Arch Linux

A-Fellow-Human

Member

Registered: 2022-10-15

Posts: 35

[SOLVED] Constant flickering and unresponsiveness on X11

I'd like to use X11 rather than Wayland to diagnose some issues. However, X11 is basically unusable.

On KDE Plasma, issues include (but are probably not limited to):
- Lack of desktop wallpaper or splash screen
- Application icons in panel keep flickering in size, making it difficult to click on a specific icon (even after disabling scaling)
- Swiping to switch virtual desktops does not work
- Lots of flickering in general with applications, e.g. when launching system settings, the application is unresponsive, with flickering occurring at the search bar
- Clock (with seconds) and virtual desktop indicator in the panel are frozen
- After clicking on "log out", there is no proper log out, with only the cursor (still able to move)

I initially thought that this was a KDE Plasma specific issue. However, when I replicated this on GNOME Classic, I found that many applications were similarly flickering and were unresponsive.

Here are the XDG variables when logging into X11:

XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/home/kyanc/.config/kdedefaults:/etc/xdg
XDG_SESSION_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session1
XDG_MENU_PREFIX=plasma-
XDG_SEAT=seat0
XDG_SESSION_DESKTOP=KDE
XDG_SESSION_TYPE=x11
XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP=KDE
XDG_SEAT_PATH=/org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Seat0
XDG_SESSION_CLASS=user
XDG_VTNR=2
XDG_SESSION_ID=2
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/1000
XDG_DATA_DIRS=/home/kyanc/.local/share/flatpak/exports/share:/var/lib/flatpak/exports/share:/usr/local/share:/usr/share

and I've uploaded the auto-generated /etc/x11/xorg.conf at https://pastebin.com/yZhJ6m3N. I've uploaded a journalctl boot log (where I only booted into Plasma X11 once before shutting down) to https://pastebin.com/7w5b6hqf.

I'm using the standard Arch Linux kernel and up-to-date xorg and plasma packages, with the graphics kernel driver being i915. This is running on a Framework 13 with an Intel 1340P processor.

Hope someone could give some advice on how this could be fixed. If I've missed something do let me know.

Last edited by A-Fellow-Human (2024-04-09 04:30:31)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,804

Re: [SOLVED] Constant flickering and unresponsiveness on X11

Remove the xorg.conf they are not necessary and will generally disable automatic detection of things that might be relevant. But it gives us the information you have xf86-video-intel installed... get rid of that. It's only useful on 2011 and older intel GPUs

A-Fellow-Human

Member

Registered: 2022-10-15

Posts: 35

Re: [SOLVED] Constant flickering and unresponsiveness on X11

Yep, removing the xorg.conf and xf86-video-intel fixed the issue. Thank you!