Default Ghostty Terminal Fails/Instantly Crashes on Legacy GPUs (e.g., ATI Radeon HD 5xxx)

[yaroslavrick]

System details

Omarchy 3.2.0, ATI Radeon HD 5xxx

What's wrong?

On older laptops utilizing legacy integrated or dedicated graphics cards (specifically, pre-GCN architecture), the default terminal emulator, Ghostty, fails to launch when executed from the GUI (e.g., top panel Wi-Fi menu click, or keyboard shortcut).

The symptom is: The terminal window flashes black and closes immediately. This prevents initial network configuration and setup (because of that it is no way to download other terminal)

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/dcf2f804-d903-4cfb-9d4e-a44e88470800

Hardware Example

• Laptop Model: Sony Vaio PCG-61212T
• GPU: ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5000 series (TeraScale 2 Architecture)
• Driver: Open-source radeon kernel driver

Diagnosis / Root Cause

Ghostty requires modern GPU acceleration (OpenGL/Vulkan) for rendering. On this legacy hardware, the radeon driver either fails to initialize the required GPU context or encounters an immediate instability crash under the Wayland compositor (Hyprland), leading to the instant termination of the application.

This makes the system essentially unusable post-install until manual intervention.

Workarounds Discovered

I found two workarounds, which should be documented for users or ideally implemented as a configuration check in the installer or setup script:

Workaround 1: Gaining Internet Access and Installing an Alternative Terminal (Alacritty)

This is necessary to make the system usable by installing a lighter terminal that does not rely on modern GPU context (like Alacritty).

1. Switch to a TTY console: Ctrl + Alt + F3
2. Connect to Wi-Fi using iwd (as nmtui is often missing):

   iwctl
   device list
   station wlan0 scan
   station wlan0 get-networks
   station wlan0 connect "YOUR_SSID"
   exit
   ping -c 3 google.com
   

3. Install Alacritty and set it as the system default:

   sudo pacman -Sy alacritty
   

4. Edit the user's terminal list file (to ensure GUI menus open Alacritty):

   echo "Alacritty.desktop" | tee ~/.config/xdg-terminals.list
   

Workaround 2: Forcing Ghostty to Use Software Rendering. But this work only if run ghostty via alacritty (maybe I should find better way).

This allows Ghostty to function, though performance will be degraded due to CPU load. This requires installing the alias in the user's shell profile (.bashrc in this case).

1. Open the user's shell configuration file:

   nano ~/.bashrc
   

2. Add the following alias to the end of the file:

   alias ghostty="LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 ghostty"
   

3. Apply the changes and test:

   source ~/.bashrc
   

Suggested Resolution

Consider one of the following changes in future Omarchy releases:

1. Change Default Terminal: Switch the default terminal to Alacritty or Foot, which are generally more stable and compatible with a wider range of hardware under Wayland.
2. Implementation: If Ghostty is preferred, implement a check (e.g., in the Hyprland/Waybar configuration files) to use LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 ghostty if the user is detected to be running a known legacy driver/hardware stack
3. Give user ability to choose terminal app in the moment of installation.
4. Preinstall alacritty as second pre installed terminal.

[jfbourdeau]

Good job with the info, description, workaround etc. I did experienced it...

[omarahmed786]

Just fresh installed Omarchy 3.2 on an old laptop and am experiencing the same issue as well

[BardleyMusic]

Just fresh installed Omarchy 3.2 on an old laptop and am experiencing the same issue as well

try the 3.1.7 ISO it still uses alacritty as the default and you can upgrade everything else from there

[omarahmed786]

Just fresh installed Omarchy 3.2 on an old laptop and am experiencing the same issue as well

try the 3.1.7 ISO it still uses alacritty as the default and you can upgrade everything else from there

Thanks for the suggestion. Workaround #1 in the OP worked to install alacritty. Oddly enough after installing alacritty i was able to install kitty and get it working no problem. The laptop is old as hell tho so I'm not even gonna keep Omarchy on it just wanted to see if it could run haha

[dhh]

If we could find a good way to detect what machines don't work with Ghostty, we can fall back to using Alacritty for those.

[yaroslavrick]

@dhh here is PR of fallback to use Alacritty on legacy GPU instead of Ghostty while installing omarchy.

Could you please take a look at it when you'll have time.