GNOME Desktop Behaving Erratically

[mshoel]

Hello!

I just installed Debian 9 today in a dual-boot configuration alongside Windows 10 on my laptop. I downloaded the GNOME desktop environment to replace the xfce that came with the distro by default.

Whenever I log in to a GNOME session, though, sometimes the screen will go black and begin to strobe and scroll the display across the screen rapidly, making the system unusable for the time, and most times I cannot recover from this (having to hard reset the computer).

Also, it seems to only happen when I begin typing in a terminal session.

I'm not really sure what to do. xfce doesn't seem to have this problem but I would rather use GNOME if possible. Any ideas?

Thanks!

[arochester]

MAKE and MODEl of laptop?

Amount of RAM?

[Wheelerof4te]

It's a known bug, I guess you have Intel card:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=135567
I've solved it for now by downgrading to Linux 4.9.51. Should be fixed in Debian 9.4. Note the security issues with running outdated kernels.

Sticking around to help, but I won't participate in discussions. Makes for a peaceful compromise.

[stevepusser]

I downloaded the GNOME desktop environment to replace the xfce that came with the distro by default.

Xfce is the default in Debian? Since when? Do you instead mean you used the xfce install ISO?

[mshoel]

It's a known bug, I guess you have Intel card:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=135567
I've solved it for now by downgrading to Linux 4.9.51. Should be fixed in Debian 9.4. Note the security issues with running outdated kernels.

Sticking around to help, but I won't participate in discussions. Makes for a peaceful compromise.

I see. You're right, I do have an Intel card (integrated graphics I think). I gave your suggestion a try and downgraded to an earlier kernel version and I haven't had any troubles yet. Let's hope it stays that way. Here's to the next update!

Thanks again!

[stevepusser]

The other way to get Meltdown hardening is to use the stretch-backports 4.14 kernel, or a recent backported 4.14 Liquorix kernel.

[Wheelerof4te]

This bug is fixed in stable-proposed updates. To add stable-proposed updates (in this case "stretch"), add this line to your sources.list:

Code: Select all

deb http://deb.debian.org/debian/ stretch-proposed-updates main

then

Code: Select all

apt update
apt upgrade