I thought I’ll make this thread for all of you out there who have questions but are afraid to ask them. This is your chance!

I’ll try my best to answer any questions here, but I hope others in the community will contribute too!

  • Deconceptualist@lemm.eeEnglish
    4·
    8 months ago

    I’m running Endeavour OS (KDE Plasma) and ran into a weird issue with my graphics. It’s like windows sometimes flicker and flight with each other, some fullscreen videos won’t play and just lock to a gray screen instead (e.g. in Steam, though YouTube is oddly fine), and most 3D games are super choppy and unplayable.

    I’m not asking how to fix this, I just want to know how I start troubleshooting! I haven’t done anything special with my system, and I think the issue started after a normal pacman update. My GPU is a GeForce GTX 1060.

    Any suggestions to get started? I don’t even know if the issue is Nvidia drivers, X, window manager, KDE, etc.

    EDIT: The problem was Wayland. Fixed by logging in with X11 instead!

    • BananaTrifleViolin@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      Start by checking what windowing system you’re using as its a fundamental part of problem solving. It’s a little confusing how to do this, the top answer in this Stack exchange thread works well.

      If you’re running the latest KDE then you’ve almost certainly been moved to Wayland and that will be the source of your problems. Wayland and Nvidia drivers don’t work well together, and KDE have defaulted to Wayland in the latest release. I have had very similar issues to you with the move to wayland and have not been able to fix them - they’re too fundamental and depend on updates to wayland and/or Nvidia drivers.

      I know you don’t want a solution but there isn’t one at the moment, so you’d be wasting your time. The solution is to log out, then on the log in screen select Plasma (X11) as your session and log in again.

      Personally I have had to abandon KDE as I get a different set of problems in X11. I’m on OpenSuSE Tumbleweed so have little choice inrolling back to the previously functioning version of KDE - I’m using Cinnamon instead and contemplating switching to a different Linux distro, probably OpenSuSE Leap in favour of stability over cutting edge.

      Meanwhile I have the latest KDE running on another device with AMD GPU without issue.

      In terms of when it’ll be fixed, there is a change being made to Wayland which will effect how it and the Nvidia drivers interact (something called Explicit sync). It’s just been merged into wayland so presumably will appear downstream in the coming next few months in rolling distributions. There have been articles suggesting this is going to fix most problems but personally I think this is a little brave but fingers crossed.

      • Deconceptualist@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        8 months ago

        Oof, yep, that’s all it was. I just fired up Elden Ring and it runs great under X11. Thanks a million!

        I’d heard Wayland and Nvidia don’t play nicely together, but forgot KDE had officially made the switch. I’m sure I approved the install a while back but probably assumed it was all stable and compatible now. Guess that’s what I get for not reading the release notes!

    • AnIndefiniteArticle@sh.itjust.works
      2·
      8 months ago

      Try switching to different versions of your graphics driver and/or kernel. Nvidia cards get really finicky about the version matchups, especially as they age. Try different combinations of the versions that are available via pacman, and maybe it’ll work. You may need to start keeping an eye on updates to your kernel and graphics driver to see if a new update fixes your issue. Welcome to life with an nvidia card. I bought an nvidia card once in 2013. By 2016 I had to start playing this game on upgrades. At one point, the graphics driver was causing kernel panics until I downgraded both and waited a few months. Very happy with AMD.

      • Deconceptualist@lemm.eeEnglish
        2·
        8 months ago

        Thanks, I’ll try that. I figured an update would fix it by now (it’s been a few weeks) but maybe I do need to roll back.

        And yes my other machine has an AMD card. This will be my last one from Nvidia since I’ve fully switched to Linux.