C SDL2 Error: No hardware accelerated renderers available - c

Question

I'm trying to create a pong game with sdl2 in c. I'm able to make it work in a laptop running UBUNTU 20.04 (gtx 1650 mobile) with nvidia driver 470. But running it on the same setup in ubuntu 21.10 with nvidia 470 on a different laptop (rtx 3060 mobile) gives me this error.
Here's the code (stripped off any game logic to only part where it crashes).
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdbool.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include "SDL2/SDL.h"
const int SCREEN_WIDTH = 1200;
const int SCREEN_HEIGHT = 800;
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
int sdl_init_status = SDL_Init(SDL_INIT_VIDEO|SDL_INIT_AUDIO|SDL_INIT_TIMER);
if (sdl_init_status != 0)
{
printf("Initialization failed. Error: %s \n", SDL_GetError());
return 1;
}
SDL_Window* window = SDL_CreateWindow("PONG", SDL_WINDOWPOS_CENTERED, SDL_WINDOWPOS_CENTERED, SCREEN_WIDTH, SCREEN_HEIGHT, SDL_WINDOW_RESIZABLE);
if (!window)
{
printf("Window initialization error: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
SDL_Quit();
return 1;
}
puts("Window created");
// // create renderer
Uint32 rflags = SDL_RENDERER_ACCELERATED | SDL_RENDERER_PRESENTVSYNC;
SDL_Renderer* renderer = SDL_CreateRenderer(window, -1, rflags);
if (!renderer)
{
printf("renderer initialization error: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
SDL_Quit();
return 1;
}
puts("Renderer created");
SDL_Surface* screen_surface = SDL_GetWindowSurface(window);
if (!screen_surface)
{
printf("surface initialization error: %s\n", SDL_GetError());
SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
SDL_Quit();
return 1;
}
puts("Surface created");
SDL_Delay(1000);
// cleanup and quit
SDL_DestroyRenderer(renderer);
SDL_DestroyWindow(window);
SDL_Quit();
}
This is the output I get:
gcc -std=c99 -g3 -Wall -o1 -o main main.c `sdl2-config --libs --cflags` -lm -lSDL2_image
./main
Window created
Renderer created
surface initialization error: No hardware accelerated renderers available
make: *** [Makefile:10: test] Error 1

Answer 1

You have
Uint32 rflags = SDL_RENDERER_ACCELERATED | SDL_RENDERER_PRESENTVSYNC;
SDL_Renderer* renderer = SDL_CreateRenderer(window, -1, rflags);
Your error states No hardware accelerated renderers available.
The documentation for SDL_CreateRenderer refers 4 flags you can use.
I was having this issue on Android devices and solved with replacing the flags in SDL_CreateRenderer with only SDL_RENDERER_SOFTWARE. So use
Uint32 rflags = SDL_RENDERER_SOFTWARE;
instead.