Ubuntu – Laptop display goes crazy after log out

15.04driversdual-bootgraphicsnvidia

I first noticed this behavior in a newly purchased HP laptop. The login window goes crazy after I log out. The screen moves erratically, often the screen corner icons are in the middle. The only way out of this is a hard reboot.

Initially, I thought that this has something to do with the laptop hardware and I was about complain to the supplier. However, after a couple of weeks, another newly procured laptop showed the same behavior.

Some facts/observations.

  1. This occurs only at random, without any detectable pattern. The event can not be called to be predictable or always reproducible.
  2. This does not occur in case of Windows 8.1. The first laptop has Ubuntu only, the second one is dual boot.
  3. Both the laptops are running Ubuntu 15.04, upgraded to the latest version.
  4. The movements are more in the horizontal direction rather than in the vertical direction.
  5. The two laptops have different graphics cards. One has a built in card, the other one has a separate Nvidia card using a proprietary driver.

Could you please tell me how do I find a remedy to the situation?

EDIT

More informatin on graphics and display.

Laptop 1:
Intel HD Graphics 5500 (Broadwell GT2). 14.0-inch diagonal LED-backlit display. Using default 1366X768 resolution.

Laptop 2:
Intel HD Graphics 5500, NVIDIA GeForce 840M (2 GB DDR3 dedicated).
15.6-inch diagonal HD BrightView WLED-backlit.
Using default 1366X768 resolution. Installed the Ubuntu offered
proprietary graphics driver.

Best Answer

As you have quite new GPU hardware it might possibly be some kind of driver issue.

While intel chips are very well supported, there is actually nothing to do right now.

We may come to this later, but to sort things out - let us start with laptop 2 first.

Install the latest stable NVIDIA driver and Optimus support : 

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-355 nvidia-prime
sudo reboot

Update :

Sorted out a lot of possibilities, it looks like it might be a kernel related compatibility problem.

Download the daily (test) build of the coming Ubuntu edition 15.10 with the newer kernel 4.2 :

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/wily-desktop-amd64.iso

Create an install media - boot from it to check.

Conclusion :

The problem does not occur on ubuntu 15.10.

Install it immediately or wait for final release.

Ubuntu 15.10 will be released on October, 22.

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