Screen flickering

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bluejupiter
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Joined: 02/12/2011

Does anyone know how to get rid of the flickering screen every time you maximize a window or open an application? Just curious, I searched and can't find. Thanks!

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

What kind of GPU do you have?

lspci|grep VGA

Chris

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Joined: 04/23/2011

It is likely that the kernel needs to be upgraded.

Try jxself's kernel:

http://jxself.org/linux-libre/

Or upgrade to 3.5 in the repository.

bluejupiter
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Joined: 02/12/2011

I have: 00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310]

Let me look at the kernel stuff too. Thanks a lot!

bluejupiter
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I upgraded to the 3.5 kernel (belenos) but I still get the same behavior - the flickering is a small white line around the entire perimeter of the screen.

Chris

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hmmm

I don't know although ATI graphics chips aren't supported in Trisquel. They are dependant on non-free firmware. What happens I believe (it's been a long long time since I've touched a system with ATI graphics) is the system defaults to the VESA driver which is a very basic generic driver. There is no 2d or 3d acceleration present. I wouldn't necessarily expect flickering with it. The problem may be elsewhere.

Are you using an older CRT monitor? That is it's not ultra thin like most monitors sold in the past several years. It's a fatter older monitor (maybe 10+ years). If so there may be some refresh rate configuration component you can look into changing. I completely forget the details of this. The actual file is xorg.conf although this isn't generated any more. You can force it... if you can find the directions on how to do it. All I can say is it is a pain to do ever since auto-configuration became the standard.

akirashinigami

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It was a pain to do even before auto-configuration. I definitely do not miss xorg.conf.

Chris

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Yes- yes it was.

bluejupiter
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I have a brand new 23 inch monitor from Acer. The visual appearance of Trisquel is really great. I don't mind the flickering, it's not a big deal, just curious if there was an easy solution. Thanks a lot though!

Chris

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Is it a cheap monitor? I know some of the cheap cheap cheap monitors flicker.

lembas
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If you go to system settings > details > gfx does it say you're running vesa?

You could try the radeon driver. Better to have a live media ready if you do.

bluejupiter
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When I go to Details, then Graphics, it says Driver "Unknown" Experience "Fallback." For Overview, this is an AMD E-300 APU with Radeon HD Graphics x 2 (for the processor) with 2.5GiB memory.

Also if I do lspci I get this output at command line:
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI Wrestler [Radeon HD 6310] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 2ad3
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
Memory at d0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
I/O ports at f000 [size=256]
Memory at feb00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K]
Expansion ROM at [disabled]
Capabilities:
Kernel modules: radeon

The monitor was about $130, an Acer LCD monitor.

Maybe it's because I installeda 64-bit system? I have no idea.

lembas
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OK, so sounds like you're on (the) radeon (driver) already. I thought it was blacklisted on 6.0.

In that case you might want to try the vesa driver. Or some of the options offered by the radeon driver. (these go to xorg.conf) Or nomodeset kernel parameter. (this goes in grub cfg)

You want a live media close by if you try these things because you could end up looking at a black monitor but can change things back with it.

Chris

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I'm curious about something.

Run:

apt-get install mesa-utils

Then go to system settings > details > gfx again.

What does it say now?

bluejupiter
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Joined: 02/12/2011

I installed that, it was not installed. Now the Graphics says:

Driver: Gallium 0.4 on llvmpipe (LLVM 0x300)
Experience: Fallback

bluejupiter
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I did not reboot or anything, but the flickering has just stopped, so I guess that did it.

Chris

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Wow- I didn't expect that to solve anything.

Interesting bit I read in wikipedia:

Gallium3D has been a part of Mesa since 2009[3] and is currently used by the free and open source graphics driver for Nvidia (nouveau project),[4][5] and by the free and open source graphics driver for ATI Radeon R300-R900.[6][7][8]