Arch Linux

diogobaeder

Member

Registered: 2012-01-02

Posts: 71

Screen flickering on some programs under GNOME (maybe other DEs too)

Hi folks,

This is not a request for help, but rather an attempt to help others (please let me know if the title should be different because of this). It's based on my experience with my computer, so if you want to try it, try at your own risk.

I use to upgrade my packages at least once a week, and in one of the recent upgrades (probably in the beginning of November) I started getting a screen flickering issue for some applications I have - most notably Zoom, Slack and Rambox.

What solved the problem, for me, was to remove xf86-video-nouveau (maybe xf86-video-vesa which I removed too, but might be unrelated). I saw this package being referenced in some conversations in this forum and tried removing it, which ended up fixing the issue on my computer. In my case, this was a safe move because I use Wayland here (I've had both Wayland and Xorg installed for a long time, because of problems with either of them in the past, so that I could switch between sessions), and since I've been using it for so long it's probably safe to not have Xorg stuff anymore on my computer.

So, if you use Wayland¹ and have xf86-video-nouveau installed because you have an NVIDIA card, and are seeing screen flickering, maybe try removing that package too, it might solve for you as well - make sure you know how to reinstall the package though in case you get locked out of your desktop environment.

Cheers,
Diogo

¹ To know whether you're using it or Xorg, just run this:

$ loginctl show-session $(awk '/tty/ {print $1}' <(loginctl)) -p Type | awk -F= '{print $2}'

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Diogo Baeder
http://diogobaeder.com.br/