Wayland lag/stuttering since kernel 6.11.2

[Alessio_Elmi]

Hello I am reporting that I am having severe graphic issues starting from (standard) kernel 6.11.2. What I am having is a very laggy/stuttering display, especially the external one. You can feel it as soon as you launch the terminal, and it’s so bad to be unusable apart from debugging purposes.

Few extra considerations:

• it only affects wayland (both Hyprland / Sway) and not X (i3 is fine)
• it only affects kernel 6.11.2 onward (6.11.4 is still affected). The latest LTS (6.6.57) is fine.
• I have the Framework13 with AMD 7640U
• I am on Arch

Is anyone else in the same situation?

[Matt_Hartley]

Hi @Alessio_Elmi,

Is this happening in casual desktop usaage or with gaming? We’re seeing folks on Arch (same kernel) having flickering during gaming, fine on older kernels.

[inffy]

I am currently on AMD FW13 6.11.4 (and also just built 6.12rc4) on CachyOS with their kernel (Arch based).

I haven’t noticed any issues on my usage, although I haven’t tested any games.

Running mine on wayland with Hyprland

[dimitris]

Vanilla GNOME on Wayland Fedora 40 here, no issues (13 inch 7840U).

I do have another occasional bug that others have encountered too:

Screen No Longer Powers Back On After Inactivity

I currently have my screen set to turn off after 5 minutes of inactivity. For the six months I’ve had my Framework 16 this has never been an issue, but starting yesterday I cannot get my screen to power back on after it goes inactive. To be clear, what I mean is that my session locks and the screen shuts off, not that my laptop is suspending itself. I can still see that the screen backlight is on. Pressing the volume keys on the keyboard to adjust my volume still makes sounds, so I don’t suspect…

but that seems different.

@Alessio_Elmi

You can feel it as soon as you launch the terminal

Is that a “required” step to get the bug? If so which terminal?

I can’t find it now, but I vaguely remember a bug that involved the terminal emulator. I think I was running on X back then. CPU use high and/or display lag was involved. Shot in the dark but worth a mention.

[Mistral24]

Hi. I had similar issue on Manjaro (Arch based) with 6.11.3 onwards. It’s still present on 6.12rc4.
I resolved it with the following entry in /etc/environment:

GSK_RENDERER=ngl

Maybe it helps in your situation?

[James3]

Hi,

On a FW16. No dGPU. Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS.
I am seeing similar stuttering on mainline kernel 6.11.5 (not reproducible here in 6.11.2)
Playing videos in windows or fullscreen in youtube / firefox seems to be fine (plays ok).
When I use the linux application “mpv” to play a video, it plays ok in a window, but then tends to suffer or completely pause when full screen. Moving the finger across the touchpad advances the video almost frame by frame. Pressing keys (does nothing) does not advance the video.
Summary:
mpv plays well in 6.11.2
mpv pauses / stutters in 6.11.5

Is this linked to:

PSA: Kernel 6.11.3 display updates

This is to serve as a PSA for those running a rolling release distro: From Kernel 6.11.3 on, DisplayPort Panel Replay leads to missing display refreshes on the internal display. For me this manifested itself as only updating the screen randomly or while moving the mouse - unless I used a compositor like picom. There is an open issue in the Freedesktop Gitlab to follow: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/drm/amd/-/issues/3682

Using “xrandr --output eDP --set TearFree on” helps cure the problem for me.

[inffy]

Not a kernel issue but a bug on gtk.

[D.H]

I was seeing this as well since 6.11.2 or so on both FW13 11th gen and 13th gen. Definitely affected Hyprland, even with no GTK based apps running at all.

6.11.5 seems to be slightly less bad, but not completely cured.

EDIT: I’m changing my answer on this. Still getting stuttering and freeze ups, less so in the terminal but Steam games via proton are way worse.

[D.H]

@Mistral24

the following entry in /etc/environment:

GSK_RENDERER=ngl

Just tried this. Made it worse, not better for me.