Need Linux help - screen keeps flickering

M

MrCrispy

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May 14, 2007
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I installed Linux on my Dell Inspiron 7457 laptop - its pretty modern with a Core i7, 8GB RAM and integrated Intel HD graphics. I have the latest KDE Neon, and I'm getting continuous screen flicker - the entire screen will have snow every few seconds.

I googled and this kind of video corruption seems like a very common issue - I've tried all the fixes I found, such as changing renderer from OpenGL to XRender, turning off hw accel, new X conf file settings for Intel -

Section "Device"
Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
Option "TearFree" "true"
Option "DRI" "3"
EndSection

Nothing works. This is the kind of thing that frustrates me in Linux - no definitive solution for something that shouldn't happen.

Any ideas on what to try? I can post any detailed info needed.
 
ArchiWiki has some good info for troubleshooting: Intel Graphics - ArchWiki , Backlight - ArchWiki

A couple weeks ago I had trouble with an HP All in one, the only solution that worked reliably for me, was using fallback driver. This created a problem with suspend, so had to disable that, unfortunately.

Appeared to be an issue with the intel driver on that particular eDP connected panel. With the intel driver loaded it would set the refresh rate to 75Hz, with no other modes available, with constant flickering, snow / artifacts.

I tried several kernel versions, but all had the same issue.
 
MrCrispy said:
I dont know how. I've done sudo apt upgrade/update and have the latest.
Click to expand...

I'm a neophyte and haven't experienced this issue so I really don't have anything left to offer. Wish I had a better answer.

Maybe if you're able to blink at the right rate it won't be and issue? :D Sorry, strange mood! :D
 
MrCrispy said:
I dont know how. I've done sudo apt upgrade/update and have the latest.
Click to expand...

I don't know what distro you're using, but I would make a live USB of a different version ( like Ubuntu 17.04 if you're using LTS), and see if the problem persists.

If it goes away, then changing the kernel version is likely the solution.
 
The distro is KDE Neon. I ran its live USB for 2 days and everything worked great which is when I decided to install it. I also tried Mint live usb before that but I liked KDE more and Neon was recommended as the best way to get that.

If this doesn't get fixed, I can try another distro, and then no option but to go back to Windows 10, this is my only laptop.
 
Try holding shift after POST, and try some previous kernel options (if available) in grub menu.
 
Because you're running an Ubuntu derivative you can utilise the vast Ubuntu help resources to rectify your issue. Here's a number of people experiencing the same issue, personally I'd try updating the kernel 4.6 and see if that resolves everything - Honestly I'd be very surprised if it didn't.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/752743/ubuntu-16-04-skylake-6th-generation-screen-flickering

Kernels can be simply and easily updated using Ukuu via the GUI, avoid any kernels marked in red and don't upgrade to the very latest kernel just yet, as I say I'd personally try the final release of 4.6.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/ukuu-easy-way-to-install-mainline-kernel-ubuntu

If 4.6 doesn't work try the final release of 4.10.

[EDIT] This should probably be in the Linux subforum...?
 
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BulletDust said:
Download the 64bit .Deb installer for the Intel graphics updating tool from here, it usually installs to the Control Centre:

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-installer-linux-1.4.0

Run it and see if it picks up newer drivers for your device.
Click to expand...


BulletDust said:
Because you're running an Ubuntu derivative you can utilise the vast Ubuntu help resources to rectify your issue. Here's a number of people experiencing the same issue, personally I'd try updating the kernel 4.6 and see if that resolves everything - Honestly I'd be very surprised if it didn't.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/752743/ubuntu-16-04-skylake-6th-generation-screen-flickering

Kernels can be simply and easily updated using Ukuu via the GUI, avoid any kernels marked in red and don't upgrade to the very latest kernel just yet, as I say I'd personally try the final release of 4.6.

http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/02/ukuu-easy-way-to-install-mainline-kernel-ubuntu

If 4.6 doesn't work try the final release of 4.10.

[EDIT] This should probably be in the Linux subforum...?
Click to expand...

Yes that first link is where I got the conf file I thought would fix it, its a common answer I found in other places too. I also read that updating the kernel manually can be dangerous so I was hesitant to do that. I honestly don't want to deal with other issues like wifi breaking (seems another common thing). And how are people supposed to discover things like Ukuu anyway, it never came up in my searches. This is what it says on their page - 'Upgrading to a mainline Linux kernel is generally not a good idea. If in doubt, don’t mess about.' And on the KDE Neon forums there are similar warnings.

I'm going to try the Intel driver installer. So this is not added to any of the Ubuntu or KDE repo's, right? Otherwise shouldn't it be picked up by sudo update?
 
MrCrispy said:
Yes that first link is where I got the conf file I thought would fix it, its a common answer I found in other places too. I also read that updating the kernel manually can be dangerous so I was hesitant to do that. I honestly don't want to deal with other issues like wifi breaking (seems another common thing). And how are people supposed to discover things like Ukuu anyway, it never came up in my searches. This is what it says on their page - 'Upgrading to a mainline Linux kernel is generally not a good idea. If in doubt, don’t mess about.' And on the KDE Neon forums there are similar warnings.

I'm going to try the Intel driver installer. So this is not added to any of the Ubuntu or KDE repo's, right? Otherwise shouldn't it be picked up by sudo update?
Click to expand...

There's a number of situations that can also being a Windows install to it's knees, Linux is no different in this regard. I just ran Ukuu to update the kernel on my laptop running Ubuntu GNOME, I had to run it a couple of times as sometimes it doesn't pick up all dependencies/packages and the update fails, but now I'm running 4.11 without a hitch. If you encounter issues with a new kernel, boot into the Grub menu and select your old kernel, not harm done.

How did you find CPU-Z under Windows? Backup utilities under Windows? any number of software packages under Windows? You searched for answers - Linux is no different. Understand that issues like this also happen under Windows, the first time I ran Windows 10 I installed Nvidia drivers and rebooted to a blank screen with a flashing cursor in the LH top corner, I had to diagnose and rectify the fault, no different to what you are doing here. Stay calm, accept that your issues are quite common on all platforms and resist the need to blame the OS, accept that you aren't entirely comfortable or familiar with Linux yet and there was a time where this was the case under Windows also, ask advice and accept a new learning challenge. Rather than getting frustrated, enjoy learning new things.

Under the Linux subforum there is a whole stickied thread devoted to Linux software, Ukuu is in that thread.
 
MrCrispy said:
I'm going to try the Intel driver installer. So this is not added to any of the Ubuntu or KDE repo's, right? Otherwise shouldn't it be picked up by sudo update?
Click to expand...

I missed this post. Ukuu is in the Ubuntu repo's, not too sure what version though.
 
B00nie said:
This is actually the biggest problem with people experimenting with new OSes. They're so stuck to the windows state of mind that they find any change to the norm difficult and bad. What people should understand is that along the years they have been accustomed and learning to the quirks and glitches of Windows and learned where to download different set of tools for different purposes (and along them viruses, malware etc. goodies).

They should unlearn these things when looking at linux or OSX. They just work different. Different may be frustrating at first but once you go through the same kind of learning process like you did with Windows originally - at least I grew to prefer the alternatives way of working. Unix-like system all the way baby.
Click to expand...

This is nonsense. What has a 'Windows state of mind' got to do with this? What quirks am I used to? The fact that I expect a major distro to work on common hardware without jumping thru hoops? And I'm perfectly willing to try out new things and experiment, but no one seems to know the cause or the fix and its basically 'try X, then Y, and if it breaks A then do B,C'. This is BASIC stuff like the video driver. You know what Windows does when it cannot find a working video driver, it falls back to its built in ones or as a last resort VGA. I don't know if Linux does this but it should, and none of the solutions I've googled has mentioned this. Plus the fact that it seems to happen on wakeup leads me to believe its not really the video driver.
 
MrCrispy said:
Plus the fact that it seems to happen on wakeup leads me to believe its not really the video driver.
Click to expand...

When it happens, could you try going to a console and back to the GUI? ctrl-alt-F1 and then ctrl-alt-F7
I've had some flickery weirdness when my screen goes to sleep and wakes back up under Ubuntu 16.10, and that normally rights it.
 
Frobozz said:
When it happens, could you try going to a console and back to the GUI? ctrl-alt-F1 and then ctrl-alt-F7
I've had some flickery weirdness when my screen goes to sleep and wakes back up under Ubuntu 16.10, and that normally rights it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can second this. Even my Mint install sometimes has issues coming back from sleep. I disabled it so I didn't have to go about fixing it lol
 
First off everyone, step off the Windows hate in a simple thread about some issues with Linux. Let's keep this constructive and on topic to the OP's difficulties.

TLDR;
Change to terminal console, does it flicker?
Run lshw -c video, tells us what the output is.
Provide Xorg logs (should be Xorg.0.log or some derivative).
Uninstall all video drivers, re-isntall correct drivers.

Frobozz said:
When it happens, could you try going to a console and back to the GUI? ctrl-alt-F1 and then ctrl-alt-F7
I've had some flickery weirdness when my screen goes to sleep and wakes back up under Ubuntu 16.10, and that normally rights it.
Click to expand...

I would start with this and see if it works find under a terminal, or if the problem comes in with the GUI. Also as mentioned there may be some issues with power saving features. Linux has been addressing this over the years and in the newer kernels this should be less of a problem. But if you are using derivatives YMMV.

MrCrispy said:
The distro is KDE Neon. I ran its live USB for 2 days and everything worked great which is when I decided to install it. I also tried Mint live usb before that but I liked KDE more and Neon was recommended as the best way to get that.

If this doesn't get fixed, I can try another distro, and then no option but to go back to Windows 10, this is my only laptop.
Click to expand...

Neon is a derivative of Ubuntu which is a derivative of Debian. I would probably start with base debian with KDE and go from there. Personally I prefer KDE plasma. Understand that KDE/Gnome/Etc are Display managers running on top of the base distro. You could try looking in the Xorg logs and see if it mentions any specific problems after the flickering starts (if you have problems, try switching to a terminal console as mentioned above).

Another thing to note, did you ever have another video card in this system, or was it always just onboard intel? Using lshw -c video should list the video hardware that Ubuntu sees. See if it is recognizing the right type/version of the hardware. If it lists multiple things, you may need to blacklist some. You also may have to uninstall all the video drivers and re-install from scratch (You may have already tried this, but here is a link to Debian Wiki on the topic).
 
NoOther said:
Neon is a derivative of Ubuntu which is a derivative of Debian. I would probably start with base debian with KDE and go from there. Personally I prefer KDE plasma. Understand that KDE/Gnome/Etc are Display managers running on top of the base distro. You could try looking in the Xorg logs and see if it mentions any specific problems after the flickering starts (if you have problems, try switching to a terminal console as mentioned above).
Click to expand...
If I were going to approach it from a distribution testing perspective: KDE Neon uses Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as a base and focuses on iterating the latest KDE environment/apps but not really much else. With that, I'd probably look for things with a kernel newer than 4.4, like Ubuntu 17.04 (fairly sure it ships with 4.10), or wait until June 17th 2017 for Debian "stretch" if you did want to go that far upstream.

Also would like to note Kubuntu 17.04, if KDE was a huge driving force for choosing KDE Neon. Being it's primary focus, I'd assume it was.
 
Frobozz said:
If I were going to approach it from a distribution testing perspective: KDE Neon uses Ubuntu 16.04 LTS as a base and focuses on iterating the latest KDE environment/apps but not really much else. With that, I'd probably look for things with a kernel newer than 4.4, like Ubuntu 17.04 (fairly sure it ships with 4.10), or wait until June 17th 2017 for Debian "stretch" if you did want to go that far upstream.

Also would like to note Kubuntu 17.04, if KDE was a huge driving force for choosing KDE Neon. Being it's primary focus, I'd assume it was.
Click to expand...

Yeah, my comment was based on the possibility of it being more of a kernel/driver issue. Which being closer to the source distro may be easier to resolve. Also we are using Debian stretch quite a bit at work atm, and supposedly its power settings are much better especially with newer Intel chips. Supposedly Intel has been providing a lot of support and driver information to the next release of Debian and specifically working on the power setting issues.
 
I've already advised the OP to update the kernel, something he appears hesitant on doing.

[EDIT] Hangon, does the issue only happen on wake from sleep? Sleep is a fickle process on every platform I've ever used, including Windows. My fix? Don't use sleep.

For what it's worth, my laptop running Ubuntu MATE 16.04 was able to sleep and wake from sleep just fine.
 
Was really busy last 2 days.

Running in full screen console (Ctrl Alt F1) - flicker is still present.

Outputs -

sudo lshw -c video
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Haswell-ULT Integrated Graphics Controller
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 0b
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
resources: irq:42 memory:f7800000-f7bfffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:f000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff

uname -r
4.8.0-53-generic

I also found a common thing online was to disable the xorg intel video server an duse modsetting, but Neon already has it.

dpkg -l | grep xorg

i xserver-xorg-video-intel-arbiter 0+p16.04+git20170210.1114 all Dummy package to help with Intel GPU driver selection
ii xserver-xorg-video-intel-native-modesetting 0+p16.04+git20170210.1114 all Dummy package to force native modesetting for xorg on intel
ii xserver-xorg-video-nouveau-hwe-16.04 1:1.0.12-2~16.04.1 amd64

Do I still need to update the kernel? Online I see references to hwe kernel, do I need that?
 
Ran the Intel graphics installer - says distro not supported

Checking if Intel graphics card available...
• checking for i915 module in /sys/module
• i915 module found
Checking if Intel graphics card available... OK
Retrieving information from 01.org...
• fetching https://download.01.org/gfx/ilg-config.cfg
• saving to /home/ace/.ilg-config
• fetched 1626 bytes
• fetched 9818 bytes
• fetched 11627 bytes
• looking up [neon xenial] configuration
Retrieving information from 01.org... OK
Checking distribution... Failed


I already have kernel 4.8, so the above posts saying to update to a newer kernel than 4.4/4.6 aren't relevant. On the the Kde forums I read that 4.10 kernel will come to Neon in Aug, and users shouldn't manually update to it.

So what now? I've spent a lot of time on this and am out of ideas at this point.
 
I just updated the kernel

uname -r
4.10.0-21-generic

The flicker is still present.

w.r.t sleep - I still cannot be 100% certain - its there 100% after resume from Suspend. After a fresh reboot (sudo reboot) I've seen it twice, its definitely not all the time.
 
1. I am willing to try any other advice. About kernel updates, when I reboot I just see the KDE plasma logo, no POST. When you install a new kernel, does it store the previous kernels so you can select them at boot, and is this automatic?

2. I can also try a fresh install of Kubuntu. Actually I read about SUSE Tumbleweed which is a rolling release which means it will get the latest updates much sooner, right? But its not Debian based so the community, support etc is much smaller. Not sure if its worth it. I do like what I read of Yast.

3. I guess I can also try a non KDE DE like Mate

3. Finally, this laptop came with a Win 10 entitlement and I'll go back to that if none of this works out.
 
MrCrispy said:
Yes. Its full screen flicker/snow. I also get it on the logon screen (not sure if that is using the window manager).
Click to expand...
That's a new one on me. Usually the console will render normal, but it's window environment that gets the quirks. I'm not sure what to recommend. It ran fine with Windows for a while before this? (thinking ruling out hardware issue)
 
Frobozz said:
That's a new one on me. Usually the console will render normal, but it's window environment that gets the quirks. I'm not sure what to recommend. It ran fine with Windows for a while before this? (thinking ruling out hardware issue)
Click to expand...

Yes. The live Linux from USB also runs fine. Does the login screen is the same window manager?
 
MrCrispy said:
1. ... When you install a new kernel, does it store the previous kernels so you can select them at boot, and is this automatic?

....
Click to expand...

From what I have read the previous kernel should have been saved and you should be able to restore it with the proper commands which I can't help you with. Hang in there! :)
 
Does the issue only appear when the device is woken up from sleep? If so it's most likely power management and low iGPU clock speeds that are causing the flickering - This used to happen all the time running multiple monitors on Nvidia hardware under Windows.

Also, I did inform you earlier on that the kernel version can be rolled back simply and easily via the Grub boot menu. Ukuu even informs you of the process to be used in such a scenario. This is very interesting. I'm having trouble finding specifics on your laptop, what processor is it running?

Have you tried a bios update?
 
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I just found out about screenfetch. If there are other utils that can generate system info output I can post here.

How do I get to GRUB boot menu, just hold SHIFT? Will try that. I just see the KDE logo when booting.
 
MrCrispy said:
Ukuu just showed a notification to upgrade to 4.11.3. should I?
Click to expand...

Not yet, look for a bios update. Your issue wreaks of a hardware compatibility issue with incorrect 2D clocks. To access the Grub menu press and hold shift at the grey Grub boot screen.
 
Checked at Dell, has the latest bios. Does Linux have an equivalent to hibernate? That would be a restart but will restore my work.
 
Does the screen stop flickering if you turn off Bluetooth by any chance?
 
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