FIX for flickering/flashing panel on Intel gpu

[schnelle]

TESTED ON KUBUNTU 16.04 LTS

If you experience flickering/flashing panel in plasma 5 with intel graphics, follow this tutorial to fix it.

Fix/workaround is to use DRI3 instead of default DRI2. DRI3 works great for me and fixes few problems/bugs that I experience with intel gpu driver.

1) Press alt+f2 and type

kdesudo dolphin

2) Navigate to /root/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d folder.

If xorg.conf.d folder does not exist, create it (right mouse click>create new>folder)

3) In xorg.conf.d folder create text file 20-intel.conf (right mouse click>create new>text file)

4) Open 20-intel.conf text file and add this content:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
    Driver      "intel"
    Option      "DRI"    "3"
EndSection

save and exit.

5) Reboot system. After booting, you can check if you use DRI3:

cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep DRI3

should return:

[    23.678] (II) intel(0): direct rendering: DRI2 DRI3 enabled

[Gavin77]

An alternative method that I use, from the terminal:

cd /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano 20-intel.conf

Paste this:

Section "Device"
   Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
   Driver      "intel"
   Option      "AccelMethod"  "sna"
   Option      "DRI"   "3"
EndSection

CTRL+o to write the file then CTRL+x to exit.


Then just log out and back in, no need to reboot.

[vtpoet]

In the second example, what's the purpose of the extra option?

Option "AccelMethod" "sna"

[Gavin77]

In the second example, what's the purpose of the extra option?

Option "AccelMethod" "sna"

It's not technically required as SNA is already the default but taken from the Arch Wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics

You may need to indicate AccelMethod when creating a configuration file, even just to set it to the default method (currently "sna"); otherwise, X may crash.

[vtpoet]

It's not technically required as SNA is already the default but taken from the Arch Wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Intel_graphics

So I tried this solution as a workaround to this bug (Missing Letters):

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=361211

And unfortunately it only made the problem worse. Feh.

[GreyGeek]

So I tried this solution as a workaround to this bug (Missing Letters):

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=361211

And unfortunately it only made the problem worse. Feh.

Did you try schnelle's solution? If so,X did it help?

[vtpoet]

Did you try schnelle's solution? If so,X did it help?

Yes, sorry, that was the solution I was referring to. In the meantime I'm following another lead -- rebuilding the font cache. I'll know if this has worked by the end of the day. The problem is that it's affecting both of my systems (which are both very different systems --- one being a System76 laptop). This makes me think there's something going on with the Kernel or KDE. If I'd been troubled by this in previous versions of Kubuntu, then I'd be more inclined to blame video drivers, but this only happened after upgrading to 16.04.

[schnelle]

Well I had "missing letters" problem after wake from suspend in firefox, but
since I started using DRI3 - never faced the problem again.

Install intel-microcode if you didn't already. Maybe it will help.

Also if you upgraded to 16.04, try 16.04 live iso and see if you can repoduce the problem. Maybe something got broken during upgrade.

I am running clean install of 16.04 with DRI3 and face 0 issues with intel gpu.

[username]

if you use the solution from schnelle, it sometimes flashes pictures from previous display outputs like videos. like in the movie fight club the penis picture . and it messes up your dipslay if you use for example the programm shutter and try to select a part of your display.

theres a easier way to fix the problem with the flickering though. Just change in the compositor menu in settings->display-monitor from openGl to XRender. no more flickering and shutter works fine

[schnelle]

if you use the solution from schnelle, it sometimes flashes pictures from previous display outputs like videos. like in the movie fight club the penis picture . and it messes up your dipslay if you use for example the programm shutter and try to select a part of your display.

theres a easier way to fix the problem with the flickering though. Just change in the compositor menu in settings->display-monitor from openGl to XRender. no more flickering and shutter works fine

I don't experience this "flashes pictures from previous display outputs" problem.

Xrender fixes the problem too but it is software rendering, many effects don't work with it, and vsync doesn't work with it - so tearing everywhere.

Gesendet von meinem GT-I9300I mit Tapatalk

[username]

mhhh then maybe its a skylake cpu/gpu thing. have a laptop with a skylake cpu (core m 6y30).
too bad. thought i had something going on here . but with opengl i just cant use shutter, which is kind of importand for me . need it for university.
well anyhow. i cant seem to find any problems with Xrender, so i have to stick with it.

[GreyGeek]

My Acer Aspire 7739 has an Intel Integrated Graphics controller chip.
Right after I installed 16.04 my display flickered, especially when running Stellarium, which I use as a Canarry in the GPU mine. When I checked the Compositor I noticed that there were only two offerings: GL 2.1 and Xrender, and I switched to Xrender. My display problems disappeared.

Some time later some updates came through and I noticed one was GL.
Checking the Compositor I noticed three options: GL 2 and 3 and Xrender. I selected GL 2.1 and it works well.