Does changing to Wayland or changing OS to Kubuntu stop from having screen tearing?

[pranav.bhattarai]

My friend is a noob (& so am I in some ways). I tried many things to fix tree tearing problem solutions but none of them actually worked. After a week, he told me that he is still experiencing screen tearing/glitches. There is no NVIDIA stuff. His laptop is old & surprisingly released with Ubuntu by Dell (Inspiron 3442, i3, 1TB HDD).

How can I solve his problem? I am running out of options.

He is starting to hate Linux, and I don't like it.

What should I try?

Current Distro: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
Current Display server: X
Current DE: GNOME 3.36

Edit:
Output of sudo lshw -C video >>> https://imgur.com/m95BSUa This can be helpfull to know every information about what video cards, drivers, etc are involved.

[ajgreeny]

I wonder if moving to Xubuntu 20.04 might help.
Previous versions of Xubuntu have often suffered from screen tearing, though it's never been a problem for me, and other users with integrated Intel graphics have usually found that using Compton as the composting software in place of the default from wxfm window manager overcomes it effectively.
20.04 should be much better apparently even without using Compton but I can not confirm that as I do not suffer from the problem so can't test this out.

[pranav.bhattarai]

Then what should I do? Is there something, through which I can stop this?
One of my friend suggested me to try this:

1. sudo (editor command) /etc/default/grub

2. Comment out this line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

3. Add this line instead:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash i915.enable_psr=0"

4. Save and close your editor

5. sudo update-grub



Should I try this?

[GhX6GZMB]

The 3442 i3 has Intel graphics AFAIK, which can have problems with tearing.

Possible solution: sudo open

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

and check that it has the following content:

Section "OutputClass"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
  Option      "TearFree" "true"
EndSection

Otherwise add the option line.

Let us know the outcome.

[CelticWarrior]

Possible solution: sudo open

/usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

an check that it has the following content:

Section "OutputClass"
  Identifier  "Intel Graphics"
  Driver      "intel"
  Option      "TearFree" "on"
EndSection

This ^^^ is what I would try but with just a small yet very important change represented in bold below:

sudoedit /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d/20-intel.conf

Likewise, in your friend's suggestion, 'sudoedit' is the now preferred method for editing system configuration files. But regarding this suggestion I also have a couple of remarks:

1. I've never seen such parameter being used, I've no idea about what is it supposed to do.
2. Commenting out that line to add an identical one with the added parameter is nonsense; just edit in the additional parameter.

[GhX6GZMB]

Hmmm... sudoedit is a really interesting idea (I wasn't aware of it). With me it unfortunately launches a super-nerdy editor (vim?) instead of my preferred Featherpad. I'll have to play around with the $EDITOR variable I guess.
But thanks for the input.

[ajgreeny]

Add a line such as

export EDITOR="nano"

to your hidden .bashrc file to change the editor used by sudoedit.

You can use whatever editor you prefer; I use nano because I'm so used to it, and like you, I've never managed to get used to vi or vim; both a bit esoteric for my needs.

[SeijiSensei]

You can use whatever editor you prefer; I use nano because I'm so used to it, and like you, I've never managed to get used to vi or vim; both a bit esoteric for my needs.

I grew up with emacs and now use jed pretty much exclusively. Like you, vi and vim never clicked for me.

[GhX6GZMB]

OP, did the "TearFree" option help?

[TheFu]

Hmmm... sudoedit is a really interesting idea (I wasn't aware of it). With me it unfortunately launches a super-nerdy editor (vim?) instead of my preferred Featherpad. I'll have to play around with the $EDITOR variable I guess.
But thanks for the input.

Any editor can be used safely with sudoedit, even gedit, because the editor runs as the normal userid, not with elevated privileges. For example:

export EDITOR="/usr/bin/geany"

Though everyone knows that vim is the most powerful, most flexible, most extensible, editor that exists for every platform. I’ve never seen nano on a router, but there is always vim if only the minimal version. But we each have different needs in an editor based on our skills. Eventually, everyone learns vim.

i have mostly intel iGPUs but never notice tearing in my fvwm + X/Windows setups. But I’m still on 16.04 with 4.15.x kernels.