Why is Fedora 38 missing the essential GPU driver component to have HW acceleration enabled by default?

Ask Fedora
,
1

I understand the deal with the proprietary video codec drivers not existing in Fedora by default but I absolutely do not understand why I ALSO need to manually find the needed intel driver component to enable hardware acceleration on my Intel® HD Graphics 4600.
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration

Please tell me why in 2023 I need to manually search for something that my GPU should already have installed during the time the distro is installing on my laptop.

I tried installing and following every command and instruction for my intel card from the link above but hardware acceleration does not work in Librewolf.
libva-intel-driver is supposed to be the correct “driver”
for my GPU but I keep getting “vainfo: command not found” although I installed absolutely everything.
Please help me figure this out.
Thank you!

2

Hi
actually because of legal issues some codecs like hevc\h265 and h264 are removed from intel and amd drivers

you can install them with rpmfusion
multiple guides are available by searching the web
but i followed this guide and it’s working fine
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/intel-graphics-best-practices-and-settings-for-hardware-acceleration/69944

also if you use mpv use flatpak version (onlt need to add a line in confg files for hw accelerated video decoding)

1 Like
3

Like I already mentioned before, I already installed from the official page the proper codecs and libva-intel-driver that seems to be the correct driver for my Intel HD Graphics 4600.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Firefox_Hardware_acceleration

If “vainfo: command not found” error message appears means the official page is missing one ore more steps.

The link you posted is just throwing every command possible at the wall without any kind of reasoning or attempt at reasoning what every command does and why it is necessary in the first place.

What am I missing or what is the official page missing that can explain that error message?

4

Fedora is not allowed to distribute any software that may be encumbered by copyright, licensing, or proprietary issues. I don’t know if that is the issue in this particular case, but it may be. Complaining about legal restrictions will gain nothing but frustration.

There are alternate sources for most software that allow the user to fully use the hardware so please accept that and work around these restrictions.

Not every problem has been seen by a user with your exact hardware so it is up to you to find the exact answer that fits your needs. Hardware is constantly evolving as is the software.

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5

vainfo is in the libva-utils package. (I think too that this is missing from the Firefox Hardware acceleration page, I may suggest to add it one day…). I was at the same point in activating Hardware acceleration -for proprietary and/or secure encoded content?- in FF before finding this page, thanks for the link in the first comment I’m getting closer, I think! :wink:

2 Likes
6

@daosans, you can utilise the undermentioned to ascertain this in the future:

  1. #!/usr/bin/env sh
dnf provides vainfo

  2. Updating and loading repositories:
 Fedora 41 - x86_64 - Updates                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      100% |   2.8 MiB/s |  27.7 MiB |  00m10s
 RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Nonfree - Updates                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      100% | 137.3 KiB/s | 137.6 KiB |  00m01s
 RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Free tainted                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           100% |  19.7 KiB/s |  16.4 KiB |  00m01s
 RPM Fusion for Fedora 41 - Free - Updates                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         100% | 268.8 KiB/s | 203.5 KiB |  00m01s
Repositories loaded.
libva-utils-2.22.0-2.fc41.x86_64 : Tools for VAAPI (including vainfo)
Repo         : fedora
Matched From : 
Filename     : /usr/bin/vainfo

@ypihoh, it was still not in oldid=709238, so I’ve submitted oldid=733622:

It is available in the libva-utils package.

7

Does vainfo merely invoking demonstrate that HW acceleration is enabled? I ask because:

  1. I don’t see anything in the output that explicitly states that it is:

    Trying display: wayland
libva info: VA-API version 1.22.0
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri-nonfree/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Trying to open /usr/lib64/dri-freeworld/radeonsi_drv_video.so
libva info: Found init function __vaDriverInit_1_22
libva info: va_openDriver() returns 0
vainfo: VA-API version: 1.22 (libva 2.22.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 25.0.1 for AMD Radeon RX 5700 (radeonsi, navi10, LLVM 19.1.7, DRM 3.61, 6.13.6-200.fc41.x86_64)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile0            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVP9Profile2            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc

  2. …and I don’t see (en/de)codement in nvtop, although github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-smart-video-wallpaper-reborn/blob/94ad05fd3a8e628f166189cc51b1fb41890dbc82/README.md#improve-performance-by-enabling-hardware-video-acceleration [1] mentions that I should with HWA enabled:

    Screenshot_20250316_113927
    Screenshot_20250316_1139271280×680 64.5 KB

    [2]

  1. github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-smart-video-wallpaper-reborn/blob/94ad05fd3a8e628f166189cc51b1fb41890dbc82/README.md?plain=1#L122C51-L122C126 ↩︎

  2. github.com/luisbocanegra/plasma-smart-video-wallpaper-reborn/discussions/97#discussion-8089931 ↩︎