cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/20949510

SOLUTION: Apparently there’s some sort of bug in xwayland that causes Steam games to flicker, so “downgrading” to X11 solved it (for now). Now all I need to know is how to file a bug report for this.

I’m trying to set up a Linux install for my mom (Ultramarine KDE on Wayland), and all her (2) Steam games are flickering. I thought it was from fractional scaling, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Her games don’t flicker on Windows, and I’ve already tried multiple versions of Proton. I’m not quite sure what’s happening, and any help would be appreciated.

Specs
  • OS: Ultramarine Linux KDE Edition
  • Host: Dell Inspiron 15 3511
  • CPU: Intel Core i5-1035G1
  • GPU: pretty sure it uses integrated graphics apparently it uses Nvidia? First time I’ve seen that, gonna have to remember that in the future. Both Linux and Windows are using integrated graphics with no sign of Nvidia anywhere??

If you need any more information, please ask me

Edit: other than the flickering, her games run perfectly fine.

Edit 2: Just learned my mom’s laptop model has a discrete Nvidia GPU, gonna troubleshoot that in a bit.

Edit 3: Her laptop doesn’t seem to have anything Nvidia inside, despite the fact that the Dell website says her laptop should, weird…

  • Kevin@lemmy.ca
    7·
    3 months ago

    Is it possible she has variable refresh/gsync/freesync support and that it’s enabled? That turned out to be the cause of the flickering I was seeing.

    • dabster291OPEnglish
      2·
      3 months ago

      How do I disable that? KDE’s settings doesn’t seem to have anything about VRR (searching for it leads me to the display setings, but there’s nothing mentioning VRR there either).

      • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
        3·
        3 months ago

        I think you only get the VRR setting if the screen does support VRR. No point asking the user if the system can’t do it.

    • dabster291OPEnglish
      3·
      3 months ago

      All that seems to do is force the game into windowed mode and cause heavy artifacting (using gamescope -f doesn’t show the game at all, but it still seems to be running in the background).

  • poVoq@slrpnk.netM
    1·
    3 months ago

    Try launching KDE in X11 instead of Wayland.

    Nvidia is known to have all sorts of graphical issues on Wayland in all but the most recent versions of KDE which likely isn’t available in your distro yet.

    Edit: ah, not Nvidia? You can still try on X11, as some programs also have issues with xwayland.

    • dabster291OPEnglish
      0·
      3 months ago

      It’s not an Nvidia problem (no discrete gpu, already checked both Windows and Linux)

      Edit: Somehow missed your edit, oops

      Also I might try X11, just to see if anything changes.