Linux – Help – chromium display frozen but the app keeps working

arch linuxchromei3manjaro

I am new to Manjaro and Arch. Recently I started running into an issue that I don't know how to solve.

The Issue

The chromium and skypeforlinux windows freeze, but the apps keep running.
For example skype calls don't break off but the window is stuck.
Same with chrome and chromium. If I am chatting (say telegram web) and the issue happens I can still send messages, but the screen does not update. So I am acting 'blindly'.
Other Apps like Emacs (also installed with yay), Telegram (yay) or terminal (native urxvt) are uneffected.

Another symptom: When I have Emacs running on Screen 1 and a broken Chrome on Screen 2, and when I switch from 1 to 2, then the window continues to show the contents of Screen 1, in this case emacs.

What is happening?

My system:

Manjaro Architect (uname -a): Linux archangel 5.1.4-1-MANJARO #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed May 22 17:56:21 UTC 2019 x86_64 GNU/Linux

pacman –version: Pacman v5.1.3 – libalpm v11.0.3

i3 –version: i3 version 4.16.1 (2019-01-27)

yay –version: yay v9.2.0 – libalpm v11.0.3

Effected apps (installed with yay/pacman):

skypeforlinux: skypeforlinux-preview-bin 8.47.76.58-1

chromium –version: Chromium 75.0.3770.80 Manjaro Linux

Best Answer

I recently had the same issue. In my case, the problem was solved by forcing DRI 2 instead of DRI 3 (I have an intel graphic card with the intel drivers).

I basically followed the instructions given here:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_Graphics#DRI3_issues

In a nutshell, I had to write

Section "Device"
    Identifier "Intel Graphics"
    Driver "intel"
    Option "DRI" "2"
EndSection

in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

I hope this helps!

Related Solutions

Netflix works on chrome but not chromium

It is because chrome packages the...

Widevine Content Decryption Module - Version: 1.4.6.667

Enables Widevine licenses for playback of HTML audio/video content. (version: 1.4.6.667)

...whereas chromium does not and in August 2014 Netflix switched to allowing HTML5 content by default. Visit:

chrome://plugins

...to see a list.

You will need that plugin installed to chromium for it to work. You might also add the google talk plugin and pdf plugin while you're at it, but if you do so you pretty much just installed chrome as those are some of the primary differences.

In fact, though, until late summer 2015 you couldn't install that component singly to chromium - we can chalk that one up to another (short-lived) win for Digital Restrictive Management, I guess. With some serious downtime and expert hacking you might be able to compile your own package (a chromium compile is no Sunday drive, by the way) - but you might have to hack the plugin out of chrome.

Failing that, you can use the Ubuntu chrome ppa source, I suppose:

wget -q -O - https://dl-ssl.google.com/linux/linux_signing_key.pub | 
sudo apt-key add -
echo "deb http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main" | 
sudo tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google.list

...should probably do the trick, I guess, if you're ok with using the closed-source chrome binary.

As of August 2015, though, you can now install the Widevine module separately as the chromium maintainer has patched the source to accept its use. For example, on an Arch Linux system there is the chromium-widevine AUR package. Have a look at its PKGBUILD script to see how it's done - it doesn't look very complicated. Essentially the chrome...deb debian package file is downloaded, from it are extracted only a few Widevine relevant files, their version numbers captured, and then these are copied into the relevant chromium installation paths.

There is also the Pipelight project which should enable you to use the Silverlight plugin (via wine) to watch Netflix video (and so not the HTML5 method which works with chrome) in chromium. It is a somewhat heavy-handed approach in my opinion, but it is a popular option.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Netflix works on chrome but not chromium

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