Introduction

After installing Artix with LXQT and runit on my NovaCustom laptop I was finding that many GUI applications were failing to run properly. When running them via terminal to see the error output there were all sorts of dconf related errors.

These were related to issues in the /run/user/ hierarchy, such as the 1000 directory not being created. When trying to get it and elogind working properly the directories were just getting deleted if created manually.

Eventually this helped me realize that it was only the GTK programs such as kitty, transmission-gtk, gnome-system-monitor, etc. Apps such as qterminal, firefox, and transmission-qt were working with no issues!

This seemed odd since on my mid-2010s Macbook everything had been working flawlessly from the start, but it was installed with a Cinnamon runit ISO, so I thought maybe I was missing some graphics libraries that come with a GTK desktop environment.

After doing some pacman-fu with -Qqn from the Macbook to the newer system it still did not resolve the issues, so I figured it must be something specific to the laptop, similar to how the ISO needed booted with nomodeset (see this article).

The steps below are what got me successfully running all GUI applications properly with Intel Integrated 12th-gen XE graphics using Artix with runit.

Instructions

Check the GPU and driver in use.

$ lspci -k -d ::03xx
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
        DeviceName: VGA compatible controller
        Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device 4041
        Kernel driver in use: i915
        Kernel modules: i915, xe

You may need to enable the 32-bit repo in pacman.conf with these two lines.

[lib32]
Include = /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist

$ sudo vi /etc/pacman.conf

Ensure all the Intel drivers are all installed.

$ sudo pacman -Sy mesa vulkan-intel lib32-mesa lib32-vulkan-intel intel-media-driver

Grab the PCI ID of the GPU (value after the colon in [xxxx:yyyy]).

$ lspci -nn | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] [8086:46a6] (rev 0c)

Switch to xe driver using the PCI ID above in the kernel parameters for GRUB. i915.force_probe=!46a6 and xe.force_probe=46a6 do this.

$ sudo vi /etc/default/grub

So it should look something like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT='quiet i915.force_probe=!46a6 xe.force_probe=46a6 ...'

Then reload GRUB to install the changes.

$ sudo update-grub

Remove legacy drivers which may get in the way.

$ sudo pacman -Rns xf86-video-intel

Reboot the system.

$ sudo reboot

Check which driver is now in use.

$ lspci -k -d ::03xx
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Alder Lake-P GT2 [Iris Xe Graphics] (rev 0c)
	DeviceName: VGA compatible controller
	Subsystem: CLEVO/KAPOK Computer Device 4041
	Kernel driver in use: xe
	Kernel modules: i915, xe

Validate whether GTK applications are happy now.

In my case, kitty, gnome-system-monitor, codium, transmission-gtk, mullvad-vpn, and all other GTK apps are now all running properly and their GUI interfaces are now working flawlessly. :D

Artix is feeling fast as ever and the simplicity of using a feature-complete init system like runit is at its full power! >:)

Credits

Thanks to Ask Brave for helping me troubleshoot this.

blog.hyperling.com/artix-intel-gpu