Specs: Thinkpad X250 CPU Model name: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5200U CPU @ 2.20GHz (Broadwell?) Intel HD 5500 graphics 8Gb RAM I have recently upgraded from 4.9.51 LTS kernel to 4.13.3 downloaded from kernel.org. By doing this, I had noticed that the gnome animations have become visibly poorer in quality due to choppiness. This was not the case under linux-4.9.51-LTS. The somewhat choppy animations can be visibly seen when closing/opening applications such as the gnome-terminal. I tried to narrow down which kernel caused this problem. My investigation led to a culprit commit that happened between 4.11.9 and 4.12.1 kernels. If I have to go by logic, since this a graphics problem, I suspect that it is a drm/i915 commit. I do not see further drm/i915 commits from 4.11.9 to 4.11.13, so I can safely rule out that the culprit must be somewhere between 4.12 rc1 and 4.12.1. There are just too many commits between the two versions for me to tell which version is responsible for this. To rule out possible bad .config settings, I used the .config parameters of my 4.9.51-LTS kernel (which I know is not causing choppy gnome animations) to build 4.12.1 kernel. I have no knowledge on how to bisect kernels since I am an average everyday desktop user. I also do not have enough computational resources/time. However, I felt the urge to report this issue as many people have been complaining about poor gnome animation performance and this could be *one* of the reasons why. The bad commit would unfortunately propagate down to the future 4.14 LTS kernel release if it is not found. Therefore I am reporting this to at least let people know this issue exists. I believe this is a case of graphics regression of the kernel and not the Gnome Desktop since the only constant variable here is the Gnome Desktop. If not, maybe the graphics stack actually evolved to become better and Gnome Desktop is not able to properly utilise the new changes? I do not know since I am not an advanced user. In the coming days I will *try* to compile/build the 4.12.x kernel if I have time, starting from rc1 to try to find the offending version, but it would really help if anyone else out there would report on this too. In the meanwhile, please advice what to do? Thank you in advance.
Hello Harish, could you please try to get a dmesg log with debug information, drm.debug=0x1e log_bug_len=2M(or bigger) on grub? Also a screenshot of the corruption would help. Have you tried disabling/enabling HW/SW acceleration? This problem happens since the beginning of the session or takes some time? A bisection could definitely help in this case. Thank you.
Thank you for the response. Please take note of the following: 1.) This problem happens from beginning of the gnome session. 2.) How do I disable/enable HW acceleration? 3.) I can confirm that the problem is somewhere in the 4.12 kernel. As mentioned, somewhere between 4.12 rc1 and 4.12.1 to be exact. I do not have any experience in bisecting unfortunately and I cannot dedicate much resources to the bisecting process. 4.) I cannot take a screenshot of the corruption as its the gnome animation that is the culprit. I can take a video of the problem and email it, if that could help. 5.) I will provide the dmesg log in the near future. Thanks in advance!
here is the bug report for a potential gnome bug regarding the animations. https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=788867 However, right now I'm not sure if this is a gnome issue or a kernel issue. Using the 4.9 LTS kernel definitely solves this problem. The possibilities are: 1.) Is gnome not playing well with the new graphics stack? 2.) IS there a regression in the kernel? I hope the developers from both projects can interact with each other to get to the bottom of this.
First of all. Sorry about spam. This is mass update for our bugs. Sorry if you feel this annoying but with this trying to understand if bug still valid or not. If bug investigation still in progress, please ignore this and I apologize! If you think this is not anymore valid, please comment to the bug that can be closed. If you haven't tested with our latest pre-upstream tree(drm-tip), can you do that also to see if issue is valid there still and if you cannot see issue there, please comment to the bug.
Closing, please re-open if still occurs.
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