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Nora NICOLAS
Asked: 2021-01-22 10:54:29 +0800 CST

Ubuntu 18.04 window flickering/strobing white for specific applications

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I've been having lots of graphical issues with specific applications on Ubuntu 18.04 using my Dell Latitude 7490. For instance on GitKraken:

Example of application that goes... whatever that is

The same thing happens on:

  • Zoom
  • Slack
  • Signal
  • Skype
  • Discord
  • Telegram (I think)
  • Chrome
  • Chromium

I think this is giving me random crashes after some point (where my session just closes and I lose everything that's opened, but the RAM doesn't lower). I'd like to fix the graphical issues first and hope that it fixes the random crashes.

I get the feeling there's an underlying cause there, some software thingy, a driver issue, but I have no idea where to look or what relevant information to give. I thought about:

$ lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 3ea0 (rev 02)

$ hostnamectl
Operating System: Ubuntu 18.04.5 LTS
          Kernel: Linux 5.4.0-64-generic
    Architecture: x86-64

$ glxinfo | grep -i "vendor\|rendering"
direct rendering: Yes
server glx vendor string: SGI
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
    Vendor: Intel Open Source Technology Center (0x8086)
OpenGL vendor string: Intel Open Source Technology Center

It might be relevant that I'm using i3 and compton, though it happens on a regular Gnome session and with compton not running.

18.04

2 Answers

  1. Again this is not a solution, I am still unable to comment.

    You could try reinstalling the driver

    sudo apt install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-dri

    Shutdown, disconnect the cable. Power on. When you log in try and select one of the other display managers (click on the cog to select an alternative), this is to rule out that it isn't the display manager at fault. Then connect the display cable.

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  2. The issue was hardware acceleration. There are lots of information already online regarding how to deactivate it system-wise. I fixed these issues (apart from Zoom which is still flickering) by following the answer from this post. Note that the other solutions mentioning creating a /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf and putting an AccelMethod to sna didn't fix the issue for me.

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