Is Zed only useable on GPU-enabled machines?

[thor314]

It seems that Zed complains my linux laptop does not have an onboard GPU:

zed uses vulkan for rendering and requires a compatible gpu. you are using a software emulated gpu, which will result in awful performance.

From that message, I infer my options are:

• get a beefier laptop with a GPU
• don't use Zed

is that correct?

[bajrangCoder]

No, It's works well on integrated GPU.
I have an old Intel processor with no dedicated GPU but Zed works flawlessly and it's fast . I'm using Arch linux

[thor314]

how do i set that up?

[bajrangCoder]

Install the vulkan graphics lib and then install zed using any of mentioned method from zed docs

[thor314]

Maybe I misunderstand what you mean.

I've tried:

sudo apt install vulkan-tools libvulkan1 libvulkan-dev
sudo apt install mesa-vulkan-drivers
vulkaninfo # returns a long text block of info

# opens zed with the warning, Unsupported GPU
zed

edit:
I believe I misunderstood earlier what an integrated GPU is. I don't have one of those, so I don't believe I'll be able to run zed. Cheers, thanks for the comments.

[gkobeaga]

I successfully ran the Zed editor on Arch Linux with an integrated Intel GPU by installing the vulkan-intel package.

[muhiris]

Zed, you just broke old machine compatibility by mandating Vulkan support. You locked out users with older hardware or systems lacking proper GPU drivers. Your decision to force Vulkan rendering without maintaining a fallback option demonstrates poor judgment regarding hardware accessibility.

This is exactly how you kill adoption and fragment the user base. Not everyone runs cutting-edge hardware, and many developers work on older but perfectly functional machines. Watch as someone forks this and maintains a version that actually respects hardware diversity.

Terrible product decision. Back to VS Code.

[obamarama]

totally agree with @muhiris! i'm an active python developer and have a couple of computers for my work that performs great enough with minimalistic arch setup, but my GPU's just aren't new enough to use vulkan, so i couldn't even try Zed while really interested in it.