Comment 3 for bug 641027

Revision history for this message
David B (d-bannon) wrote :

Now, this just could be the same or related to bug #585651. It was marked as resolved a couple of weeks ago but I dropped a note there suggesting, "maybe not". Steve Conklin kindly pointed out that was not enough to reopen, better to create a new bug report. Looking around I found this one.

In summary, all newish kernels have this problem with a laptop that uses the eDP display. Not a problem with external screen.

I am using a beta Maverick and Ubuntu's mainline (2.6.26) kernel dated 201009281108.

To save people the effort, while the flickering or flashing is not present in an earlier kernel (such as what you will find in U9.04) the hardware is so unfamiliar to that old kernel other things like external displays don't work. I mostly go from my desk at work to my desk at home and use an external display at both so the occasional flickering (when using laptop screen) is acceptable.

Other observations that might be interesting -

1. xrandr has problems understanding the internal screen but it does get setting right.
Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1280 x 960, maximum 8192 x 8192
(null)1 connected 1280x800+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 260mm x 160mm
   1280x800 60.0*+ 40.3
Note the (null)1 name.

2. xrandr has problems setting preferred mode on my HP Compaq LA2405wg screen, notes that 1920x1200 is preferred mode but still selects 1280x960. Switches over when asked to do so. On the other hand, works fine on my Acer screen at home.

3. xrandr, with any screen, blanks the screen momentarily as usual but surprisingly does so again about six seconds later. I have not seen that before...

I have been watching progress of this bug on http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=29821

A good history at https://bugs.launchpad.net/opensuse/+source/linux/+bug/585651

David