Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Smells like a driver issue or some sort of problem with Muffin + NVIDIA drivers, but every now and then, very rarely, will I get the background turning black and/or flickering, and sometimes various windows will do this as well. It's very rare as I said, and moving the mouse will get it to go away. Anyone else seen this?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
- Spearmint2
- Level 16
- Posts: 6900
- Joined: Sat May 04, 2013 1:41 pm
- Location: Maryland, USA
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
add nvidia-settings using the Package Manager. Here's what it does.
"The nvidia-settings utility is a tool for configuring the NVIDIA
Linux graphics driver. It operates by communicating with the NVIDIA
X driver, querying and updating state as appropriate. This
communication is done with the NV-CONTROL X extension.
Values such as brightness and gamma, XVideo attributes, temperature,
and OpenGL settings can be queried and configured via nvidia-settings."
"The nvidia-settings utility is a tool for configuring the NVIDIA
Linux graphics driver. It operates by communicating with the NVIDIA
X driver, querying and updating state as appropriate. This
communication is done with the NV-CONTROL X extension.
Values such as brightness and gamma, XVideo attributes, temperature,
and OpenGL settings can be queried and configured via nvidia-settings."
All things go better with Mint. Mint julep, mint jelly, mint gum, candy mints, pillow mints, peppermint, chocolate mints, spearmint,....
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I guess that was a bot response? Either way it's spam and has nothing to do with windows rarely and randomly flickering black in Cinnamon.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
This is a known issue. Myself and another of the devs have seen this happen. The problem with trying to fix it is that it happens rarely and seemingly at random. I also have only seen this on my machine with the Nvidia driver and not my intel graphics machine.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Thanks for the confirmation. That would seem to make it more likely that it's a problem with the NVIDIA driver than with Muffin/Cinnamon, but the issue may still have been resolved in newer versions of Muffin, or in Mutter. Ubuntu is using Mutter with the GNOME Shell in 17.10, so I'm curious to see if there is any flickering there or not, but that'd mean running Ubuntu and Gnome instead of Mint and Cinnamon. Ew!JosephM wrote:This is a known issue. Myself and another of the devs have seen this happen. The problem with trying to fix it is that it happens rarely and seemingly at random. I also have only seen this on my machine with the Nvidia driver and not my intel graphics machine.
- Spearmint2
- Level 16
- Posts: 6900
- Joined: Sat May 04, 2013 1:41 pm
- Location: Maryland, USA
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
No, that's the read file for it from Package Manager. I doubt it would qualify then as "spam". Sorry if it offended you for some inexplicable reason.Yfrwlf wrote:I guess that was a bot response? Either way it's spam and has nothing to do with windows rarely and randomly flickering black in Cinnamon.
All things go better with Mint. Mint julep, mint jelly, mint gum, candy mints, pillow mints, peppermint, chocolate mints, spearmint,....
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I'm pointing out that nvidia-settings has nothing to do with this bug, so I have no clue why that info is relevant, and thus spam for this particular thread topic? Please correct me if I'm wrong.Spearmint2 wrote:No, that's the read file for it from Package Manager. I doubt it would qualify then as "spam". Sorry if it offended you for some inexplicable reason.Yfrwlf wrote:I guess that was a bot response? Either way it's spam and has nothing to do with windows rarely and randomly flickering black in Cinnamon.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I have experienced this issue three or four times since 18.3. I run dual monitors and it only occurs on the secondary, and especially when Firefox Q is running.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I've never seen it with my NVIDIA desktop running 18.3 Cinnamon?
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I am getting flickering under Mint 19.
- My machine has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, with the *Intel* active.
- I didn't have this issue under Mint 18.3.
- It only happens on the secondary monitor.
- The primary monitor's contents to affect it. For example, with a Firefox window open on the primary, the secondary doesn't flicker as much.
- Terminal seems good for triggering flicker, although I've seen it with other applications too.
- With the primary monitor empty of windows (or minimized), two terminals open on the secondary, overlapping so there's some compositing going on, mousing over/in & out of windows triggers the black box flickers around the partially-buried windows reliably.
- My machine has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, with the *Intel* active.
- I didn't have this issue under Mint 18.3.
- It only happens on the secondary monitor.
- The primary monitor's contents to affect it. For example, with a Firefox window open on the primary, the secondary doesn't flicker as much.
- Terminal seems good for triggering flicker, although I've seen it with other applications too.
- With the primary monitor empty of windows (or minimized), two terminals open on the secondary, overlapping so there's some compositing going on, mousing over/in & out of windows triggers the black box flickers around the partially-buried windows reliably.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Wondering if AMD users have this happen with their open source driver. Maybe this is a bug in the proprietary NVIDIA driver. If Ubuntu's DE doesn't have any issue I wonder how they're doing it differently.Perette wrote: ⤴Thu Jul 12, 2018 2:47 pm I am getting flickering under Mint 19.
- My machine has an Nvidia and an Intel graphics card, with the *Intel* active.
- I didn't have this issue under Mint 18.3.
- It only happens on the secondary monitor.
- The primary monitor's contents to affect it. For example, with a Firefox window open on the primary, the secondary doesn't flicker as much.
- Terminal seems good for triggering flicker, although I've seen it with other applications too.
- With the primary monitor empty of windows (or minimized), two terminals open on the secondary, overlapping so there's some compositing going on, mousing over/in & out of windows triggers the black box flickers around the partially-buried windows reliably.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I've been running 18.3 on my server with AMD and nVidia card on a dual setup (monitor ad TV) and have not noticed it. I upgraded to Mint 19 only last night, so shall be vigilant.
Fully mint Household
Out of my mind - please leave a message
Out of my mind - please leave a message
- catweazel
- Level 19
- Posts: 9763
- Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:44 pm
- Location: Australian Antarctic Territory
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
This an nVidia bug. You probably see things like this flashing madly:Yfrwlf wrote: ⤴Sun Nov 12, 2017 3:37 pm Smells like a driver issue or some sort of problem with Muffin + NVIDIA drivers, but every now and then, very rarely, will I get the background turning black and/or flickering, and sometimes various windows will do this as well. It's very rare as I said, and moving the mouse will get it to go away. Anyone else seen this?
Code: Select all
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa --yes
sudo apt update
"There is, ultimately, only one truth -- cogito, ergo sum -- everything else is an assumption." - Me, my swansong.
- catweazel
- Level 19
- Posts: 9763
- Joined: Fri Oct 12, 2012 9:44 pm
- Location: Australian Antarctic Territory
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
See my response to the OP, above.
"There is, ultimately, only one truth -- cogito, ergo sum -- everything else is an assumption." - Me, my swansong.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
So, a bit more info. I've now seen this issue with the nvidia driver with Cinnamon on Mint18.3, Mint19, and with Gnome shell on Ubuntu 18.04. It also happens on a range of drivers including the 396 drivers that someone above says fixes it. It can sometimes just happen few and far between.
When I give opinions, they are my own. Not necessarily those of any other Linux Mint developer or the Linux Mint project as a whole.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
There's some additional screwy behavior dealing with backgrounds. When the background periodically using a crossfade, the secondary monitor starts flickering, switching between a couple of cross-faded frames rather than moving all the way to the new one. Moving the mouse to that screen and clicking on the background it corrects the behavior. There is a similar misbehavior when using the background preference application.
lspci reports the device as:
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 950M] (rev a2)
Subsystem: Lenovo GM107M [GeForce GTX 950M]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
[snip]
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
Using driver manager to switch back to the Nouveau open-source driver seems to resolve the issue.
lspci reports the device as:
01:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM107M [GeForce GTX 950M] (rev a2)
Subsystem: Lenovo GM107M [GeForce GTX 950M]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 255
[snip]
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia
Using driver manager to switch back to the Nouveau open-source driver seems to resolve the issue.
-
- Level 1
- Posts: 37
- Joined: Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:29 pm
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Nvudia card here. Same problem iterated in original post here coupled with multiple freezes per day using Cinnamon Zoom. Logout / login would get rid of flickering temporarily. Freezes from zoom required hard reboot. Posted this problem here - no takers.
Gave up, reformatted and went back to rock solid 18.3. Maybe after 19.1 release I’ll think about upgrading again.
Maybe.
Gave up, reformatted and went back to rock solid 18.3. Maybe after 19.1 release I’ll think about upgrading again.
Maybe.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Updated Nvidia driver to 396 per catweazel's suggestion, but still saw both background flicker when I launched the background preference pane and switched background selections, and got the black boxes around windows when active windows changed. Both behaviors limited to second monitor only, with prime-select in Intel mode as before.
When I prime-selected back to Nvidia mode, the problem went away. Then, switched back to Intel mode... and the problem stayed away. It does not put me at ease that jiggling the handle is the solution, but I'll live with it unless trouble shows up again.
When I prime-selected back to Nvidia mode, the problem went away. Then, switched back to Intel mode... and the problem stayed away. It does not put me at ease that jiggling the handle is the solution, but I'll live with it unless trouble shows up again.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
I am using the Nouveau Driver and have the exact same effect. Black Boxes randomly appearing on the second screen and being really annoying and flickering. GTK CSS fix applied but did not work.
As I use the Nouveau Driver and _not_ the NVIDIA driver, I daresay it's nothing to do with the NVIDIA driver but with a second monitor setup in Linux Mint 19.
This didn't happen to me in Linux Mint 18.
As I use the Nouveau Driver and _not_ the NVIDIA driver, I daresay it's nothing to do with the NVIDIA driver but with a second monitor setup in Linux Mint 19.
This didn't happen to me in Linux Mint 18.
Re: Anyone else get flickering desktop backgrounds and windows periodically on NVIDIA cards in Cinnamon?
Mint 19 here with the following:
Never experienced the issue OP is having. Must be I'm using an older card.
I'm using the nvidia 390.77 driver.
Code: Select all
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF116 [GeForce GTX 550 Ti] (rev a1)
I'm using the nvidia 390.77 driver.