Display anomalies across multiple displays

I’m just recently started seeing some strange screen anomalies (pics below).

  • This happens on both the built-in laptop screen and on external monitors.
  • The distortion sometimes follows windows (I’m using KDE plasma), though if I resize a window, they get cleared, and sometimes dragging another window over it, it sticks around and distorts the new window as well.
  • It’s happening on multiple apps, at least vivaldi web browser, wezterm terminal, and slack.

I just did a full update (sudo zypper up -y; sudo zypper dup -y), and have restarted several times with the issue persisting. Is this a hardware issue, could it be a kernel / software issue?


output


Which Linux distro are you using?

❯ cat /etc/os-release -p
NAME="openSUSE Tumbleweed"
# VERSION="20250307"
ID="opensuse-tumbleweed"
ID_LIKE="opensuse suse"
VERSION_ID="20250307"
...

Which kernel are you using?

c1:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Phoenix1 (rev c1)
        Subsystem: Framework Computer Inc. Device 0005
        Kernel driver in use: amdgpu
        Kernel modules: amdgpu

Which BIOS version are you using?

BIOS Information
        Vendor: INSYDE Corp.
        Version: 03.02
        Release Date: 01/23/2024
        Address: 0xE0000
        Runtime Size: 128 kB
        ROM Size: 32 MB

Which Framework Laptop 16 model are you using?
AMD Ryzen 7040

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I have the same issue on my Framework Laptop 13 AMD Ryzen 7040 on Fedora 41.

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The issue is most definitely with the software or kernel.

If you are running Fedora 41:

  1. update to kernel 6.13.5 or later

  2. downgrade mesa to major version 24

/Zoe

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This is a current problem with the new Kernel and amdgpu versions. There is already another thread about this topic: Amdgpu instability (6.13.4 + firmware 20250219) - #20 by Aron_Griffis

For now a workaround on Tumbleweed is to do a snapper rollback to an older kernel version and stay on that.

Did you mean to do both of these things? I’ve just updated the BIOS, and haven’t seen the problem again. Maybe that was enough? I’m currently looking into how to downgrade mesa on opensuse, I will report back.

First upgrade the kernel. If that doesn’t resolve the issue, then downgrade mesa.

/Zoe

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I spoke too soon, display Issues still happening with the upgraded bios, and my kernel is on the latest. Now trying to figure out Mesa

Howdy there, if you’re still having trouble with this I’d be happy to help. You should be able to downgrade Mesa with dnf downgrade mesa. If you have Steam installed, you may also have 32-bit mesa packages that will need to be uninstalled using dnf remove mesa-dri-drivers.i686. Of course, exercise caution, create a backup before doing anything that might make it difficult to otherwise access your important files and data. I’ll be keeping tabs on this thread so if you run into any trouble, I should notice and be able to offer more help.

Just want to note that my issue seems identical to Graphical Corruption in Fedora 41 on AMD (BIOS3.06, Linux 6.13.5) - #18 by variegated.vanilla

Missed that in my searching, apologies.

On opensuse tubleweed, which uses zypper. And it seems based on some posts on the opensuse forums that this isn’t quite as straightforward.

There is another solution than downgrading Mesa. You can install kernel-longterm (make sure to switch to it during boot) and this should fix the problem.