so I bought a computer with one of the first 64bit processors, an AMD Athlon 3500. I thought it would speed up rendering time. I got it home only to find out it had 32bit XP, hobbling the hardware I paid a premium for. I went searching for 64bit Os’s and found linux (Ubuntu Breezy Badger). I never went back.
A friend gave my wife a Dell 24 inch all in one because they got a new computer. They told me Windows was messed up after years of use. Likely from using Internet Exploder. I put Manjaro on it and she loves it. It works flawlessly, even the touch screen.

1 Like
74

Ehh… Let’s face it, regularly compiling mesa from source is anything but convenient. Yes, I can do it, but I won’t, because it’s pure nonsense.

2 Likes
75

Let’s sum up Best way to get h264 accelerated again?

First and foremost - stop whining - it is a counter productive waste of energy.

Get used to it

  • Follow advise from @Zesko [1]
  • Build from a modded PKGBUILD [2]
  • When a skilled grandma has no issues with current mesa [3] - you shouldn’t either.

The topic is exhausted - closed - with this topic as the conclusion.

1 Like