Weird screen flickering issue in ubuntu 17.04 GNOME

Question

I'm new in Ubuntu world,I'm using Ubuntu GNOME 17.04. The weird issue I have is , when I open the terminal and trying to install something or run commands or doing anything else, after minutes my screen keeps flickering, it will go black and appears white lines flashing and it takes seconds then my laptop goes off. I've searched for the problem but without no luck, maybe graphic not installed yet?

Core i5,RAM 4

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:0046] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Dell Latitude E6410 [1028:040a]

Guide me step by step because as I said I'm new in Ubuntu.

In order to get an answer you should provide more information about your system. Please provide output of following command: lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 vga — Tombart, Feb 14 '18 at 13:54

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Oct 09 '20 at 15:23

I just put together a new system with an i5-8600 CPU and 4K monitor and had similar issues with Kubuntu 17.10 installed. Here's what I tried to solve them ...

Add i915.alpha_support=1 to the boot parameters (kernel parameters) by editing /etc/default/grub.

Change
```
 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
```
to
```
 GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.alpha_support=1"
```
This allowed be to get 4K output (previously only FHD) but there were some really strange display issues. Looked like problems with frame buffer switching.
Installed the graphic packages from Oibaf's PPA repository:

This improved the situation greatly but there were still a few flashes.

Unfortunately, a few days ago there was an update to the repository and, after running sudo apt update && apt upgrade I was greeted by a blank white screen and no mouse or keyboard at the next reboot!

Reverted to standard Ubuntu drivers ...

 sudo apt-get install ppa-purge
 sudo ppa-purge ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers

Downloaded and installed the INTEL GRAPHICS UPDATE TOOL FOR LINUX* OS V2.0.6 from

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-update-tool-linux-os-v2.0.6

Follow the installation instructions on this page. In particular don't forget the "SIGNATURES - UBUNTU*" section.

BUT, Don't run the updater yet!

This version is intended for Ubuntu 17.04, but, with a little messing about, seems to work fine on 17.10.

You need to, temporarily, lie to the Update Tool about what release you are running. You do this by changing the contents of /etc/lsb-release.

Backup the file first
```
 sudo cp /etc/lsb-release /etc/lsb-release.backup
```
Then replace the contents of /etc/lsb-release with
```
 DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
 DISTRIB_RELEASE=17.04
 DISTRIB_CODENAME=zesty
 DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 17.04"
```
Then run the Update Tool like this
```
 intel-graphics-update-tool
```
or from the Application Launcher > Settings menu.

Finally reinstate the original /etc/lsb-release.
```
 sudo mv /etc/lsb-release.backup /etc/lsb-release
```

I have not seen any display glitches since running the Update Tool. I have had a number of crashes of the kdenlive video editor but I can't really tell if they are related to the graphics drivers or not.

Hope this info helps.

kdenlive is indeed prone to crashing sometimes. – devius Feb 21 '18 at 11:30 — devius, Feb 21 '18 at 11:30

Michele · Answer 2 · 2017-05-17T03:10:49.357

1

I have the same problem with the display flickering after updating to 17.04 and 17.10. My graphics hardware (Unity->Details)

 Intel HD Graphics 620 (Kabylake GT2)

I assume you have a 4K display. Check Unity->Displays and if you see 3840x2160, that means your equipment supports 4K. If the flickering becomes annoying, a temporary workaround is to reduce your display resolution to 2048x1536. You should probably set the scale to a suitable font size. Note that as a result of changing the resolution, your display aspect ratio will show a smaller output but it's a lot easier to look at than a flickering screen.

Intel provides a nice GUI-based graphics update tool. However, the tool currently doesn't support 17.04+ since it's a relatively recent Ubuntu release.

Here's the link to the Intel Graphics update tool for your future reference so that you can keep an eye out for when 17.04+ driver support becomes available.

https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-update-tool-linux-os-v2.0.2

Hope this helps.

edited May 17 '17 at 03:10

answered May 17 '17 at 02:14

Michele

11

so do you mean the graphic need to be updated?you still have your display flickering after updating or you only redcued your display resolution?does it made any change,i mean whether its stoped flickering after doing this steps or not yet... – Aqil Hex May 19 '17 at 06:34
I've had a similar issue on Kubuntu 17.04 and the current KDE Neon neon-useredition-20170518-1018-amd64.iso. As the Intel driver doesn't support Ubuntu 17.x yet, I switched back to Ubuntu 16.10. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS works too. – Fabian Horlacher May 19 '17 at 15:19
right Fabian H,i also tried Ubuntu 16.04 LTS at the first time,everything was working good,i have this issue on gnome only(Maybe),maybe it will be fixed on 17.10 i hope,but does this issue damage my graphic?this is why im worry! – Aqil Hex May 20 '17 at 12:29

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 14 '18 at 13:52

0

Try installing newer graphic packages from Oibaf's PPA repository:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:oibaf/graphics-drivers
sudo apt update && apt upgrade

answered Feb 14 '18 at 13:52

Tombart

903

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 10 '19 at 16:29

0

Not sure if this is your problem because I have a different version (18.04) and a different graphics set up (NVidia), but, I was able to completely remove flickering by setting console transparency to opaque.

answered Jan 10 '19 at 16:29

user289931

1

score 0 · Answer 5 · edited Jun 10 '17 at 06:26

0

@Aqil, as mentioned I had to reduce the display resolution to 2048x1536 to get rid of the flickering - the issue is likely because the existing driver that comes with 17.04 does not work well with 4K display.

v2.0.5 can be downloaded from here https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/intel-graphics-update-tool-linux-os-v2.0.5

Download the deb file and Install it with

$ sudo -dpkg -i intel-graphics-update-tool*.deb

If you want to see the logs, run it with sudo and proxy disabled (Network->Network proxy->Method->None

$ sudo -E intel-graphics-update-tool

I'm getting errors with and without proxy. Try it outside the firewall and see if it works for you.

edited Jun 10 '17 at 06:26

Anwar

76,649

answered Jun 06 '17 at 00:51

Michele

1
1

Hi @Michele,thanks for answer,im updating it now i hope its gonna works...thanks @> – Aqil Hex Jun 07 '17 at 14:39
unfortunately i've encountered this error while updating ,check this http://vip.opload.ir/vipdl/96/1/aqilhex/faild.png – Aqil Hex Jun 07 '17 at 14:43
The download page is updated – Anwar Jun 10 '17 at 06:26

score 0 · Answer 6 · answered Aug 03 '17 at 22:44

One workable (but perhaps not the) solution to the screen tearing issue on 17.04 and 17.10 using a Lenovo (mine is a Yoga 910 with KabyLake) is to add i915.enable_rc6=0 to your boot parameter.

This works, but as I will note in a separate post, it disables some critical power management functions and, as a result, the fan stays on high constantly. This to me makes it unusable.

I tried a number of other solutions, including:

Installing Intel Graphics Update Tool for Linux (this seemed to work for 17.04, but there is updated tool for 17.10 until October 2017)
Installing Intel Firmware drivers manually from https://01.org/linuxgraphics/downloads/firmware
Adding 20-intel.conf to /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d and adding this:

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

The one that works independently of the others is adding i915.enable_rc6=0 to your boot parameter. I believe that the Intel Graphics Update also worked -- but only for 17.04.

Weird screen flickering issue in ubuntu 17.04 GNOME

6 Answers6

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