Graphical glitches on Linux status?

Framework Laptop 16 Linux
1

I’ve been experiencing moderate graphical glitches for a while now. While I was communicating with support on hardware issues, a Mesa update caused glitches not just for me, but for many other people as well. Since some time has passed, I want to know if others are still experiencing graphical glitches like I am right now, so I can tell if this is an issue unique to me.

The glitches I’m experiencing are, concretely:

  1. Brief half-screen single-colour flashes
  2. Brief whole-screen flashes, particularly when displaying bright colours
  3. Glitched rectangles briefly appearing during animations or video playback, particularly in the lower half of the screen
  4. Occasional screen tearing in the lower half of the screen

These glitches occur on my desktop, mostly. They don’t occur when I’m playing full-screen games, with the possible exception of screen tearing, but that happens rarely and I haven’t seen it when gaming yet.

Which Linux distro are you using? NixOS

Which release version? unstable, last updated today

Which kernel are you using? 6.12.56, 6.17.6

Which BIOS version are you using? 0.0.3.7

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

1 Like
2

Im on 6.17.6-300.fc43 with Fedora 43. FWIW I am no longer seeing the artifacts as of the current versions I am on.

However, when I did see them, I did some research (and shared it in the thread that is basically identical to this) and there is a workaround - note, it will reduce battery life:

I used to use amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x410 within my kernel parameters. This disables the powersaving features that can cause the issue.

ymmv

3

I’ve also been seeing the whole-screen flashes, which are driving me nuts. I think it may be related to my docking station and 4k monitors, as I haven’t been able to find a solution yet. Feeding my logs into Claude, it’s indicating that I should try reducing my refresh rate to 30Hz, but I really don’t want to do that :frowning:.

Note that the amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x410 didn’t work for me, nor did amdgpu.runpm=0.

4

This is happening on the built-in screen.

5

I can report that neither amdgpu.dcdebugmask, nor amdgpu.runpm, nor disabling that power management feature in the firmware interface help.

6

I’ve had a few flashes of weird coloration (kind of hot pink, usually) that flicker in a thin line near the bottom of the screen. When I briefly tried Nobara it was much worse, with some full-screen green static-y flashes nearly every time I opened a program or switched between open programs. Now I’m firmly on Mint and the flickers are extremely rare, but I’m also not pushing my graphics very hard even when gaming.

OS: Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon
Cinnamon Version: 6.4.8
Linux Kernel: 6.14.0-generic
Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics < 8
Graphics Card: Advanced Micro Devices, inc. [AMD/ATI] Phoenix1

7

I had a similar issue on the built in screen. I was running Ubuntu at the time. I loaded up bazzite and that seemed to fix it.

Maybe try booting to another distro on a USB and see if the glitches still happen?

8

Yes, they still happen on Ubuntu.

9

When I first got my F16 (first gen) I had these issues and used amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x400 as a work around, after a few updates it was resolved and the the kernel parameter went away. Kernel 6.18 and above on Fedora has reintroduced this issue and I have had success resolving it by readding the amdgpu.dcdebugmask=0x400 parameter back into my kargs.

Probably needs to be resolved upstream, as it is a regression

10

No issues on Deepin OS. I dual boot Kali on a stick with a KDE desktop and they occur. I also tried Elementary OS never saw the issue on there.

11

For some reason I manged to fix it in KDE by setting adaptive sync to “always” and not “automatic”.

Running Arch and kernel 6.19

12

Some interesting information here: I’ve bisected the kernel and found that the commit that breaks it is be64336307a6c3ee71fe1337c1b9f0495aa83c50. Now, that commit re-enables some FreeSync-related feature and links to a bug report on the FreeDesktop GitLab which explains why this was previously disabled, specifically referring to the Framework 16 laptop: amdgpu - regression - bisected - Framework 16 laptop on kernel 6.9.0 results in screen flickering

This makes me think that either:

  1. I (and others experiencing this issue) have defective hardware that only exhibits the issue if this FreeSync feature is enabled
  2. The problem in the Freedesktop bug report wasn’t actually fixed and the kernel commit was in error

@Walter_Griffin: Could you check what kernel version you’re running?

I’ve commented on the Freedesktop bug tracker about this. I don’t know if there are any other places I should ask, the kernel docs seem to indicate that the Freedesktop bug tracker is the correct place.

EDIT: I’ve opened a new issue about this.

13

Just some data point: I’ve had glitches when running Ubuntu two years ago, but none whatsoever since switching to Tumbleweed. At the same time, I’ve switched from Wayland to X. In my case, all displays would go black for a split second every couple minutes or so.

$ fastfetch
          ,...,                                 ekkehard@FW16
     .,:lloooooc;.                              ------------------
   ,ool'     oo,;oo:                            OS: openSUSE Tumbleweed x86_64
 .lo'        oo.   oo:                          Host: Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series) (AG)
.oo.         oo.    oo:                         Kernel: Linux 6.19.11-1-default
:ol          oo.    'oo                         Uptime: 1 day, 7 hours, 13 mins
:oo         .oo.    .oo.                        Packages: 4615 (rpm)
.oooooooooooooo.    .oo.                        Shell: bash 5.3.9
 ;oo.               .oo.                        Display (BOE0BC9): 1920x1200 in 16", 165 Hz [Built-in] *
  'oo,              .oo.                        Display (DELL U2410): 1920x1200 in 24", 60 Hz [External]
    "ooc,',,,,,,,,,,:ooc,,,,,,,,,,,             Display (HP LP2065): 1600x1200 in 20", 60 Hz [External]
       ':cooooooooooooooooooooooooool;.         Display (STN0011): 1024x768 in 15", 60 Hz [External]
                    .oo.             .oo;       DE: Xfce4 4.20
                    .oo.               .oo.     WM: Xfwm4 (X11)
                    .oo.    'oooooooooo:ooo.    WM Theme: Daloa
                    .oo.    'oo.         col    Theme: Greybird-geeko [GTK2/3/4]
                    .oo'    'oo          col    Icons: adwaita-xfce [GTK2/3/4]
                     coo    'oo          oo'    Font: Noto Sans (11pt) [GTK2/3/4]
                      coc   'oo        .lo,     Cursor: Adwaita
                       `oo, 'oo      .:oo       Terminal: xfce4-terminal 1.2.0
                         'ooooc,, ,:lol         CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (16) @ 5.14 GHz
                            `''"clc"'           GPU: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics [Integrated]
                                                Memory: 8.73 GiB / 60.63 GiB (14%)
                                                Swap: 0 B / 126.95 GiB (0%)
                                                Disk (/): 44.80 GiB / 927.28 GiB (5%) - btrfs
                                                Disk (/mnt/ubuntu): 465.76 GiB / 1.67 TiB (27%) - ext4
                                                Local IP (enp196s0f4u1u4): 192.168.0.67/24
                                                Battery (FRANDBA): 75% [AC Connected]
                                                Locale: de_DE.utf8
14

I am running kernal 6.12.65 amd 64 rolling desktop. Note, I havve tried two additional distros: Elementary OS and Deepin OS. Neither have had this issue at all, not once.

15

I just made this change and it seems to have fixed my issue. (Adaptive sync never to always) Thank you!

fastfetch
.',;::::;,'.                 finn@fedora
.';:cccccccccccc:;,.             -----------
.;cccccccccccccccccccccc;.          OS: Fedora Linux 43 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition) x86_64
.:cccccccccccccccccccccccccc:.        Host: Laptop 16 (AMD Ryzen 7040 Series) (AG)
.;ccccccccccccc;.:dddl:.;ccccccc;.      Kernel: Linux 6.19.11-200.fc43.x86_64
.:ccccccccccccc;OWMKOOXMWd;ccccccc:.     Uptime: 22 hours, 44 mins
.:ccccccccccccc;KMMc;cc;xMMc;ccccccc:.    Packages: 2369 (rpm), 8 (flatpak)
,cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cc;;WW:;cccccccc,    Shell: bash 5.3.0
:cccccccccccccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc:    Display (BOE0BC9): 2560x1600 @ 1.25x in 16", 165 Hz [Built-in]
:ccccccc;oxOOOo;MMM000k.;cccccccccccc:    DE: KDE Plasma 6.6.3
cccccc;0MMKxdd:;MMMkddc.;cccccccccccc;    WM: KWin (Wayland)
ccccc;XMO';cccc;MMM.;cccccccccccccccc'    WM Theme: Breeze
ccccc;MMo;ccccc;MMW.;ccccccccccccccc;     Theme: Breeze (Light) [Qt], Breeze [GTK2/3]
ccccc;0MNc.ccc.xMMd;ccccccccccccccc;      Icons: breeze [Qt], breeze [GTK2/3/4]
cccccc;dNMWXXXWM0:;cccccccccccccc:,       Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
cccccccc;.:odl:.;cccccccccccccc:,.        Cursor: breeze (24px)
ccccccccccccccccccccccccccccc:'.          Terminal: konsole 25.12.3
:ccccccccccccccccccccccc:;,..             Terminal Font: Cascadia Code NF (11pt)
':cccccccccccccccc::;,.                  CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS (16) @ 5.14 GHz
GPU: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics [Integrated]
Memory: 8.72 GiB / 27.20 GiB (32%)
Swap: 0 B / 8.00 GiB (0%)
Disk (/): 24.53 GiB / 463.16 GiB (5%) - btrfs
Local IP (wlp1s0): 10.0.0.5/27
Battery (FRANDBA): 78% [AC Connected]
Locale: en_US.UTF-8