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#1 2016-07-08 12:28:49

Malvineous
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From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
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[SOLVED] X11 renders unpredictably on Intel video - compositing issue?

Has anyone noticed any issues with the latest X11 and the Intel video driver?

I updated this morning and now if I switch tabs in Firefox, every time the text cursor blinks (so once per second) the previous tab is rendered in the Firefox window.  This means although I am not touching anything, I see the contents of tab A for one second, then tab B for one second, then tab A again, and so on.  Switching to different desktops also causes my other monitors to randomly render another desktop instead of the selected one as well.

This is very similar to what was happening when I was using the Compton compositing manager, which I had to stop using as it didn't seem to work properly with the Intel video driver.

I haven't got Compton running now, and can't see any other compositing manager running, so does anyone have any idea what might be going on?

Last edited by Malvineous (2016-07-08 13:45:22)

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#2 2016-07-08 12:32:43

Trilby
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Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
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Re: [SOLVED] X11 renders unpredictably on Intel video - compositing issue?

Malvineous wrote:

Has anyone noticed any issues with the latest X11 and the Intel video driver?

Yes.  You'll see issues, workarounds, and solutions all over the forums.

Which of these have you tried?


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#3 2016-07-08 12:40:35

Malvineous
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From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
Website

Re: [SOLVED] X11 renders unpredictably on Intel video - compositing issue?

I tried reading the first two pages of the Applications & Desktop Environments thread lists and the only thread that looked vaguely related was the one about "strange rendering and missing icons" but it turned out not to be related to this issue.  So I tried searching for "x11 intel" and couldn't find anything relevant in the first page of results,  I then tried searching for "intel compositing" and none of the first page of results seemed to have anything to do with rendering issues, so I figured nobody has discussed this issue and I created a new thread.

I guess I am searching using the wrong terms, but I am encouraged if there are workarounds all over the forums.  Would you mind pointing me in the right direction?

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#4 2016-07-08 12:46:37

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,442
Website

Re: [SOLVED] X11 renders unpredictably on Intel video - compositing issue?

I suppose some of the threads are titled pretty poorly as there is a wide range of symptoms.  But this sounds like it could be the same issue that is behind these threads:
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=213533
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=214386
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=206172

Yours *might* be something different, but the above issue should definitely at least be ruled out before searching further.  The simplest test may be to remove xf86-video-intel and reboot.  Xorg will use the modesetting driver.  If this works, then it is almost certainly the same problem.  Then you can decide whether using modesetting is a long term solution (as I have) or if you want to try one of the alternative fixes in the above-listed threads.


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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#5 2016-07-08 13:44:25

Malvineous
Member
From: Brisbane, Australia
Registered: 2011-02-03
Posts: 189
Website

Re: [SOLVED] X11 renders unpredictably on Intel video - compositing issue?

Many thanks for the tips!  Uninstalling xf86-video-intel (and updating my multimonitor xorg.conf to handle the different names of the video outputs) seems to have fixed the problem.

I will keep an eye on this to eagerly see whether it helps with the memory leak that causes my system to die with 99% system memory used after a week, all allocated by the Intel video driver.  I am hoping that ditching xf86-video-intel may help with this too.  If it does then I will definitely stick with this long term.

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