splitshotz/Vice v1.2.4

v1.2.4 - Reliable rendering on NVIDIA + audio and settings fixes

on GitHub

Consolidates all fixes since v1.2.0 (replaces the v1.2.1-v1.2.3 releases, which each fixed part of the same NVIDIA rendering problem).

The NVIDIA rendering fix, complete

Chromium's GPU buffer setup (GBM) fails nondeterministically on some NVIDIA drivers: the same machine can render fine on one launch and produce a black window on the next. Vice now handles the whole class:

• Every launch tries full GPU rendering first.
• If Chromium rejects GBM, Vice detects it within half a second (before the window visibly paints) and relaunches that run in software mode automatically. Nothing is remembered; the next launch tries the GPU again.
• Detection works from the app launcher too, not just terminals (Qt was routing its error output to the journal for launcher starts, hiding the failure from the watchdog).
• Software-mode runs disable the UI's blur and glow effects so they stay responsive.
• Vulkan rendering is blocked on NVIDIA (its fallback path segfaults on some driver series), and clip playback uses software video decode everywhere (hardware decode renders black/grey video on many Linux driver combos).
• ~/.local/share/vice/vice-app-stderr.log captures the graphics stack's output from the last launch for easy bug reports.

Also in this release

• Audio source dropdowns show clean device names instead of raw id|description strings, and the broken ids the old dropdown could save are fixed. Reselect your source in Settings if you saved one before.
• Settings layout no longer overflows with long audio device names.
• Locale fix for systemd-launched sessions (Qt C-locale warnings).

Update with yay -Syu (AUR) or cd Vice && git pull && ./install.sh (git clone).