this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2025
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[SOLVED] - I learned that this is a sure way to break your Debian, and no matter how you go about it, you'd wish you either waited or used a different distro altogether for this purpose. In my case, I got Nobara 41 working, which already has the latest mesa. Trying to install the latest from Debian unstable almost got me pretty turned around, and I'm glad I switched course when I did.

Original post: Apologies for my fairly low-level question. I spent all day yesterday spinning my wheels on this.

(I do fine using Debian Linux as my daily driver, but I'm not ashamed to admit that this (and things in this area) are beyond my experience. I've never compiled anything from source. I used to be a wiz with DOS 6.22 and Windows through 7, but my brain just stopped learning these things properly some time in the past.)

My distro (MXLinux 23.x) just announced they're almost ready to include Mesa 24.2.8. I purchased an AMD RX 9070, and all my Linux games (HGL or Steam) are angry that Vulkan can't recognize a valid GPU.

I see that Mesa 25.0.2 should work, but I don't know how to either build & install from source or add a repo for that particular package only.

I see that Arch users can easily use the Mesa-git or others, but not my Debian 12.

I installed Nobara to a spare drive as a stopgap, but on that install, FH5 refuses to prompt for account sign in there no matter which Proton I use.

Edit: I'm using the AHS version which includes the liquorix 6.13.7-2 kernel, and none of the repos (testing, back ports) show a higher version of Mesa.

EDIT2:

System:
  Kernel: 6.13.7-2-liquorix-amd64 [6.13-5~mx23ahs] arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0 parameters: audit=0
    intel_pstate=disable amd_pstate=disable BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-6.13.7-2-liquorix-amd64
    root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet amdgpu.ppfeaturemask=0xffffffff init=/lib/systemd/systemd
  Desktop: Xfce v: 4.20.0 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.38 info: xfce4-panel wm: xfwm v: 4.20.0 vt: 7
    dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0 Distro: MX-23.5_ahs_x64 Libretto May 19  2024 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: ASRock model: B650E Taichi serial: <superuser required> UEFI: American
    Megatrends LLC. v: 3.20 date: 02/21/2025
CPU:
  Info: model: AMD Ryzen 5 9600X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: N/A level: v4 note: check
    family: 0x1A (26) model-id: 0x44 (68) stepping: 0 microcode: 0xB404023
  Topology: cpus: 1x cores: 6 tpc: 2 threads: 12 smt: enabled cache: L1: 480 KiB
    desc: d-6x48 KiB; i-6x32 KiB L2: 6 MiB desc: 6x1024 KiB L3: 32 MiB desc: 1x32 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 3175 high: 5437 min/max: 3000/3900 boost: enabled scaling:
    driver: acpi-cpufreq governor: ondemand cores: 1: 2900 2: 2972 3: 2959 4: 3018 5: 5437 6: 2819
    7: 3000 8: 3000 9: 3000 10: 3000 11: 3000 12: 3000 bogomips: 93602
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
  Vulnerabilities:
  Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: itlb_multihit status: Not affected
  Type: l1tf status: Not affected
  Type: mds status: Not affected
  Type: meltdown status: Not affected
  Type: mmio_stale_data status: Not affected
  Type: reg_file_data_sampling status: Not affected
  Type: retbleed status: Not affected
  Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected
  Type: spec_store_bypass mitigation: Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl
  Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
  Type: spectre_v2 mitigation: Enhanced / Automatic IBRS; IBPB: conditional; STIBP: always-on;
    RSB filling; PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected; BHI: Not affected
  Type: srbds status: Not affected
  Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD vendor: Gigabyte driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: gen: 5 speed: 32 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: DP-1 empty: DP-2, HDMI-A-1, HDMI-A-2, Writeback-1 bus-ID: 03:00.0
    chip-ID: 1002:7550 class-ID: 0300
  Device-2: AMD vendor: ASRock driver: amdgpu v: kernel pcie: gen: 4 speed: 16 GT/s lanes: 16
    ports: active: none empty: DP-3, DP-4, DP-5, HDMI-A-3, Writeback-2 bus-ID: 4f:00.0
    chip-ID: 1002:13c0 class-ID: 0300 temp: 42.0 C
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 compositor: xfwm v: 4.20.0 driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
    dri: swrast gpu: amdgpu display-ID: :0.0 screens: 1
  Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 509x286mm (20.04x11.26") s-diag: 584mm (22.99")
  Monitor-1: DP-1 mapped: DisplayPort-0 model: Acer XF250Q serial: <filter> built: 2018
    res: 1920x1080 dpi: 90 gamma: 1.2 size: 544x303mm (21.42x11.93") diag: 623mm (24.5") ratio: 16:9
    modes: max: 1920x1080 min: 720x400
  API: OpenGL v: 4.5 Mesa 24.2.8-1mx23ahs renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 15.0.6 256 bits)
    direct-render: Yes
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[–] kbal@fedia.io 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

At this point in the debian release cycle your easiest course of action would probably be to switch over to debian testing. It's quite easy to do if you're in debian 12 and wanting newer packages is a legit reason to do it. It should be getting reasonably close to being stable by now I would guess.

You'll need a newer kernel than is currently in debian stable as well, but that is actually quite easy to build and install. Building mesa I don't know about, but it will have many more dependencies and could be a lot of work.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Thx for the reply!

My AHS version includes the 6.13.7-2 kernel, but the testing repo (MX anyway) doesn't show a newer version of Mesa.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Ok, it didn't seem clear if you were on Debian 12 or MX. I'm not sure what the relationship between them is, but mesa 25 seems to be in trixie only since 13 march.

Maybe you could use that package from debian testing on the MX version of testing if you wanted to live dangerously.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

MX is currently on Debian 12 Bookworm, but I can select backports or testing from the package manager:

collapsed inline media

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I may have described my situation poorly to explain the MX relationship with Debian 12. The base is Debian 12 Bookworm:

Distro: MX-23.5_ahs_x64 Libretto May 19  2024 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12
    (bookworm)
[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Yeah, I see that MX test is not based on current debian testing (trixie) but also bookworm. So I guess you'll not find the package in MX repos until it makes it into AHS. Apparently there's a PPA that some people use, that might work.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Thx again for the reply. Adding PPA's is pointed to as a no-no for Debian stable, otherwise I would add it in a heartbeat.

[–] kbal@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

One more idea... If you're willing to temporarily add the Debian testing "deb-src" repository to your sources.list, which should be slightly safer, then there's a chance that this might work: https://wiki.debian.org/SimpleBackportCreation

Seems not completely crazy, unless MX has its own way to do that.

[–] slyecho@mdon.ee 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

@s38b35M5 There are instructions here: https://docs.mesa3d.org/install.html

But it probably is not as easy as explained there, when I last did this I had to install a lot of additional libraries from apt and some from source because the repo versions were too old. And you definitely need to get the latest kernel, from MX Linux's AHS repo, for example.

[–] s38b35M5@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thanks. I tried this with Meson and Ninja, and it kept requiring more and more build and make tools that reported broken dependencies, so I got worried I'd brick something else.

I downloaded the nightly from the mailing list and tried to build but... I'm out of my wheelhouse.