External screens turning off and on repeatedly at different intervals (flickering)

Which is why I said then it leans back to driver timings. Also why I suggested trying Clear since that should in theory be the distro to run the Intel stuff as "to spec" as possible.

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I'm currently running Clear for the next few hours (without installing, just from a USB drive). The behavior shown in the previous video is still present. I turned on both external screens to try and see if I can trigger flickering again as it seemed it was a lot more frequent with two external screens rather than one. So far no flickers but they were also happening a lot less since I started using the linux-lts kernel with Garuda.

Hmm so you've got the mild snow...dude this is going to drive me insane...and I'm already insane...so maybe it will make me sane?

I must append this statement as I missed an obvious Futurama joke in which I could become insanezier!

Don't worry about it too much haha, at this point I'm likely going to stop using this laptop and Garuda and go back to my MacBook. Just trying to figure out a fix for curiosity's sake.

Trust me the curiosity is...insanezier...no no I already used that one...hmmm...

Part of me wonders if it really might be something with system memory since it's an IGP.

Going back to the Roberto them have you tried STABBING it on and off? heh

Nothin' beats a hobo's life...stabb'n people with mah hobo knife...

/me runs away laughing maniacaly

Lmao sorry but I don't have any of those references

Well SHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYAT!

Roberto was the insane robot from Futurama. The hobo song was from the Simpsons. The running with what the laughing is being GOTO 10 GOTO 10 :wink: (What do you have an extra GOTO 10 line or something?!)

In all seriousness though I was wondering what if you boot up with no DE? Just sudo systemctl set-default multi-user reboot and login to a base tty? See if that does anything stupid.

Oddly I don’t remember that Simpsons reference at all haha

Just booted back into Garuda. Same effect as before with the desktop environment, then ran systemctl isolate multi-user.target to switch to console mode without rebooting, no more ‘snow’. It only appears in graphical mode.

Well this is kinda getting somewhere...where we got I don't know but it's somewhere we weren't. :wink:

So something with X...forgive me as there's been a lot going on but have you tried a Wayland session? Not that I want to promote the devil but worth asking.

Went back to check your DE too, have you tried something other than KDE? Like perhaps KDE's compositor is doing something whacky?

I thought Wayland wasn't stable at all with KDE?

heh I don't mean Wayland with kDE, just Wayland i.e. any of the other DE that works with it. However I also tossed in after if you'd just tried another DE to see if the issue isn't the compositor. Which I'd wager won't matter if Clear has the issue too. Something kernel > driver > X related so grabbing a distro running wayland and giving that a shot might be a good test.

From a brief test, Wayland doesn't seem to have all the 'snow'. Yesterday I had no flickers at all without doing anything special on Garuda, today it's a lot worse (a lot more snow and more flickering which would indicate that they're linked). Not sure what could cause a sudden change like that. I've already rebooted multiple times and it's still happening.


Never mind, tried Wayland with Garuda and the snow is still there.

I was going to suggest a Fedora image for a more "normalish" kernel build with wayland but this just feels like straight up gremlins. This is where I wish there were more people spitballing.

I know I some times feel like I've forgot just enough stuff to make me stupid with this stuff as time and complacency erodes my working mental records of issues and troubleshooting but this is really some WTF?

Yeah I'm also wondering what the hell is going on lol. Today for the first time (that I can remember) the snow even started appearing during Garuda's boot sequence, and also in console mode when switching ttys (Ctrl + Alt + Number).

I just out of curiosity did a search for the XPS 13 flickering and one of the solutions was change the refresh to 40Hz WTH!?

As stupid as that seems though is does make me want to ask, are all the screens running the same refresh?

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They're both set to 60 Hz. The issue is that it's not the XPS' screen that's flickering but only the external screens. 40 Hz isn't an option for either of the monitors (built-in and external).

I wouldn't think 40 would be but it's more an issue of if the attached display IS actually supposed to run at 40 (serious wtf) then the issue might be the timing where the IGP is screwing up the timings for them all and that is causing artifacting. -again spitball but I have seen "moar stupidier" stuff

Scratch that found the manual the screen is supposed to be 60 so all three at 60 should be fine. Still wth is with all the people reporting flicker then marking 40hz as the fix!?

Not sure how they even got 40 Hz as a supported refresh rate. Mine only offers 60 and 48.

Found this too and followed the procedure. Will see if it changes anything about the flickering but for now there's still the occasional snow appearing everywhere on the screen.


Nope, just got more flickers.

48 is pretty whacky, I hadn't seen stuff that low since the monochrome CRT days. Have you tried the 48 + 60 + 60?

This is where you need a buddy who does electrical engineering who can cut open a cable and clamp some damned leeds on it and watch.