Fixing llvmpipe on Ubuntu Wayland with Intel + NVIDIA Hybrid Graphics

On my Ubuntu desktop, I noticed that OpenGL appeared to be using software rendering.

The first clue came from:

glxinfo -B

It reported:

OpenGL renderer string: llvmpipe
Accelerated: no

At first glance, this looked serious. llvmpipe means Mesa is rendering on the CPU instead of using a real GPU.

But in this case, the result was a little misleading.

• System Setup
• Checking Native Wayland
• Fix
• NVIDIA PRIME Offload
• Native Wayland Offload
• Takeaway

System Setup

This machine is an Intel + NVIDIA hybrid graphics laptop:

Intel UHD Graphics 630
NVIDIA GeForce MX150

The desktop session was GNOME on Wayland.

That detail matters because glxinfo -B usually checks the X11/GLX path. In a Wayland session, that means it is mostly testing Xwayland, the compatibility layer used by old X11 applications.

So glxinfo -B showing llvmpipe does not automatically prove that the whole Wayland desktop is using software rendering. It may only mean the Xwayland/GLX path is broken.

Checking Native Wayland

To check the native Wayland graphics path, I ran:

glmark2-wayland

The result was good:

GL_VENDOR:      Intel
GL_RENDERER:    Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)

That changed the diagnosis. Native Wayland applications were already using the Intel GPU correctly.

The real problem was narrower:

• GNOME Wayland itself was hardware accelerated
• Native Wayland applications were using Intel graphics
• Xwayland/GLX applications were falling back to llvmpipe

So the issue was not “the whole desktop is software rendered.” It was “the Xwayland GLX path is software rendered.”

Fix

The fix was to update Xwayland and the related Xorg core packages:

sudo apt install xwayland xserver-xorg-core

This upgraded only a small group of display-server packages:

xserver-common
xserver-xephyr
xserver-xorg-core
xserver-xorg-legacy
xwayland

After installing those updates, I rebooted.

After rebooting, glxinfo -B no longer reported llvmpipe. The Xwayland/GLX path was using hardware acceleration again.

NVIDIA PRIME Offload

I also tested NVIDIA PRIME render offload for GLX/X11 applications:

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 __GLX_VENDOR_LIBRARY_NAME=nvidia glxinfo -B

This worked. It reported:

OpenGL vendor string: NVIDIA Corporation
OpenGL renderer string: NVIDIA GeForce MX150/PCIe/SSE2

So NVIDIA offload was working for GLX/X11 applications.

Native Wayland Offload

Forcing NVIDIA for native Wayland/EGL applications was not as straightforward.

This command still used Intel:

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 glmark2-wayland

I also tried a stronger EGL vendor override:

__NV_PRIME_RENDER_OFFLOAD=1 \
__EGL_VENDOR_LIBRARY_FILENAMES=/usr/share/glvnd/egl_vendor.d/10_nvidia.json \
glmark2-wayland

That failed with:

eglGetDisplay() failed

So I decided not to use that override. It was not needed for the desktop, and it made native Wayland testing worse instead of better.

Takeaway

The final state was:

• The main GNOME Wayland desktop was already hardware accelerated
• glxinfo -B showing llvmpipe only meant the Xwayland/GLX path was broken
• Updating xwayland and xserver-xorg-core, then rebooting, fixed the Xwayland issue
• NVIDIA PRIME offload worked for GLX/X11 applications
• For this hybrid laptop, prime-select on-demand remained the best setup

That setup keeps Intel driving the desktop while using NVIDIA only for selected heavy applications.

The main lesson is to test both paths separately. On a Wayland desktop, glxinfo -B is not enough by itself. Use a native Wayland test such as glmark2-wayland before concluding that the whole desktop is falling back to software rendering.