Arch Linux

j4cobgarby

Member

Registered: 2021-05-09

Posts: 3

Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

This is the second time this has happened in about a month, so it's not a common occurrence, but it is still quite annoying.

Basically, sometimes, seemingly at random, my entire desktop environment becomes very blurred, as if it's antialiasing everything way too much. Here's a screenshot.

Here's the basic system information:

Kernel: 5.12.1-arch1-1
KDE Plasma 5.21.5
AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
NVIDIA GTX 1070

I have a dual-monitor setup -- one 4K monitor scaled down to 1080p, and one native 1080p monitor.

NVIDIA driver version 465.27

As you can see from the screenshot, edges of windows are not blurred, it only seems to be text and images. It usually occurs when I'm developing a game I'm writing using SDL2. A possibly related issue is that when I run this SDL2 program, various other GPU-related parts of the desktop temporarily blank, for example if a Youtube video is playing and I start up the SDL2 program, the video will stop displaying entirely until I hover my mouse over the firefox window where the video is playing. I feel this might be related because it happens by a similar cause, seemingly, but although the blurring issue happens very occasionally, the video playback issue happens every time.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue? By the way, I can easily fix the blurring by logging out and back in/restarting my system, but that obviously isn't ideal.

Thanks for looking

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,285

Re: Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

SDL2 will set a window hint to tell KWin to disable compositing which could be related to the issues you are seeing. Is the blurring limited to a particular monitor of the two?

FWIW to test that theory set SDL_VIDEO_X11_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR=1 in your environment before launching your program.

j4cobgarby

Member

Registered: 2021-05-09

Posts: 3

Re: Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

SDL2 will set a window hint to tell KWin to disable compositing which could be related to the issues you are seeing. Is the blurring limited to a particular monitor of the two?

FWIW to test that theory set SDL_VIDEO_X11_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR=1 in your environment before launching your program.

That sounds promising, I'll try that and see if it happens again.

The blurring happens on both monitors.

j4cobgarby

Member

Registered: 2021-05-09

Posts: 3

Re: Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

So, unchecking "Allow applications to block compositing" in KDE settings GUI seems to have at least fixed the video freezing issue. If I was right about them being related, that'll fix the main problem too, fingers crossed.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 76,631

Re: Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

Looks a lot like FXAA, given the amount of desktop software that uses OpenGL, don't enable it globally but activate it before running a game or, if you activeate it globally, "export __GL_ALLOW_FXAA_USAGE=0" and only " export it to "1" for games or so.
You could also add process profiles in nvidia-setting, but you'll have to disable it for A LOT of stuff…

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

senjacob

Member

From: Kerala

Registered: 2023-11-22

Posts: 1

Re: Strange blurred/VERY antialised text/images in entire KDE desktop

Thanks seth!

In my case (KDE Plasma 5.27.8, X11), I had to turn off "Enable FXAA" settings under the NVIDIA X Sever settings App > X Screen 0 > Antialiasing Settings.

Then go to System Settings > Display and Monitor > Compositor > Compositing: Enable on startup (Uncheck/Check) > Apply. (One could reboot instead of this)

Last edited by senjacob (2023-12-18 19:45:12)