Ubuntu – Flickering screen with Intel graphics on Ubuntu 17.04

17.04graphicsintel graphicskernelscreen

On a fresh install of Ubuntu 17.04 I have problems with the screen flickering, going black for extended periods of time (~10 seconds) as well as "hot pixels" on the home screen and in some applications. The system is an Intel Skylake integrated graphics (HD 510) with no other graphics card that could be interfering.

The problem goes away if I either reduce the resolution (to 1080i or lower) or the refresh rate (from 60Hz to 30Hz).

Before the install, I was on Lubuntu 15.10 with no such problems.

From what I've been able to find out, it seems to be a kernel issue: I can break the working 15.10 install (kernel 4.2) by upgrading to kernel 4.4. And I can also almost fix the 17.04 install (kernel 4.10) by downgrading the kernel to 4.3 (almost in that the flickering goes down significantly without disappearing completely). Oddly enough, it seems that the higher the kernel version is, the worse the effect becomes.

Does anybody else have this problem?

Update: Having tried out (live usb) the new Ubuntu 17.10 this morning with high hopes, I have noticed something interesting: When I first tried it, it appeared to be okay. Now, after a couple of hours of tinkering with it, the issue is back as bad as ever. This would ordinarily make me think the problem might be heat-related, except the same machine runs happily and without problems for hours on end with the old Lubuntu 15.10. Very bizarre.

Summary of things I have (unsuccessfully) tried so far:

  • creating config script for the X server as suggested, among others, on the Arch wiki. This seems to be the go to advice for this sort of problem, but unfortunately it hasn't helped me.

    Section "Device"
        Identifier "Intel Graphics"
        Driver "intel"
        Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
        Option "TearFree" "true"
        Option "DRI" "3"
    EndSection

    I also tried this with AccelMethod uxa and it didn't help.

  • Enabling the intel microcode proprietary driver

  • nomodeset and i915.modeset=0 kernel parameters. This just limits my resolution to 1024×768 (or maybe it was 1280×1024, but either one isn't satisfactory)
  • i915.preliminary_hw_support=1, i915.enable_rc6=0, i915.enable_psr=0 kernel parameters
  • acpi=off kernel parameter
  • Upgrading drivers through the Intel graphics update tool as well as from this website (latest versions at the time of this writing: GuC – Ver 6.1, DMC – Ver 1.26, HuC – Ver 1.07)
  • Upgrading kernel to 4.11 and 4.12rc5, which has only seemed to make matters worse
  • apt-get purge xserver-xorg-video-intel, which hasn't helped, as well as a reinstall (suggested here)
  • Installing intel-vaapi-driver (from launchpad)
  • Different distros (Lubuntu 16.04.2, Lubuntu 17.04, Ubuntu 17.04, Fedora 25), they all have the same problem. Update: So does the recently released Lubuntu 17.10 (kernel 4.13.0-16)
  • Increasing the initially allocated memory to 1024MB in the BIOS
  • Enabling CSM in the BIOS
  • Setting the intel_iommu kernel parameter to off or igfx_off
  • Running stock Ubuntu 17.10. I thought maybe it was an X11 issue, and using Wayland might work. It didn't, although the exact symptoms changed slightly
  • Replacing the i915.ko file in the kernel's drivers directory with the working one from the 15.10 install. Somewhat surprisingly, this does not work. I had been halfway sure it would.

Best Answer

Its happened with me too on Intel graphics.. Some times these are the bugs also sometimes screen detection sensor does it is lided or unlided. It can be dust or something etc in your device.

I would suggest you to clean or check your device clearly after it then come towards removing of bugs.