OpenGL Updates May Cause VR3 To Crash Leo Or The OS

[tbpassin]

Updates to the XFCE desktop manager used as an option for Linux Mint caused VR3 to crash Leo (and sometimes the OS). This is not a VR3 bug. It is also not for any particular version of Python (I saw it for both 3.9 and 3.11 installs) It appears to be caused by the PyQt6 Web Engine's interaction with OpenGL v3.3. The error message seems to come from VMWare (whether or not VMWare is in use), and typically reads:

vmw_ioctl_command error Cannot allocate memory

Other projects have had complaints of the same or very similar crashing error. One user found that the version of OpenGL for the desktop manager to use can be downgraded to v2.x by running this command:

echo "export SVGA_VGPU10=0" >> ~/.bashrc"

This solved the problem for him and some other users, and I found it also solved it for Leo/VR3. The user should log off and log on again after this change.

However, I don't have good confidence that this fix will work indefinitely, since it seems to me that at some point, the older version will no longer be available or may no longer work. We can only hope that the bug will have been fixed by then.

Changing the desktop manager from XFCE back to the standard (for Mint) Cinnamon also cured the problem, apparently because Cinnamon doesn't use OpenGL (or not the problem version, I don't know which).