I am trying to run blender on my newly installed Xubuntu 20.04. The specific error I'm getting is: "Error! Unsupported graphics card or driver.
A graphics card and driver with support for OpenGL 3.3 or higher is required."

I *think* The OpenGL version I have available is 4.3, and my Mesa version is 20, but I'm not completely sure.

I have googled this problem, and I did find a couple of solutions that didn't work for me:
- installed this PPA, and rebooted.
add-apt-repository ppaibaf/graphics-drivers; apt dist-upgrade
- re-installing xserver-xorg-video-intel both with and without the PPA
- setting the environment variable MESA_GL_VERSION_OVERRIDE=4.3 and when set, blender will start but almost immediately crashes with a different error: "GPUShader: compile error:
0:1(10): error: GLSL 3.30 is not supported. Supported versions are: 1.10, 1.20, and 1.00 ES"


"glxinfo|grep OpenGL" returns
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset (CTG)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.3 (Core Profile) Mesa 20.2.0-devel (git-91a82d0 2020-06-24 focal-oibaf-ppa)
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL core profile context flags: (none)
OpenGL core profile profile mask: core profile
OpenGL core profile extensions:
OpenGL version string: 4.3 (Compatibility Profile) Mesa 20.2.0-devel (git-91a82d0 2020-06-24 focal-oibaf-ppa)
OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
OpenGL context flags: (none)
OpenGL profile mask: compatibility profile
OpenGL extensions:
OpenGL ES profile version string: OpenGL ES 2.0 Mesa 20.2.0-devel (git-91a82d0 2020-06-24 focal-oibaf-ppa)
OpenGL ES profile shading language version string: OpenGL ES GLSL ES 1.0.16
OpenGL ES profile extensions:


"inxi -G" returns:
Graphics:
Device-1: Intel Mobile 4 Series Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa
resolution: 1366x768~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel GM45 Express (CTG)
v: 4.3 Mesa 20.2.0-devel (git-91a82d0 2020-06-24 focal-oibaf-ppa)



Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

I'm not sure, but what I think inxi is reporting Focal's installed OpenGL version, not the maximum OpenGL version that your IGP supports. Mine is similar (blender is not installed - trying wanted to install 92 new packages consuming 401 MB).

Don't do that. There are certain cases where you can get away with this hack (like for older radeon cards as long as the program doesn't require fp64).
But it will not magically make your old OpenGL 2.1 GPU support OpenGL 4.3.

Then solution is to use an older version of Blender. Read the requirements/release notes to see which version will work.

I'm pretty sure this article applies to your old GPU:
https://software.intel.com/content/w...nd-beyond.html
tl;dr: maximum OpenGL version supported by this hardware is 2.1.

Is there an echo in here?

Blender 2.79 is the last release to support OpenGL 2.1 GPU's.
Blender 2.8x will not run on your laptop.

As a number of you pointed out my poor under-powered and quite old GPU is not exactly up to the task and I don't doubt that the highest it will go is 2.1
I had rather hoped that there was a driver solution to this problem, but this turns out to not be the case.

The good news is I *do* have a solution. Sort of.

Running this command:

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 blender file.blend

Will run blender in a 3d emulation mode. I think this only works in Ubuntu variants, so if anyone finds this and gives it a go, YMMV. Also, it's slow and prone to locking up, but it does work.

1 members found this post helpful.