@werner.back OK now looks like if we even ignore the lack of the GLX_ARB_create_context extension, we still fail to create OpenGL context. Sad. I really have nothing to do with this problem, it really looks like upstream bug.
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Nothing fancy, really. Onboard graphics on an old office computer from 2016ā¦Mesa Intel(R) HD Graphics 530 (SKL GT2) Driver is āirisā.
I just got an old gaming pc from my son, possibly I will use it as my new music machine.
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The issue persists, no matter which plugin format.
Randomly crashing (with core dumps) by opening plugins, and by closing Ardour.
Ardour under Arch is unusable at the moment.
So Iām not gonna waste my time with bug hunting anymore.
Uninstalling Ardour and switching to Reaper is the way to go for me!
So long!
Hm, did you change something today? Iām on a new machine now, again with manjaro linux, but nvidia graphics. With git master same problem, crash at 2nd opening, but devel seems to work now as expected. Info shows openGL constantly, no Cairo anymore so far.
Didnāt try the binary version yet.
I didnāt change anything. But the devel branch has some changes related to master. If you have issues with devel, I need logs and stack traces for your NVIDIA configuration. But anyway it would be nice to see the stack trace and log for master to ensure that the problem is same to you previous hardware configuration.
You could also uninstall Arch 
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Changing OS, because of one Software that is buggy most of the time?
Everything else working. Thatās rediculous. Therefore Ardour is simply not good enough.
In the past year Iāve been using Reaper (and Qtractor) I had zero issues with plugins or Crashes. That means more time for making music. Thatās what counts for me.
If you really recommend changing OS you should consider admitting that Ardour is not working on all modern Linux Platforms and give a clear recommendation for a specific Linux OS to only use with Ardour.
There was a joke from @x42 . But sometimes a joke contains a great bunch of true.
Arch Linux tends to use the latest possible software and libraries. And sometimes this software and libraries can contain bugs. I already met set of problems where disappointed users come to the project with their problems and finally we find out that the problem is not in our project but in some third-party library.
Good examples are listed here:
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Since you donāt mind running binary blobs, could cent you check if the official binary from Download Ardour | Ardour Community also has those issues (demo version is fine to check and comes with an uninstaller).
We had reports that the arch build (and CatchyOS) are currently broken and crash regularly (nit just plugin related). Ubuntu managed that as well in the past by mixing random libraries, but has been fine lately.
Same issue with demo version!
I donāt waste any energy and time for Ardour anymore.
Goodbye!
If the problem is in the operating system, it doesnāt make sense to blame the application developers. Itās the same as if the road were full of potholes, your car broke down, and you blamed the car manufacturer. Good luck on your journey.
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I do understand your point and I also believe that bleeding edge Distros are bad choices for āpurpose-drivenā applications like Audio Workstationsā¦ However your analogy doesnāt exactly hold up because given that the road has potholes the Ardour āvehicleā is breaking down and the Reaper one isnātā¦ in that case there may be agreement that the road needs fixing but you also may have a case to complain to the vehicle manufacturer, or look elsewhere for a better-suited vehicle.
I think a product like Ardour that has an established, patched and mature set of core support libraries is going to occasionally not mesh with bleeding edge Distros, in similar ways other bundled things like AppImages also donāt work foreverā¦ You canāt fault Ardour for building a reliable bundle and you canāt fault Arch Linux for being what it says on the canā¦ I think there are a LOT of Users somewhere in the middle of all of that and I would guess that would be a sensible place for Ardourās priorities to be.
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Thanks for testing. The mystery remains though.
Reaper is a fine DAW, too. and hey, whatever works.
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Maybe Ardour could use some hot rod suspension to better handle the bumps of distros like Arch. 
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And, specifically, it states:
It is the user who is ultimately responsible for the stability of their own rolling release system
Implicitly, that includes the stability of applications they wish to run in their choice of OS.
I see this as putting the onus on the end-user to make things work. If they canāt, then I would suggest the user shouldnāt be using Arch (and I suspect the Arch maintainers would agree).
complaints of breakage are misguided and unproductive
Cheers,
Keith
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So I think I finally found the error.
It seems to be a mesa 25.2.2-4 issue on my hardware.
Iām on amdonly-gaming-mesa-git 25.3.0 now:
Everythings working again, no crashes, no plugin issues anymore.
Still wondering why this did only affect Ardourā¦?
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So it would be logical to admit that when you said "
Changing OS, because of one Software that is buggy most of the time?
Everything else working. Thatās rediculous. Therefore Ardour is simply not good enough.
In the past year Iāve been using Reaper (and Qtractor) I had zero issues with plugins or Crashes. That means more time for making music. Thatās what counts for me.
If you really recommend changing OS you should consider admitting that Ardour is not working on all modern Linux Platforms and give a clear recommendation for a specific Linux OS to only use with Ardour.",
in this case it was largely unfair to Ardour and its development, since you had tinkered with your distribution using AUR or Git packages for gaming .
If we did the same thing on Windows, I doubt that a series of software would work as well.
Iām not blindly defending Ardour, but in this caseā¦
And I donāt blame the approach of tinkering with a distribution. I do it myself often. But in the case where it doesnāt work, I avoid getting angry with the developers.
Besides, I personally gave up on the idea of āāhaving a Linux distribution that works for both gaming and pro audio use. Itās either one or the other.
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This is exactly why, especially in media production ā whether itās audio or video ā itās recommended to use a distribution tailored for that purpose, such as Ubuntu Studio, AV Linux, or similar. These systems are designed so that things just work out of the box without extra tweaking. If youāre using a general-purpose distro thatās been customized for something like gaming, you really need to have a deep understanding of how Linux works to keep the system stable and reliable for production use.
The same principle actually applied in the Windows world as well, especially in the past: if a machine was used for professional production, nothing else was done on it. No games, no experiments, not even casual web browsing. Just work ā to keep the environment predictable and consistent.
In media production, stability always takes priority ā regardless of the operating system.
From my perspective, the Ardour developers are top experts in their field and have clearly done significant pioneering work. As a recording and mixing engineer, I donāt feel I have enough grounds to criticize their work negatively ā nor do I have the need or desire to do so. However, I certainly have plenty of positive and kind things to say about them.
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I am glad you found the issue, and thank you for sharing the solution.
If I had to guess: Ardour does not sandbox plugins and runs them all in the same process. In the past weāve seen issue with nouveau when one than one window in a given process uses openGL. Maybe something similar sneaked in to mesaā¦?
Thatās why I prefer āstableā Linux distributions. Even if there some bug appears, I is a high probability that it already has been fixed in the new version of software and back-ported into the repository of stable distribution. It just works and does not force me to jump across the forums looking for a solution of the problem in the third-party software.
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