[Bug 102054] New: KDE desktop compositing occasionally causes flickering and frozen window contents

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

Bug ID: 102054
Summary: KDE desktop compositing occasionally causes flickering
and frozen window contents
Product: xorg
Version: unspecified
Hardware: Other
OS: All
Status: NEW
Severity: normal
Priority: medium
Component: Driver/Radeon
Assignee: xorg-driver-***@lists.x.org
Reporter: ***@yahoo.com
QA Contact: xorg-***@lists.x.org

KDE desktop compositing occasionally causes strange visual artifacts. This
includes the following problems, which may or may not be related:

- Certain panels flicker when rendering against other panels, which looks as if
the two are z-fighting. I often see this with Skype notifications in the system
tray as they interfere with the Plasma panel.

- The Plasma desktop no longer executes visual updates unless the user does an
action that forces it to. For example: If you have an analog clock with the
seconds hand enabled, you will notice that it's stuck and the hands aren't
moving any longer... however if you switch desktops to force a redraw, the
hands will move to represent the current time but only once at that moment.
This problem is rare and always goes away after toggling desktop compositing.

- The contents of certain windows are no longer updated, and a past version of
the window is drawn instead. I often think the application has frozen until
turning off desktop effects and seeing that it updates again. This problem is
rare and always goes away after toggling desktop compositing.

Since I don't know how much this is a KDE problem and how much it's the
drivers, I'm reporting it with both of the teams. My OS is openSUSE Tumbleweed
x64. Plasma 5.10.4, MESA 17.1.5, Kernel 4.11.8. My CPU is an Intel core i7 920,
my video card is a Radeon R7 370 from Gigabyte (RadeonSI / GCN 1.0 / Pitcairn
Islands) and I'm running the 'radeon' driver (no 'amdgpu' support yet).

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
CC| |sonichedgehog_hyperblast00@
| |yahoo.com

--- Comment #1 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
Created attachment 133260
--> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=133260&action=edit
Screenshot of Skype notification flickering

Screenshot of a Skype notification glitching against the Plasma panel. This
shows one frame of the interference, the pattern changes constantly causing
flickering. Only edit includes removing the message contents from the white
area.

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #2 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
Created attachment 133267
--> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=133267&action=edit
Output of "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation"

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #3 from Michel DÀnzer <***@daenzer.net> ---
Please attach the corresponding Xorg log file.

I do suspect that at least some of these are kwin issues. Do they not happen
with the Xorg modesetting driver?

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #4 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
Created attachment 133287
--> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=133287&action=edit
Xorg.0.log

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #5 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
Created attachment 133288
--> https://bugs.freedesktop.org/attachment.cgi?id=133288&action=edit
Xorg.1.log

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #6 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
(In reply to Michel DÀnzer from comment #3)

Attached both Xorg logs to be safe. I haven't played around with the drivers,
as this is my main desktop and I can't risk a system that doesn't boot.

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

Michel DÀnzer <***@daenzer.net> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment #133287|text/x-log |text/plain
mime type| |

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

Michel DÀnzer <***@daenzer.net> changed:

What |Removed |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachment #133288|text/x-log |text/plain
mime type| |

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #7 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
I'm still seeing this every now and then... very rarely, but apparently it will
occur at certain times. I'm curious if anyone else is getting those issues and
can confirm them. Is this even a KDE problem or a video driver bug?

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #8 from Greg Turner <***@be-evil.net> ---
Maybe a totally different code-path but I definitely have some moderate
artifacting when I enable desktop effects and enough monitors on my RX480. The
artifacting appears during desktop effects magic, i.e., during window drags,
but goes away as soon as the magic stops.

Usually the artifacts are "medium" sized and always appear on a particular
display within a limited (but not fully predictable) area, as if a 3d texture
were being rendered there.

The (apparent) texture, itself, always appears to consist of a jumbled mess of
pixels sampled "accidentally" from somewhere in video/compositor memory (but
not necessarily the pixels from the desktop effect).

While this happens, the "desktop effects" magic works fine, and nothing else
wierd happens; it just goes away once I stop moving my window (or whatever).

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #9 from Greg Turner <***@be-evil.net> ---
Forgot to mention: I'm running the amdgpu driver.

[b***@freedesktop.org]

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=102054

--- Comment #10 from MirceaKitsune <***@yahoo.com> ---
I still see occasional flickering and corrupted squares on both me and my
mother's computers, both running openSUSE Tumbleweed and AMD video cards but
obviously different hardware. Even when changing video cards, the issue will
more or less persist just happen at different stages. Sometimes it's just an
annoyance that goes away quickly, at other times desktop effects or even the
whole computer must be restarted because the graphical corruption covers the
entire screen and you can't see anything any more. It also happens with both
'radeon' and 'amdgpu', the problem is not exclusive to any one driver.

This is clearly something deep in the core renderer code or AMD drivers which
has been going on for a long time now. I'm pretty surprised it's not being
discussed a lot more often, since from what I'm seeing it's something thousands
of users should be able to easily confirm.