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Malikos

Member

Registered: 2015-12-12

Posts: 46

[SOLVED] Plasma 5 flickers/blinks/refreshes

Hello all.

I have a frustrating problem with plasma 5 since like 3 months.

I have fully updated arch and the newest KDE Plasma from the official repositories. My gpu is integrated Intel HD. CPU is i5 4210H.

Here is my desktop:
https://i.imgsafe.org/d4cf8e3ecf.png

and my problem is as follows:

I have like a 50% chance that when i run any app (dolphin, chromium, system setting etc. it doesn't matter) that area of panel with widgets (red rectangle) starts to flicker in white color and the shape of this anomaly is the exact rectangle that I showed you on the screenshot. It blinks very fast like 2-3 times (but it's very noticeable) and then it's back to normal. As I said, this occurs like 50% of the time.

It blinks only when I start a new app or a new instance of an app. It is not caused by drivers, a few days ago I've fallen back to intel modeset driver and the problem is still present.
Also, it does not depend on the compositor, the problem is still there whether I choose xrandr or any opengl.
And the last thing is, this flickering does not occur when I use my discrete nvidia GPU, so it is related to Intel.

Any suggestions? Mayby someone has a similar problem?

Last edited by Malikos (2016-07-12 09:35:15)

midixinga

Member

Registered: 2014-01-18

Posts: 193

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma 5 flickers/blinks/refreshes

my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

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

and

System Settings / Hardware / Compositor: Full screen repaints

Last edited by midixinga (2016-05-31 16:38:02)

Malikos

Member

Registered: 2015-12-12

Posts: 46

Re: [SOLVED] Plasma 5 flickers/blinks/refreshes

my /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

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

and

System Settings / Hardware / Compositor: Full screen repaints

Thanks for replying.

Unfortunately my config is the same, except I have Driver "modesetting". But that doesn't matter, with xf86-video-intel the problem was also there.
Also, full screen repaints is enabled too.

Any other suggestions? This thing is literally driving me crazy for some time.

EDIT:
I think I have finally solved my problem with plasma 5.7 (and possibly a Qt update). After posting this I reinstalled intel driver and the flickering was still there. After plasma 5.7 update it became ever worse, it flickered like every 10 seconds. Then I've done three things:
1. Uninstalled intel driver and went modesetting completely
2. Set the rendering to OpenGL 3.1 GLX

I have no flickering right now and I hope it will stay this way

When I was still on intel drivers this thing helped to reduce flickering a bit, so maybe someone should try if the above doesn't help:
- I found this thread https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … bug=829403 and I just commented the line "SATA_LINKPWR_ON_BAT=min_power" in my TLP settings

Last edited by Malikos (2016-07-12 09:34:32)