Dell Latitude 7280 Display Issue

tomscharbach

Axios If you guys are using wireless mouse try using a wired mouse for testing ...

Thanks.

I unplugged the wireless mouse (Microsoft Wireless Mobile 3500) on the 7390, plugged in a basic Microsoft wired mouse and rebooted. As usual, cursor movement with the wired mouse (which is not optical) is sloppy and hard to control with any precision, but I can't replicate the issue.

I'm going to try a Bluetooth mouse next and see what happens.

Edit/Update: I can't replicate the issue with a Microsoft Bluetooth 3600 mouse, either. With Bluetooth, though, I seem to have traded one issue for another. With the Bluetooth mouse, I get random nano-second "flashes" (the screen seems to refresh), and every once in a while the screen "stutters" for a half-second for no apparent reason. Infrequent in both cases, but often enough to be noticeable. I'll use the Bluetooth mouse for the rest of the day and see if I get the "flicker" error at any point.

I wonder if we are talking about some kind of bus conflict issue on this particular series of Dell Latitudes. The 7280 and the 7390 are close cousins, identical in build/specs except that (1) the 7280 is 7th Gen iCore and the 7390 is 8th Gen, and (2) the 7280 display is 1366x768 while the 7390 is 1920x1080.

Very interesting.

Second Edit/Update: No dice on the Bluetooth mouse. It took me about an hour to see it, but I can replicated the "flicker" error with a Microsoft Bluetooth 3600 mouse, on this forum anyway, at exactly the X/Y access point that triggered the "flicker" with the Microsoft Wireless Mobile 3500 mouse. I'm thinking that the "stutter" I mentioned earlier might have been a brief occurrence of the "flicker", short term because I moved the mouse.

Axios

tomscharbach Must be mouse day just seen your other posts in another thread.
Back in the day when I was video editing mac was the go to but the cost so we had bright idea
edit on a pc Make a long story short we could not make videos without glitches period.
so we ended up with macs and finalcut.
Year or so later Hp issued a Keyboard driver update (one those media keyboards) it was constantly polling
usb or internet forget which.
So since I still had that machine I installed the new driver and viola edited videos on the pc without any glitches
Go figure. Thousands of dollars issue at the time!!
Anything polling ect usb ports or driver may be causing an issue prob not likely but something to keep in mind.

BuzzPCSOS

I run Solus Budgie on my 7280 with a Logitech Pebble mouse in Bluetooth mode so that I can also use it on another PC with the unifying adaptor. Two computers - one mouse. Also the 7280 only has two USB ports so the bluetooth is a boon.
Anyhow, because I did not want to reprogram my mouse, all the live environments (Ubuntu Budgie, Solus Plasma, Feren, Solus Budgie and many more) all get run on a wired USB mouse. Some get flicker and some didn't although it is sometimes difficult to reproduce the fault on demand but they all ran on a wired mouse.
During recent testing I ended up with a small tape arrow stuck to the screen indicating the hot spot. The technique made finding the glitch much easier when switching between operating systems 😆

tomscharbach

BuzzPCSOS During recent testing I ended up with a small tape arrow stuck to the screen indicating the hot spot. The technique made finding the glitch much easier when switching between operating systems

Tech at its best ... LOL!

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I am just curious does this happen with the trackpad to?
In budgie you can disable trackpad try that with mouse
Guess I am not totally sure what happens at this magic spot nothing,screen flicker, mouse pointer goes away?

tomscharbach

Axios Guess I am not totally sure what happens at this magic spot nothing,screen flicker, mouse pointer goes away?

In my case, I would describe what happens as something in the order of a "flicker" or "jitter" or "stutter" or "vibration", horizontal (left to right) rather than vertical, shaking back and forth and continuing until the mouse is moved off the X-Y point that triggers the behavior. The "jitter" is very pronounced and obvious. The moment the mouse no longer hovers over the X-Y point, the screen returns to normal.

I do not get "the taskbar appears to double in size" behavior that @BuzzPCSOS reported in the original post.

I'm away from the 7390 right now, but I will try to test the touchpad if an hour or two. I say "try" because I am horrible on a touchpad, so I might not be able to hit the precise X-Y point.

Edit/Update: Pffft! Edge began to go south on me this afternoon, opening and then closing after a minute or two. Edge is installed as a Flatpak. I uninstalled Edge (and everything else) using flatpak uninstall --all, the then reinstalled Edge. The behavior didn't change. I've got some work to do -- install Firefox as a temporary measure, so I can work the Flatpak Edge issue -- before I can test the touchpad, obviously. I hope I don't have to do a complete Solus rebuild. Anyway, tomorrow, at best, before I can test the touchpad. Sometimes Linux just makes me crazy.

BuzzPCSOS

Axios

Axios I am just curious does this happen with the trackpad to?

Thanks for your interest. Yes it happens with just the touchpad but it is harder to reproduce because it is harder to make small accurate movements with it.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Back to basics i guess Since Dell certifies Ubuntu 16.04 for that machine
I would do one of the 2 below and see if you still have the issue
I cant answer the question if they are the same linux or if dell modifies there linux recovery image
I know its alot of trouble but would prob go the dell recovery route if it doesnt work there would tend to say hardware issue but we would expect theirs to work without issue.
Or just flip coin and try the Ubuntu 16.04 and see what happens.
Dell does not have any linux drivers listed so cross that off.
I think this test would tell what direction to go.
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/osiso/linux
https://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04/

tomscharbach

@Axios @BuzzPCSOS I'm going to stay out of the discussion while you work together, but I would like to make two observations that might be of help:

(1) Dell provides drivers and other resources to the kernel. This screenshot is from my Dell Latitude 7390:

(2) I think we have reasonably solid evidence that the issue is Solus-specific. I keep a number of distros (including Solus Plasma and Solus Budgie) on external M.2 drives (each set up to be a full standalone installation including its own EFI so that I can use them on any computer). I tested several distros on the Dell Latitude 7390 this morning. I can replicate the issue on both Solus Budgie and Solus Plasma. I cannot replicate the issue on any of the non-Solus distros. As I understand it, that has been @BuzzPCSOS's experience as well.

BuzzPCSOS

Well I have been researching with my little tape arrow again 😄
Over time I have got myself a fair library of ISOs so I have tried running the Live environment for each to see if any others flickered. All named as per the downloaded ISO.
EndeavourOS_Artemis-22_6 - Solid
Feren-OS-standarddt - Solid
linux-lite-6.0-64bit - Flickers
linuxmint-21-cinnamon-64bit - Solid
MX-21.2.1_x64 - Solid
Solus-4.3-Budgie - Flickers
ubuntu-budgie-22.04.1-desktop-amd64 - Solid
Window PE - Solid

The only distro I could reproduce the flicker on other than Solus was Linux Lite. Ironically I moved away from Linux light due to display issues on a different laptop and followed a very favourable review posted on ghacks.net that led me to Solus.
Really enjoyed the operating system and the friendly forum which is why I am still here.
It seems very strange that Linux-Lite carries the bug despite being Ubuntu based whereas other Ubuntu based OS's like Linux Mint were rock solid, pretty sure Feren was the Debian version and not the Ubuntu build.
Food for thought. I don't think the flicker is a deal breaker for Solus on my 7280 especially now I can use my desktop again with Nemo.
It would just be nice for everything to look 'right' when I show off my Solus laptop to friends.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I dug out the dell latitude 5530 with doc I could not duplicate any issues
First time I had run linux on it and I really liked it was the fastest machine running from live that
I ever used.
I think its video related dont know why those machines would be that much different and dont
have a cure for you.

tomscharbach

Axios ... dont know why those machines would be that much different ...

Different onboard graphics, probably. My Latitude 5520 has Iris Xe graphics rather than UHD 620 graphics. I don't get the error on the 5520,

Axios I think its video related ...

I do, too, probably related to the the way in which the Dell i915 driver interacts with something in the Solus OS Layer. But I don't understand why we aren't seeing more reports of the issue, and I don't have the skill set to get to the bottom of it or solve it.

laurker

I have a small, USB-powered secondary monitor. Once it's set up as an external display, the issue no longer occurs (even if it's in standby). I don't know whether this is due to the dual-display configuration or the USB polling, or power draw, and don't have a different monitor to test. Maybe this would be a path to explore, for someone with access to a secondary monitor.

I've also wondered if it might be RF interference from certain wireless accessories. I've found it more difficult to trigger when using my Logitech mouse in Bluetooth mode than with the Unifying receiver.

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