Screen's been glitching a lot past couple of weeks, what could be wrong?

sarah532

hey 😃
I've been using solus for 4 years on a Thinkpad Lenovo T440p with no problems. My system is up to date, and I ran sudo eopkg check all is OK.
The glitching varies in intensity and sometimes as I'm typing this post for example, the words get removed then reappear in a matter of seconds. Sometimes I get black lines on the screen, varying in thickness. Sometimes I can't even switch between tabs because it keeps jumping between the current open tab and the new tab.
The only thing different on my laptop is a new vpn (expressvpn) and I've been opening tradingview to check stock charts daily a lot.
What could the problem be? Thanks a lot for your time!
Cheers!

SuperJC710e

sarah532 I'm chiming in to say that I've been experiencing similar on both my Lenovo Thinkpads with Optimus graphics. (W520, W530). Both running Budgie. Both running Solus for a LONG time. The W520 has been running it from the days of yore.

Not the same issues, but definitely some graphics issues and bugs.

Recently we have been getting webcam freezes on videoconferencing applications (Zoom, Meet) that we were not getting before.
Also, if the screen goes to sleep mode, sometimes when it's awakened, it just stays black with a pointer, but nothing else.
Other times, on return from suspend it is complete locked up, and only a forced shutdown can recover.
Removal from the docking station at times results in a lockup, or non-functional networking (the switchover was seamless before.)
Ghosting of dialog boxes (there's another conversation about this in the forums.)
Lags/hangs in text entry in gedit

There's probably a few others.

With no disrespect to the devs, as I know they are working very hard on the system and doing a great job, also, likely, most, if not all, of the issues come from upstream, however, I have found currently it is no longer the rock solid distro it's been in the past. It's still my OS of choice, but it's become somewhat aggravating to use. I hope this issues get ironed out. Perhaps we can help with providing some more details and logs as we encounter them.

Leandros_Adigard

Which desktop environment are you using?

Leandros_Adigard

SuperJC710e What have you tried for rectifying the issue? I don't want to make any presumptions.

SuperJC710e

Leandros_Adigard So far my time has been limited do to work and family responsibilities, so mostly it's just been the hard restart as necessary, or ssh'ing in remotely and rebooting when that's available. I did look through the logs using journalctl a few times, but couldn't find anything helpful. I'm thinking of install the LTS kernel on the system with the webcam freezes as it's the system my son is using for virtual school. Also, I've ordered an external webcam to eliminate the issue being the hardware in the aging system. (I also have an alternate distro on the (triple boot) system that I may test, but I have to keep the learning curve low for my son and wife to be able to use the system...so I need some time to make some modifications.)

Any suggestions where I could look, or steps to take, for more helpful information or troubleshooting steps?

Thanks.

Here's a log from another glitch I'm witnessing lately. Opening new PDF's whether from a browser (Firefox) or from Files. It opens small, and basically hangs, and then displays a second distorted copy of my full desktop, and then eventually opens properly, often after I switch to something else first. (I was "following" the log output at the time.)

Feb 07 15:13:11 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Activating service name='org.gnome.evince.Daemon' requested by ':1.170' (uid=1000 pid=16137 comm="evince /home/jason/Documents/3b1e1e_278d283d14bf4d" label="unconfined")
Feb 07 15:13:11 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.evince.Daemon'
Feb 07 15:13:15 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Activating service name='org.gnome.evince.Daemon' requested by ':1.172' (uid=1000 pid=16153 comm="evince /home/jason/Documents/09186656.pdf " label="unconfined")
Feb 07 15:13:15 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.evince.Daemon'
Feb 07 15:13:18 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Activating service name='org.gnome.evince.Daemon' requested by ':1.174' (uid=1000 pid=16168 comm="evince /home/jason/Documents/1910012768-EAP Series" label="unconfined")
Feb 07 15:13:18 <hostname> dbus-daemon[1795]: [session uid=1000 pid=1795] Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.evince.Daemon'
Feb 07 15:13:18 <hostname> budgie-wm[2038]: Can't update stage views actor MetaStage is on because it needs an allocation.
Feb 07 15:13:18 <hostname> budgie-wm[2038]: Can't update stage views actor MetaWindowGroup is on because it needs an allocation.
Feb 07 15:13:18 <hostname> budgie-wm[2038]: Can't update stage views actor MetaWindowActorX11 is on because it needs an allocation.