Posted inInformation Technology

Intel Graphics Screen Jitter

seasoned_geek by seasoned_geek1

I first noticed Intel graphics screen jitter under OpenSuSE. Previously I had an NVIDIA graphics card in this ThinkCentre but it died. Only been using the on-board Intel chipset for a little while now. Screen jitter was really annoying, especially when using a browser. Thankfully I had many other machines in the office and put off using this one for a project until now.

You will find oceans of supposed fixes for this when you search. It’s a hardware flaw the default Linux drivers and kernel don’t bother to work around. I mean, it’s not like Intel or Lenovo are going to come to your house, pop the hood, and upgrade the video chips, right?

Supposed Fixes

One lengthy discussion about the shaking, wiggling, screen jitter issue can be found here. They tell you to set this variable

i915.enable_psr=0

and leave it up to you to follow links finding out how to do it. The Arch Wiki has a rather lengthy discussion about Intel graphics and all things to fix them not working. Personally, I would think Intel would want to develop a better relationship with the Linux distros. I mean when I was doing the IPOS project for them they stated that 80% of all computers new or used sold in the EU were sold with Linux installed because it was illegal to bundle and OS and hardware.

First Thing to Do to fix Screen Jitter

Ultimately the problem is the “default” free driver Linux chooses to install just doesn’t work. You may have to enable “non-free” or some other “vendor proprietary” repository in your repo, but you want to install this.

The xf86-video-intel driver is available, just not chosen by most install utilities. Install it. Reboot. Enjoy life without screen jitter. You only have to try one of the other hacks if this fails. Given this bug/issue cropped up some time in 2019, they’ve had plenty of time to get a proper driver. Installation programs have also had plenty of time to make better driver choices.

Second Thing to Do

Replace your power supply. Today’s power supplies really suck, especially in low profile or Small Form Factor (SFF) computers. They cause all sorts of gremlin like problems. How? They get weak. You can test this if you have a spare add-in video card that is compatible with your computer. Change whatever BIOS settings you have to so your computer knows to use the new video card, then boot. It won’t. Rather it will boot but you will see nothing. I run into this a lot with Lenovo ThinkCentre SFF machines. Even if you buy the 240Watt power supply, if you have 16GB or more of RAM and leave it turned on, the things seem to last about a year. After that you start having video gremlins and RAM issues. Replace the power supply and they go away.

If your power supply is really bad, when you install the add-in video card, the machine won’t even try to boot. Almost nobody considers the power supply, but they cause a lot of problems when they get weak. If you bought your system used online you probably have at least a six year old power supply. Most corporate leases run at least four years and you’ve had it a while, right?

The Boot Parameter Hack

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

The following line will look different depending on your distro, but you need to add both i915.enable_guc=0 and i915.enable_psr=0 to the end of the line.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="splash=silent resume=/dev/disk/by-uuid/e2aa2f5f-e19a-4351-a9f0-64f58dac1212 preempt=full mitigations=auto quiet security=apparmor i915.enable_guc=0 i915.enable_psr=0"

Oh, no, you’re not done. Now you have to generate grub.

sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Then reboot.

Summary

Lots of people are claiming different things “work” then coming back later saying the fix stopped working. That’s usually a clear indication of a power supply that is weak and getting weaker. If they tried adding in a different video card they would find the additional draw causes the system to not boot. If you follow all the links in this article you will learn this has been going on for years. Reports seem to go back to Ubuntu 12 or 14.

Of course, the ultimate fix for this problem (after replacing the old power supply) is to install an NVIDIA card.

Roland Hughes started his IT career in the early 1980s. He quickly became a consultant and president of Logikal Solutions, a software consulting firm specializing in OpenVMS application and C++/Qt touchscreen/embedded Linux development. Early in his career he became involved in what is now called cross platform development. Given the dearth of useful books on the subject he ventured into the world of professional author in 1995 writing the first of the "Zinc It!" book series for John Gordon Burke Publisher, Inc.

A decade later he released a massive (nearly 800 pages) tome "The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer" which tried to encapsulate the essential skills gained over what was nearly a 20 year career at that point. From there "The Minimum You Need to Know" book series was born.

Three years later he wrote his first novel "Infinite Exposure" which got much notice from people involved in the banking and financial security worlds. Some of the attacks predicted in that book have since come to pass. While it was not originally intended to be a trilogy, it became the first book of "The Earth That Was" trilogy:
Infinite Exposure
Lesedi - The Greatest Lie Ever Told
John Smith - Last Known Survivor of the Microsoft Wars

When he is not consulting Roland Hughes posts about technology and sometimes politics on his blog. He also has regularly scheduled Sunday posts appearing on the Interesting Authors blog.

One thought on “Intel Graphics Screen Jitter”

  1. Pingback: Installation and Configuration of OpenSuSE Leap 15.6 – Logikal Blog

Comments are closed.