- I am experiencing a mouse cursor flickering on my primary display when I enable fractional scaling. I am running Ubuntu 20.04 desktop on a Dell Inspiron XPS 9380 with Intel UHD620 graphics.
I have a dual monitor set-up and, as such, I have 200% scaling on my primary screen (13 inch up to 4k) and 100% scaling on my second monitor which sits above and extends the desktop ('join displays'). To achieve this configuration, I enabled fractional scaling in the screen display tab of the settings GUI.
The scaling is just how I want it to be, but, the cursor flickers very rapidly and erratically on the primary display only. It is very unpleasant to look at and very distracting when using any program. The click function works fine and the cursor tracks perfectly smoothly despite the flickering.
I have been unable to achieve the same display configuration by using 'xrandr' in the command line so ideally I will continue to use the fractional scaling setting available in the GUI.
If this is something unfix-able in Ubuntu, would anybody be able to suggest a different Linux distribution that can simple display scenarios such as there being an external monitor without immediate and obvious hiccups?
Best Answer
I do not have enough reputation to comment so I add a new answer (I do not understand this rule tbh).
Another workaround which worked for me was to set the scaling to different value than 200%, e.g. 175% or 150% both worked for me. It was still close to 200% which I initially wanted, but I am also ok with this. No screen tearing nor impact on the performance in comparison to what other users reported with the
0.9999x0.9999hack and most importantly I do not see the cursor flickering anymore. Also you can comfortably set this up in the settings.I am on X1 carbon 7th gen with Ubuntu 20.04 desktop.
Primary display: 1920x1080, scale 100%
Secondary display: 2560x1440 (built-in WQHD), scale 175%