So, ever since I switched over to Garuda linux as my daily driver early last year, I have had this aggrevating issue… I use a 4k monitor via a VESA certified displayport, and whenever I have the desktop resolution at full, the screen blanks out for a second or two at random intervals… It hasn’t been a big deal cuz when I set it to 2560x1440, I don’t have any such issues… Until yesturday…
I thought I might as well check to see if a recent update may have fixed the problem, so I switched to 4k, messed around a little bit… And then when it was clear nothing changed, I switched back to the other resolution… But this time it decided to bring the glitch with it… So now, I have to figure this out because my computer is barely usable. To add to this, it seems to have developed some new consistancies at this lower resolution. It blanks whenever I bring up that window menu through the top left corner, and it goes wild blanking when certain windows are maximized, esp Pamac for some bizarre reason. It still does it randomly too. But it won’t do it at all when certain applications like VLC are fullscreened… I have been searching everywhere for even a place to start figuring ou what is going on without much luck, and so after gaining a blistering headache from it all, I signed up here…
I have an AMD R9 390 GPU, and a Z-Edge 4k monitor. I also have an old 1440x900 Viewsonic via DVI as a secondary monitor that I mostly use for widgets so I can keep an eye on temps, activity, etc. at a glance. I am using the default Zen Kernel, and the KDE Plasma 6 Desktop Environment with the default Dragonized setup.
I know this isn’t a hardware issue because I do technically dual boot Windows (I only have a small partition of 10 for like 2 things.) and in spite of having it at full resolution and refresh rate, I have had zero blanking problems, wven after this expanded version started. It also doesn’t happen in X11 at my normal res (though still does in 4k)
I’ve tried messing more with the video settings lowering the DPI scaling to 100%, etc, but I’m genuinely at a loss… I even checked to make sure it hadn’t reset my prioritizing of the AMDGPU drivers over the Radeon ones through the GRUB menu, but no… So if anyone has any knowledge or can at least give me an idea of where to start, please let me know.
It could simply be the DP-cable. With a cheap DP-cable it happens often for me. It picks up electric disturbances very easily, like opening microwave door, turning on a CFL-light, etc, and monitor gets no signal for a second or two.
I feel like if it was merely the DP cable, it would be consistant regardless of settings and completely random… It might explain the way it functions on X11, blanking only on full 4k, but it doesn’t explain the issues on Wayland… I can literally deliberately trigger it by simply maximizing Pamac. And it does it every so often, even at the resolutions that run flawlessly on X11… I really want to keep using Wayland, but it’s just unusable right now, and all that changed was I changed the resolution to 4k, and then changed it back… That’s the only difference between it worki g flawlessly and bugging out… I’d try to reinstall Wayland, see if that fixes it, but it’s built into KDE, so that’s just gonna break everything…
The best thing to do is to start by posting your garuda-inxi. That way we would have all the information we need about your hardware, drivers and the exact model of the monitor. That makes it easier to help.
Furthermore, Linux is not Windows - just because something works on Windows doesn’t mean it will work on Linux.
You have an old R9 390 with 1x DisplayPort 1.2 - maybe Linux doesn’t like the fact that your unknown monitor model may have a different DP version set or that 4K doesn’t work properly for some other reason. And obviously it hasn’t worked for over a year…if there is a problem you fix it immediately and don’t wait until it gets worse btw…
Edit: Take a look on this:
This may not be the same, but it gets the idea across for your troubleshooting.
Sorry, been busy a few days, I will post that when I find the time. And thing is, it hasn’t gotten worse so to speak. It just has started happening on Wayland at lower resolutions. TBH I think it might be two seperate issues. I’ll check out that other post as well. Thank you.
Edit: I just noticed that it is listing the resolutions of my monitors wrong… That seems really bizarre… It seems to list them correctly on X11, so maybe that’s a hint?
I’m having the same problem. Whenever I switch 144hz my screen starts to blinking if there is a change on the screen. So right now I’m using at 120hz. 120hz more stable than 144hz but when I fullscreen a program it turns black then gets normal. I tested with different HDMI cables it still happening but noticed something that if I boot garuda iso there is no problem. I also use AMD and there is my garuda-inxi:
That is similar though not quite the same. Also, I figured out the weird nonmatching resolution. It seems to be referencing the DPI scaling for the res, so back to square one…
I feel like a complete fool rn… I blew some compressed air into both ends of the cable and the sockets, and now it works flawlessly… It still does it in 4k but to a significantly reduced degree, so I’m fairly confident a deeper cleaning will fix the issue… Mind you, I dunno why none of my previous attempts to clean it fixed it but regardless, this did it… I am happy I figured it out.
