Strange Screen Sharing Issue

[HotSchmoe]

Hi Guys, I'm hoping someone here might send me down the right path to find a solution to this. I have a weird problem. Whenever I share my screen - the person viewing on the other computer gets a large amount of "flicker" or "tearing" where my background flickers through whatever I am sharing. This was first mentioned while using Teams and Zoom, but I've since realized it happens with VNC as well - if I login remotely to my desktop from my laptop, the shared desktop is fine - but when I open a browser especially, the background on my desktop keeps flickering through the browser's window and makes it very distracting.

The screen on the actual desktop that is sharing is perfectly fine and shows now flickering, it is entirely on the computer that is viewing the shared screen.

My System:

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.11.0-34-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: N/A Desktop: Cinnamon 5.0.5 
           wm: muffin dm: LightDM Distro: Linux Mint 20.2 Uma base: Ubuntu 20.04 focal 
Machine:   Type: Desktop Mobo: Gigabyte model: B550 AORUS ELITE V2 serial: <filter> 
           UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: F13 date: 07/08/2021 
CPU:       Topology: 6-Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 
           L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm bogomips: 86238 
           Speed: 2672 MHz min/max: 2200/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2672 2: 2582 3: 2195 
           4: 2195 5: 2196 6: 2196 7: 2196 8: 2196 9: 2192 10: 2783 11: 2208 12: 2168 
Graphics:  Device-1: NVIDIA GK208B [GeForce GT 730] vendor: Gigabyte driver: nvidia v: 470.63.01 
           bus ID: 05:00.0 chip ID: 10de:1287 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: nvidia 
           unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,nouveau,vesa resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz, 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: NVIDIA GeForce GT 730/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 470.63.01 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: NVIDIA GK208 HDMI/DP Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 05:00.1 chip ID: 10de:0e0f 
           Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Gigabyte driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 07:00.4 chip ID: 1022:1487 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.11.0-34-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Gigabyte driver: r8169 v: kernel port: f000 
           bus ID: 04:00.0 chip ID: 10ec:8125 
           IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 9.55 TiB used: 169.38 GiB (1.7%) 
           ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Smart Modular Tech. model: SHGP31-1000GM-2 size: 931.51 GiB 
           speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> 
           ID-2: /dev/sda vendor: Samsung model: HD154UI size: 1.36 TiB speed: 3.0 Gb/s 
           serial: <filter> 
           ID-3: /dev/sdb vendor: Seagate model: ST8000VN004-2M2101 size: 7.28 TiB speed: 6.0 Gb/s 
           serial: <filter> 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 36.42 GiB used: 16.19 GiB (44.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
           ID-2: /home size: 878.72 GiB used: 153.07 GiB (17.4%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 41.1 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 41 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 33% 
Repos:     No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/google-chrome.list 
           1: deb [arch=amd64] http: //dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/ stable main
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/insync.list 
           1: deb http: //apt.insync.io/mint uma non-free contrib
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list 
           1: deb http: //packages.linuxmint.com uma main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
           2: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal main restricted universe multiverse
           3: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates main restricted universe multiverse
           4: deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports main restricted universe multiverse
           5: deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ focal-security main restricted universe multiverse
           6: deb http: //archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ focal partner
Info:      Processes: 346 Uptime: 5h 06m Memory: 31.36 GiB used: 3.99 GiB (12.7%) Init: systemd 
           v: 245 runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 9.3.0 alt: 8/9 Client: Unknown python3.8 client 
           inxi: 3.0.38 

I'm running NVidia 470 drivers.

This is a 1 week old install of linux Mint Cinnamon 20.2. I am using a newer Kernal but this happened with the previous Kernal as well.

I've read that compositing may be the issue, but I can't seem to find many settings for that in Mint.

Not sure if it is a GPU, Motherboard, CPU or Linux issue.

Not really sure where to begin here. Any thoughts/help are appreciated. Thanks in advance!

[SMG]

Hi Guys, I'm hoping someone here might send me down the right path to find a solution to this. I have a weird problem. Whenever I share my screen - the person viewing on the other computer gets a large amount of "flicker" or "tearing" where my background flickers through whatever I am sharing.
...
The screen on the actual desktop that is sharing is perfectly fine and shows now flickering, it is entirely on the computer that is viewing the shared screen.
...
I've read that compositing may be the issue, but I can't seem to find many settings for that in Mint.

There are a number of different hand-offs when passing your screen's image to someone else's computer including the network connection servers. My first thought was whether the receiving machine might have hardware acceleration turned on in the browser. You could try turning it off on your laptop to see if that makes a difference.

Following up on your idea of compositing, go to the Effects app on your desktop and turn all of them off to see if that makes a difference. Or check to see if you have any Accessibility app options turned on. Someone in another thread found turning the Accessibility options off cleared flickering, but that person was actually seeing the flickering locally on their screen and not remotely on a screen-sharing app.

I would expect if it was a graphics driver issue then you would be seeing the problem locally on your desktop, but that is not the case.

[HotSchmoe]

Thanks SMG!

Good thoughts - sorry for my delay in seeing this. I am going to play around with your ideas and see what I can come up with. Thanks for the input.