Debian 9 XFCE 64 bits - Screen flickering

[MatiasBarrios]

So I finally bought an I5, 8 GB RAM and a 500 GB SATA PC to get Debian running as smooth as possible. The same has a Intel integrated Video Card.

Everything went excellent, the installation was super fast and easy and the overall experience is good ( I have tested for only two days though and the only problem I did have is that I attempted to install Chrome ( not Chromium ) and the PC entirely rebooted... wtf?!! ), the package was corrupted and I did not want to have a headache with that so I just deleted it and continued using Firefox.

But thats not why I am here. I am here because there is some flickering on the desktop and I dont know how to fix it. I googled a little bit and foudn that many people have/had a similar issue ( some part of the screen goes black for a brief period of time, really short, but enough to make it perceptible ) but those post are from 2016 and before. I am posting this as I have the hope that someone would have found a straight forward way to correct this.

This is the first time I used Debian and other than that, it has been a really pleasant experience, so this is a real bummer.

The flickering occurs most of all when some window lost focus and another one gets it, as well as when I start typing somehtign or I click on an input box.

Im sorry I am not able to paste some of my system details/logs here as I am not at home right now, but being as this is an issue spread across so much different distros and also so old, I really hope someone can give me some advice here.

Thanks in advance!

[pawRoot]

How did you install Chrome ?

[MatiasBarrios]

How did you install Chrome ?

I just downloaded the deb package from their official page. Then I installed it and once it was done Syanptic started throwing an erron stating that package was broken ( although Chrome itself was working fine ) so I decided I did not want a headache further down the road so I removed it. And on the middle of the removing process the entire pc got frozen and it rebooted on its own. After rebooted I opened Syanptic and got a message I should run a command before continuing on the console and everything got removed correctly.

Why do you ask may I know?

[pawRoot]

Im asking because you said you had problems with Chrome, and some people here are magicians when it comes to installing/removing packages

I always used gdebi to install Chrome and had 0 problems.

[MatiasBarrios]

Im asking because you said you had problems with Chrome, and some people here are magicians when it comes to installing/removing packages

I always used gdebi to install Chrome and had 0 problems.

Ill try to install it later then . Thanks for the tip.

[stevepusser]

Recent Intel graphcs (last 18 months or so) can require the firmware-linux-nonfree package be installed to get the graphics working correctly. You can get an idea of what you have by installing inxi and giving us the result of

Code: Select all

inxi -G

[MatiasBarrios]

Recent Intel graphcs (last 18 months or so) can require the firmware-linux-nonfree package be installed to get the graphics working correctly. You can get an idea of what you have by installing inxi and giving us the result of

Code: Select all

inxi -G

Thanks. Ill post the output shortly. Althoughb the PC is at least 4 years old ( a little bit more maybe )

[debiman]

sorry for not being entirely helpful, but this is about the dozenth time i heard that installing Chrome messed up somebody's debian.
just don't do it.
aware of the differences between chromium and chrome?

[MatiasBarrios]

Recent Intel graphcs (last 18 months or so) can require the firmware-linux-nonfree package be installed to get the graphics working correctly. You can get an idea of what you have by installing inxi and giving us the result of

Code: Select all

inxi -G

Thanks. Ill post the output shortly. Although the PC is at least 4 years old ( a little bit more maybe )

Here is the output of yous advised command :

Code: Select all

inxi -G
Graphics:  Card: Intel Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 drivers: modesetting (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1280x1024@60.02hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Ironlake Desktop
           GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.6



And some more :

Code: Select all

lspci | grep VGA
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)

uname -a
Linux sisifo 4.9.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 4.9.65-3+deb9u1 (2017-12-23) x86_64 GNU/Linux

lscpu
Architecture:          x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                4
On-line CPU(s) list:   0-3
Thread(s) per core:    2
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
NUMA node(s):          1
Vendor ID:             GenuineIntel
CPU family:            6
Model:                 37
Model name:            Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU         650  @ 3.20GHz
Stepping:              2
CPU MHz:               1197.000
CPU max MHz:           3193.0000
CPU min MHz:           1197.0000
BogoMIPS:              6384.50
Virtualization:        VT-x
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              256K
L3 cache:              4096K
NUMA node0 CPU(s):     0-3
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts rep_good nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm sse4_1 sse4_2 popcnt aes lahf_lm tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid dtherm ida arat





Can someone advice!

[Head_on_a_Stick]

XFCE's compositor is rubbish, have you tried disabling it?

[MatiasBarrios]

sorry for not being entirely helpful, but this is about the dozenth time i heard that installing Chrome messed up somebody's debian.
just don't do it.
aware of the differences between chromium and chrome?

I read you cannot use Netflix on Chromium. If thats true te n there you have a deal breaker and a reason for using it instead of Chromium

[MatiasBarrios]

XFCE's compositor is rubbish, have you tried disabling it?

No I have not. Can you tell me how to do it? For what os worth, if there is some situation where the flickering happens is when I type in a document on Kate editor. But it also happens all across the DE but less.

[pawRoot]

XFCE's compositor is rubbish, have you tried disabling it?

No I have not. Can you tell me how to do it? For what os worth, if there is some situation where the flickering happens is when I type in a document on Kate editor. But it also happens all across the DE but less.

In xfce settings, just browse all the settings at the top and you will find it.

EDIT:


Took me literally 2 seconds in google.

[MatiasBarrios]

XFCE's compositor is rubbish, have you tried disabling it?

No I have not. Can you tell me how to do it? For what os worth, if there is some situation where the flickering happens is when I type in a document on Kate editor. But it also happens all across the DE but less.

In xfce settings, just browse all the settings at the top and you will find it.

EDIT:


Took me literally 2 seconds in google.

Thanks!

[debiman]

^ so does it work now?

I read you cannot use Netflix on Chromium. If thats true te n there you have a deal breaker and a reason for using it instead of Chromium

it does not seem to be impossible with firefox.
it does not seem to be impossible with chromium.

anyhow, for me it is a dealbreaker to a) install closed-source software, and b) let a commercial, quasi-monopolistic entity perform intrusive & potentially destructive actions on my machine without even informing me about it.
this goes for google software itself, but also for its installation.
latest example.