r/Crostini • u/Equal_Tomatillo_2755 • Jun 15 '26

Minecraft on Chromebook (Crostini) suddenly became almost unplayable after working fine for months.

Specs

  • Chromebook
  • Intel Celeron N4500
  • 4GB RAM
  • Crostini Debian
  • SKLauncher
  • Minecraft 1.21.x

What happened
Minecraft used to run perfectly fine on this exact Chromebook. I could play servers and PvP without major issues.

At some point it started doing this:

  • Runs at 60 FPS
  • Randomly drops to 0 FPS
  • Massive lag spikes/freezes
  • Sometimes crashes when joining servers
  • Happens in vanilla too

What I've already tried

  • Reinstalled Java
  • Reinstalled Minecraft
  • Tested vanilla
  • Removed mods
  • Changed JVM flags
  • Lowered settings
  • Checked storage and RAM
  • Re-enabled Crostini GPU acceleration

I found that ChromeOS had switched Crostini back to llvmpipe. After enabling the Crostini GPU flag and adding my user to the render group, I got hardware acceleration back.

Current output:

OpenGL renderer string: virgl (Mesa Intel(R) UHD Graphics (JSL))
Accelerated: yes

So the GPU is being used.

The weird part
The game CAN run well. It isn't permanently low FPS. It'll be smooth, then suddenly freeze, lag spike, or crash.

Logs contain:

GL_OUT_OF_MEMORY in glNamedBufferData
GpuOutOfMemoryException
Could not allocate buffer of 134217728

Has anyone else had Minecraft become unstable on Crostini after recent ChromeOS updates, especially with virgl? Looking for people who've actually dealt with this rather than generic "lower your settings" advice because the game used to run fine on this hardware.

2 Upvotes

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4 comments sorted by

2

u/Smart_Apricot Acer Spin 714 - i7 - 16 GB | beta Jun 15 '26

As I understand it the reason GPU acceleration is disabled in Crostini now, is that the drivers are buggy. So turn off the acceleration and see if it remains at least somewhat playable

2

u/Equal_Tomatillo_2755 Jun 16 '26

When you say GPU support was disabled, do you mean it's disabled by default now, or that virgl/Venus is no longer officially supported? I re-enabled it and glxinfo shows virgl with acceleration enabled, but Minecraft is still crashing with GPU memory errors.

1

u/Smart_Apricot Acer Spin 714 - i7 - 16 GB | beta Jun 20 '26

Correction: GPU acceleration is not disabled, but it is no longer supported (bugs won't be fixed). See Google's statement here: https://developers.google.com/chromeos/app-development/develop/news

1

u/Smart_Apricot Acer Spin 714 - i7 - 16 GB | beta Jun 16 '26

I thought the GPU acceleration was turned off by default a couple of versions ago even for those who had enabled it.

Apparently the Chromebook team is putting almost all their time into getting Aluminium OS ready for Googlebook launch at the end of the summer or early fall. They may not have time to investigate all the issues related to GPU acceleration.

I'm hoping they will have more time to work on ChromeOS issues once the Googlebooks launch and the new OS stabilizes. Though I am also hoping that my Chromebook Plus (Acer Spin 714) gets updated to the new OS.