Wayland Screen Flicker Bug

WetGeek

brent I installed Latte in XFCE and it would not launch today.

That's what happened to me when I tried that a while ago. Apparently it's Plank for the GNOME machines, and Latte for the KDE machines. For a while, I was using Plank everywhere, but as I've just written, that ended today.

We indeed live in interesting times.

WetGeek

WetGeek We indeed live in interesting times.

And one more thing that started working now, that hadn't been working recently. That's the night-light feature. My eyes are sensitive to bright light ever since I had cataract surgery. And when I worked at a computer when it's dark outside, and I opened up a Vivaldi session, it was painful. But night-light is obviously working now, and it's much better on the eyes.

brent

WetGeek That's what happened to me when I tried that a while ago. Apparently it's Plank for the GNOME machines, and Latte for the KDE machines. For a while, I was using Plank everywhere, but as I've just written, that ended today.

We indeed live in interesting times.

it's funny for Latte, I did the menu launch, nothing. I do the terminal launch it says Latte already running but nothing for eyeballs to see...I had to file an XFCE Plank bug at dev tracker today---again the parallel irony with Latte---it wouldn't show dots for the minimized apps....until I lowered refresh rate which I thought was weird.

WetGeek Apparently it's Plank for the GNOME machines, and Latte for the KDE machines

that needs to be made clear somewhere🙂. I dragged 50 k-packages into XFCE for nothing.

like you I never have a negative reaction. it's funny quite often, needs to be noted, and very much a great adventure. too bad about the Lions and I don't like the Chiefs and my teams not in it anyway so I digress 😎

WetGeek

I'm updating the Latitude laptop with Xfce on it now. This is what DoFlicky looks like when it has that upgrade for Nvidia:

Since I have no interest in playing legacy Windows games, I passed on the 32-bit option, but others may want that as well.

This is the dependency I mentioned earlier. After this, the upgrade will be installed. This is where I saw Wayland mentioned. I'm a little confused about whether the flickering was actually an Intel or NVidia issue, but I can't argue with the results.

Authentication is needed, but a convenient dialog lets you do that from here. When the upgrade is finished, a restart is needed.

WetGeek

brent I dragged 50 k-packages into XFCE for nothing.

I haven't tried that, but I wouldn't expect it to be a problem. I've used other KDE applications in every GNOME-based computer and VM I've ever created, without any problems. I figured the Plank/Latte issue was a one-off.

WetGeek

I just finished upgrading the Xfce laptop and restarting, and as one might expect, there were some differences. Unlike on the Plasma laptop, there was no problem running Plank either before or after the upgrade. So I'm less convinced that the upgrade had anything to do with Plank. I think it was this weekend's update that did that instead. While it was up and running, it stayed that way, but once it was shut down, it wouldn't start again.

brent

WetGeek . I figured the Plank/Latte issue was a one-off.

thanks for confirming this. I figured an anomaly but needed a 2nd opinion

BuzzPCSOS

My Latitude HD graphics card still flickers here :-(
I checked for an updated graphics driver but DoFlicky said there were none there which figures because I only have Intel HD Graphics 620 and no extra NVIDIA card.
I searched for the egl-wayland dependency in the Software Centre that @WetGeek mentioned, it is not installed on my laptop and I'm not going to try installing it on a hunch that it might make things better.
I will continue to run in wayland as the flicker is not that bad and it only takes a small mouse movement to stop it. I can see that there are Exciting Times ahead for all of us on Solus and maybe a future update will end the flicker for good.

WetGeek

BuzzPCSOS maybe a future update will end the flicker for good.

I'm hoping so as well. Now that the cause and the cure are known, it's time to get it fixed for everyone who's affected.

And now that I'm working with it more, I'm seeing that it's not entirely cured on my latitude, either. But now it's almost unnoticeable, as you wrote, and stops the flickering itself when I just keep using the mouse. It used to be a violent shaking of the image that made me think something was about to break, I'd need to move the mouse pretty far away to stop it.

Plus, the other changes I mentioned are very welcome. Night color working again, for instance. It's not yet dawn here, and my eyes appreciate that it automatically changed. And the night color icon now stays visible in the system tray and can be toggled on and off. Before, not only did that icon not do anything, but it jumped back into the hidden icons secetion if I clicked on it.

BuzzPCSOS

WetGeek Just need to share this. I took a serious look at my display tonight. Compositor settings, Resolution, Refresh rate, RGB Range, Legacy Applications preferences, everything! I also spent a while watching a video by Chris Titus called Fix Screen Tearing in Linux. To be honest I did not follow any of his advice except to run xrandr to show the capabilities of my video card. Turns out that my refresh rate tops out at about 58.8Hz. I also noticed that in System Settings - Display Configuration is set to 60hz. On a whim I lowered it to 40Hz and applied the change.
So far so good!
I can't make my screen flicker anymore in Wayland. I have spent several minutes trying to find the sweet spot where the screen flickers and it seems to have gone :-))
Is it just me? Please let me know. Could it really be that simple?

WetGeek

BuzzPCSOS Is it just me? Please let me know. Could it really be that simple?

I'll give that a try and see if it gets rid of what little flickering I still see. Thanks for the idea!

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I am in same boat with firefox as you guys are with wayland made it
about non existent but still burps now and then.

glxgears is cool just to see your framerate.

I got say tho the gentoo site is really good for help on stuff laid out really well easy to understand
but havent had alot time to look at it more.
There stuff seems pretty proper and right.
Will look at your suggestion since I dont do games.

OndrejPopp

BuzzPCSOS
Tx for the tip! I just upgraded to Fedora 40 and XWayland, and so I had the same issue also in DaVinciResolve. So I ran xrandr and also saw that the capability of my graphics card was just below 60 : 59.8 so I changed the refresh rate in kde plasma from 60 -> 50 and the screen flicker is gone gone gone... Amazing!

Tx and have a nice day!
Ondrej

WetGeek

WetGeek I'll give that a try

I'm not sure I'm going to call this a cure already, but it's certainly looking good here. I've been trying to prompt some flickering for the last 15 minutes or so, and haven't seen a single flicker at 48 Hz.

Keep in mind that silent films were shot and displayed at 16 Hz, as that was proven to be fast enough for users to perceive it as smooth movement instead of individual frames. Later, that standard was changed to 24 Hz, but it was because doing that increased the audio range of the optical sound track on "talkies." And 48 Hz is twice that speed, so it's clearly fast enough for all but the gamers.

I'm going to keep it at 48 Hz for a while now (at least until the flickering is demonstrably fixed), and I'll address this later, when I've had enough time to be sure. Thanks for doing the research to uncover this apparent fix.

BuzzPCSOS

WetGeek I'm just glad it wasn't just me that it worked for. Not a glamorous patch but it will do for now.

WetGeek

WetGeek I have some possible news regarding this issue.

Aw, fsck. It tuns out that my early experience with this turned out not to be true. Apparently my sesion had been on X11 - though I'd thought it was on Wayland - when I saw that apparent improvement with the mini toolbar setting turned back on. I apologize if anyone was inconvenienced by my comment. I truly thought the problem had been solved.

I discovered my mistake today when I turned that setting back on for the rest of my VMs, and found that they still lock up under the circumstances I've mentioned. My first thought was that it must be DE specific, 'cause it was a Plasma VM where I thought the problem had been solved. But no. I re-checked a Plasma VM, and it also locked up the computer under the same circumstances. So the only likely reason for my confusion is that I was actually in an X11 session when I believed I was using Wayland. Sorry about that.

BuzzPCSOS

WetGeek Thought it was too good to be true, further experimentation indicates that the screen position where flicker occurs is slightly further up the screen when a lower refresh rate is used which is why I did not find it last night.
Sorry to get your hopes up.
Investigation continues :-(

Axios

Well I have fixed my screen issues in firefox have it running now with hardware support and plays videos
without issues. (will see if the fix holds)
Dunno why on this lenovo it became an issue all of a sudden.
I needed to learn more about video...lol (yuck)
Think I am going rebase the cpu/gpu glue later prob could use it.....Rofl

BuzzPCSOS

Axios I wonder what CPU you are running. Certainly worth getting some new thermal paste on the GPU/CPU and maybe looking at how much RAM you have installed as web browsers tend to eat lots.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS It just usually after 3-4 years should be replaced.
Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU 4405U @ 2.10GHz

BuzzPCSOS

Axios

Axios A low(ish) power CPU with a troublesome graphics card is not a good combination. I try to keep intel i3 as my minimum spec for a 'keeper'.
The X11 graphics fix should work ok for everything except for Wayland on that machine, we will just have to wait for the Wayland fix.
The flickering you experienced is only in the Firefox?
That could just be because it is the environment where the cursor does the most milage.
When I was testing I ended up marking the point on my screen with a masking tape pointer so that I could relocate the place that caused the flickering quickly with different programs running.
Changing the refresh frequency certainly changes the characteristics of the flicker but does not remove it.
I wonder if the problem is just an outdated graphics driver built into the kernel, mine is listed as i915. Frankly out of my depth at that point but it still interests me that the contents of the X11 fix file did not need details of specific patches, only an identifier as "Intel-Graphics" and a driver as "intel". Seems like there are a few parts here that are not joining the dots.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Welllll my experience with the .conf files is alot the info the syntax is wrong
people dont do their research before coming out with these command web pages..

Did couple times on desktop but firefox was the main issue.

Driver is (Iris) or (intel) depending what file and Gen you are working with not i915 is the gpu
This page is good for the intel graphic gens https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Intel.
Some of the current newer stuff the kernel handles it mostly.

The skinny of Had use 2 files 20-intel.conf and 20-modesettings.conf and by testing and tuning
the settings in both tend to interact somewhat sometimes.
Syntax and commands different for each.

The files in etc/x11/xorg.conf.d overide the ones in usr/share/x11/xorg.conf.d
gotta watch that I deleted them in second and put them in the first.

I had a thread I started but got no reply so deleted Found online that the modestting was good for both
x11 and wayland wanted to know if that was correct or not.
(So if thats the case may be an avenue for wayland)

When I went to software cursor cured most but had fine tune and add couple things in both files .But I see that
wayland I think already uses software cursor. (From what I c online people complaining issues with that dunno)

Hope didnt confuse and maybe something in there that gets you thinking.
But your understanding appears on course with from what I learned My first time really dealing with this in
deep detail.

My biggest thought that 20-intel.conf and 20-modestting.conf would mess with each other and load one or the other but appears not the case

It was a journey
Note: The above is of course for X but might give some understanding in the case of wayland and I know
they are two different animals.

Just tested again it was consistent failures before ---Everything appears still working.---YA

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