It seems Vulkan support, the only GPU rendering API Zed uses, isn't well supported by any of the Debian derivatives. The libraries are only installed and working in Ubuntu 24.04 in Gnome Wayland sessions for example (Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't have KDE new enough for Wayland support).
And there are also bugs in the Zed automatic GPU selection that will intermittently cause it to pick the wrong GPU in a system with multiple (E.g. a discreet GPU and a motherboard with integrated graphics). Vulkan can only run on the primary rendering GPU, but it doesn't always pick that one, and doesn't support trying any others after the first one or picks (it seems), so it just falls back to emulated.
For reference, I had to spend 4 days getting Zed to install as part of a Nix home-manager config with nixGL because out of the box it failed to use the GPU on 2 of 3 systems. But after forcing it to use the right GPU with a wrapper that had Vulkan support (a nixGL wrapper) all 3 systems worked fine (so it's a Zed assumption/bug problem).
Also, the fact that Zed without the Vulkan supported hardware rendering is unusably slow is a big problem. It's far slower than anything else on the system and cranks the CPU to 100 with its "emulated GPU" workaround. That's not acceptable, they really need to get at least basic performance for the seeming majority of target systems that don't/can't meet the hardware rendering needs.
It seems Vulkan support, the only GPU rendering API Zed uses, isn't well supported by any of the Debian derivatives. The libraries are only installed and working in Ubuntu 24.04 in Gnome Wayland sessions for example (Ubuntu 24.04 doesn't have KDE new enough for Wayland support).
And there are also bugs in the Zed automatic GPU selection that will intermittently cause it to pick the wrong GPU in a system with multiple (E.g. a discreet GPU and a motherboard with integrated graphics). Vulkan can only run on the primary rendering GPU, but it doesn't always pick that one, and doesn't support trying any others after the first one or picks (it seems), so it just falls back to emulated.
For reference, I had to spend 4 days getting Zed to install as part of a Nix home-manager config with nixGL because out of the box it failed to use the GPU on 2 of 3 systems. But after forcing it to use the right GPU with a wrapper that had Vulkan support (a nixGL wrapper) all 3 systems worked fine (so it's a Zed assumption/bug problem).
Also, the fact that Zed without the Vulkan supported hardware rendering is unusably slow is a big problem. It's far slower than anything else on the system and cranks the CPU to 100 with its "emulated GPU" workaround. That's not acceptable, they really need to get at least basic performance for the seeming majority of target systems that don't/can't meet the hardware rendering needs.