Cannot start zed on ubuntu (Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete)

[Adjective10111]

Reproduction steps

I installed zed from the sh file on ubuntu 2404LTS. i tried installing new drivers and such. also googled a lot but nothing worked.
when i try starting it with --foreground i get the log.

Zed version and system specs

zed: Zed 0.221.5
OS: Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS
kernel: 6.8.0-51-generic
memory: 20GB
arch: x86_64

Attach Zed log file

Zed.log

2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [zed] ========== starting zed version 0.221.5+stable ==========
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 WARN  [fontdb] Failed to load a font face 0 from '/home/$USER/.local/share/fonts/Far_KoodkBd.ttf' cause font doesn't have a family name.
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::x11::client] x11: compositor present: true, gtk_frame_extents_supported: false
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::x11::client] Using scale factor from Xft.dpi: 0.8333333
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [zed_xim::x11rb] Try connect ibus
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [crashes] spawning crash handler process
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::platform] activate is not implemented on Linux, ignoring the call
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [auto_update] Auto Update: checking for updates
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::x11::window] Using Visual { id: 35, colormap: 0, depth: 32 }
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [gpui::platform::linux::x11::window] Creating colormap 56623106
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [crashes] connected to crash handler process after 100ms
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 INFO  [crashes] crash handler registered
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 ERROR [crashes] thread 'main' panicked at /home/runner/.cargo/git/checkouts/blade-.../.../blade-graphics/src/vulkan/surface.rs:344:90:
called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED...
2026-01-31T11:04:34+03:30 ERROR [crashes] triggering a crash to generate a minidump...

[cppcoffee]

MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete

Confirm whether Vulkan is available
Run vulkaninfo or vkcube to see if it initializes normally; if it fails, it is basically a system Vulkan stack issue.

[mchisolm0]

Hey @Adjective10111 thanks for the report. cppcoffee is right you'll want to try the vulaninfo or vkcube commands.

You may have already checked, but there is also more information at https://zed.dev/docs/linux#troubleshooting. Hope it helps, and let us know if you still have the problem after this.

[Adjective10111]

I ran both commands and they didn't fail. the cube was rotating and the vulkaninfo was printed. is there something in that info that may be useful?

also i checked the link you provided. i found

If you see errors like ERROR_INITIALIZATION_FAILED or GPU Crashed or ERROR_SURFACE_LOST_KHR then you may be able to work around this by installing different drivers for your GPU, or by selecting a different GPU to run on. (See #14225)

but when i tried updating the gpu manually by apt install nvidia-driver-550-open it didn't help and my kitty terminal got messed up as well. so i used ubuntu-drivers install to reinstall the one it did before which is this:

vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GK208B [GeForce GT 730]
driver   : nvidia-driver-470 - distro non-free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-470-server - distro non-free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

the system is old so maybe that's the issue?

[Adjective10111]

i had successfully installed zed a couple of days back on my personal laptop and wanted to install it on this pc. they both are on Ubuntu 2404 LTS, but my laptop is newer. i didn't have any problems on that. my best guess is the hw's support since that's the only difference between the 2 systems.

[mchisolm0]

vendor   : NVIDIA Corporation
model    : GK208B [GeForce GT 730]
driver   : nvidia-driver-470 - distro non-free recommended
driver   : nvidia-driver-470-server - distro non-free
driver   : xserver-xorg-video-nouveau - distro free builtin

Thank you for the update! 😁

I am admittedly also a bit unfamiliar, but I think based on the steps in this guide and your output that you are on the right track. Could you try this guide a report back how it goes?

[Adjective10111]

i followed the guide and had no problems:

$ lspci | grep -i vga
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GK208B [GeForce GT 730] (rev a1)
$ nvidia-smi
Sun Feb  1 13:02:36 2026
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| NVIDIA-SMI 470.256.02   Driver Version: 470.256.02   CUDA Version: 11.4     |
|-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+
| GPU  Name        Persistence-M| Bus-Id        Disp.A | Volatile Uncorr. ECC |
| Fan  Temp  Perf  Pwr:Usage/Cap|         Memory-Usage | GPU-Util  Compute M. |
|                               |                      |               MIG M. |
|===============================+======================+======================|
|   0  NVIDIA GeForce ...  Off  | 00000000:06:00.0 N/A |                  N/A |
| N/A   46C    P0    N/A /  N/A |    586MiB /  1999MiB |     N/A      Default |
|                               |                      |                  N/A |
+-------------------------------+----------------------+----------------------+

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Processes:                                                                  |
|  GPU   GI   CI        PID   Type   Process name                  GPU Memory |
|        ID   ID                                                   Usage      |
|=============================================================================|
|  No running processes found                                                 |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
$ vulkaninfo| head
WARNING: [Loader Message] Code 0 : terminator_CreateInstance: Received return code -3 from call to vkCreateInstance in ICD /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libvulkan_virtio.so. Skipping this driver.
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
==========
VULKANINFO
==========

Vulkan Instance Version: 1.3.275


Instance Extensions: count = 23
===============================
	VK_EXT_acquire_drm_display             : extension revision 1
$ vkcube
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
Selected GPU 0: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730, type: DiscreteGpu

but something cut my eye here. in this line:

MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete

means my intel gpu doesn't support that right? so maybe zed tries the intel one? i tried following the intel gpu instructions but the driver was installed and i don't know how to make sense of vulkaninfo. maybe i should try force running zed on nvidia?

[Adjective10111]

ok my hunch was right. when running vkcube --gpu_number 1 i got:

$ vkcube --gpu_number 1
MESA-INTEL: warning: Haswell Vulkan support is incomplete
Selected GPU 1: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600 (HSW GT2), type: IntegratedGpu
vkcube: ./cube/cube.c:1369: demo_prepare_buffers: Assertion `!err' failed.
[1]    1846295 IOT instruction (core dumped)  vkcube --gpu_number 1

i set sudo prime-select nvidia and zed came up. but there's another problem. i get this error:

Zed uses Vulkan for rendering and requires a compatible GPU.
Currently you are using a software emulated GPU (llvmpipe (LLVM 17.0.6, 256 bits)) which will result in awful performance.
For troubleshooting see: https://zed.dev/docs/linux Set ZED_ALLOW_EMULATED_GPU=1 env var to permanently override.

my log says:

[zed::zed] Using GPU: GpuSpecs { is_software_emulated: true, device_name: "llvmpipe (LLVM 17.0.6, 256 bits)", driver_name: "llvmpipe", driver_info: "Mesa 24.0.9-0ubuntu0.3 (LLVM 17.0.    6)" }

i tried export ZED_ALLOW_EMULATED_GPU=1 and ran zed it worked. is there a better way or should i set this env in my zshrc?