Mouse cursor flickering and disappearing

Question

I installed Ubuntu today and since the first start up I have a problem with the mouse cursor.

It starts randomly disappearing and flickering a lot.

I have searched for a solution on Google and here but didn't find anything.

Welcome! How is your mouse connected (USB maybe)? Try with another mouse device and see what happens. Also you may try plugging into another port — Lucio, Oct 17 '13 at 19:04
Its happening in 14.04 as well and this trick saved my time. — Nagendhiran, Apr 13 '14 at 03:33
if you are having flickering in chrome only , try this answer, adding one section to the 20-intel.conf file fixed my issues with flicker in chrome. https://askubuntu.com/questions/766725/annoying-flickering-in-16-04-lts-chrome#768112 — Brandon Culley, May 18 '18 at 15:19

score 209 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 29 '20 at 02:54

209

I had the same problem. You can fix it manually.

Open System Settings > Displays.

In the Displays window, you will see an Unknown monitor.

Click it and disable it.

edited Aug 29 '20 at 02:54

Zanna

70,465

answered Oct 17 '13 at 19:51

Anıl Karaağaç

2,188
1
11
8

2

And to remove that screen you can follow this: http://askubuntu.com/a/365017/34385 – Jeggy Oct 25 '13 at 08:23
8

Great! How did you figure out?? – sobi3ch Oct 28 '13 at 11:43
2

There is no unknown display for me. But I can see 2 built in display in red and green color. I tried disabling one of those alternatively but that also didn't solved my issue. Please help – Vishal Vijay Nov 22 '13 at 05:16
1

Ho sorry... Disabling the green built in display solved the issue. Thanks – Vishal Vijay Nov 22 '13 at 05:24
This didn't work in my case (I had no "Unknown Monitor"). I have posted a question here but given that the OP is a superset of my question I think this answer should provide other possible solutions (or at least avenues to investigate). – quant Nov 23 '14 at 21:09
Is there a way to open this menu from the command-line? I'm using IceWM. – nnyby Nov 26 '14 at 18:28
I've just upgraded to 16.10 - the pointer flickers but there is no unknown monitor... – snorbi Oct 15 '16 at 09:16
This does not work if your second monitor is real and in-use – b264 Oct 31 '17 at 15:38
I only have one display, that is unknown display. There is no built-in-display in my case.. – X.C. Dec 02 '20 at 12:33
I have "unknown display", no way to "click it and disable it". Running ubuntu 20.04. – Dave Mar 26 '22 at 02:28

intika · Answer 2 · 2020-08-13T14:56:13.443

Possible cause 1:

Screen settings: resolution and refresh rate. Can be checked (On KDE) under systemsettings5 then display and monitor

Possible cause 2:

Screen compositor: it could be caused by the sale-method/rendering-backend/tearing-prevention those settings can be changed (On KDE) under systemsettings5, display and monitor then compositor... apply new settings and compare

Possible cause 3:

Display server mis-configuration: you can regenerate the display server config file with X -configure or similar but first make a copy of /etc/X11

Possible cause 4:

System failure, crash, reboot: on system failure especially for systems equipped with SSD you may loose important files; Files under directories like /home/user/, /etc/ or /usr/ can cause serious damages, as these directories contain important settings/packages files for different aspect of the desktop. usually when a file is lost after a crash, the file may be completely deleted or zeroed, you can then search for file with zero size and check out if important file are corrupted with the command find /etc -size 0 -print (this is for /etc) you can also check packages integrity for missing/modified file, on rpm based system it's done with the command rpm -Va you would then reinstall the broken package.

A common situation in this case is loosing the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf or one of the config file under /etc/X11/ responsible for the display server; If recovering the file is not possible the config can be regenerated with X -configure or similar command

Possible cause 5:

Mis-configuration of user files under /home/user... you can verify this by login with an other user... to fix it eventually delete and recreate the user (after backup)

Possible cause 7:

Graphic drivers, you need to check if you are using the proper graphic driver and or try a different version of the used driver, usually this often happen with nvidia graphical cards.

Other...

The listed situations are not the only possibilities of failure.

Source: Linuxhacks.org
Disclosure: I am the owner of Linuxhacks.org

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 06 '20 at 15:26

0

2020 - Ubuntu 18.04

The problem here was because of I have Dell's laptop and Dells's Monitor, there isn't any "unknown display".

The Ubuntu wasn't recognizing the laptop as "built in".

After setup everything and restart the laptop, all works fine.

answered Apr 06 '20 at 15:26

FabianoLothor

149

"After setup everything" What does this mean? Can you share more context to what you set up? Tried rebooting several times, does not fix the issue. – Dave Mar 26 '22 at 02:29

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Apr 24 '23 at 07:35

I was able to fix the issue by changing my monitor setup using randr. It turned out that my second screen had a rather large offset to the first one (instead of being directly adjacent). My best guess is that this creates a large mostly unused framebuffer that also covers the area between the screens, which may be problematic?

You can either use a tool like arandr to place the screens without a gap in a GUI or run xrandr on the command line like so

xrandr --output HDMI-1 --left-of DP-1 (replace your respective monitor outputs, you can find out their name by running xrandr without arguments)

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 04 '17 at 14:33

0

I ran, from within 16.04, the command:

  sudo apt-get upgrade

and it seems to have appeased the pointer, so far. I had instability, especially over the Chrome browser tabs.

answered Aug 04 '17 at 14:33

Juan Lanus

201

Mouse cursor flickering and disappearing

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