[nvidia] Janky text entry and frames appear out of order in Xwayland apps

[Matias Piipari]

When writing into text fields in some applications (Firefox, VS Code) on Jammy in a GNOME / Wayland session, I can see an effect best described as the glyphs appearing / disappearing sometimes repeatedly. I have attached a recording from my phone (since attempting to record a screencast fails).

This doesn't happen always, and it appear somehow sensitive to some environmental condition (load?) since for example when I'm on a video call, the effect seems to not be happening so often.

I have also experienced a few instances of a currently not-focused window disappearing (seeing through to a window that is below that window), but cannot reproduce that reliably.

I have the NVIDIA driver 510 in use, RTX3090-only 16-core Zen1 Threadripper system with no integrated GPU.

No similar effects visible when in a GNOME / Xorg session.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 22.04
Package: gnome-shell 42.0-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.15.0-27.28-generic 5.15.30
Uname: Linux 5.15.0-27-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu82
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: pass
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Apr 26 12:17:02 2022
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2021-11-08 (168 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 21.10 "Impish Indri" - Release amd64 (20211012)
RebootRequiredPkgs: Error: path contained symlinks.
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 42.0-3ubuntu2
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to jammy on 2022-04-22 (3 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This sounds like it's probably https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1317

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

In theory, using native Wayland apps instead should avoid the problem. For Firefox you can do that with:

  sudo snap remove firefox
  sudo snap install --beta firefox

[Robert Carroll (robswc)]

I'm experiencing this too. No idea how to replicate it as it seems pretty random. Were you able to find a solution?

I find it happens on almost any "Chromium-based" application like Discord and Brave Browser.

*Edit*

Upgrading drivers to 525 seems to have made the problem go away :)

[George Salukvadze (giosal90)]

I'm experiencing similar issues, but I'm unable to switch desktop manager to Xorg as I don't have such option on login screen. I have tried to switch the session type to XOrg by modifying /etc/gdm3/custom.conf and setting WaylandEnable=false as suggested on several websites.
However, when restarting gdm3 or the system, this leads to system hanging and displaying a white cursor (underline) on black screen without any response to keyboard input. I have then to go to recovery mode, login as root and modify the file back to use Wayland...

[Giovanni Panaro (gpanaro)]

Bug is still present with 535 drivers

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Sounds like:

> Xwayland does not provide a suitable mechanism for our driver to synchronize application
> rendering with presentation, which can cause visual corruption in some circumstances.

from http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/535.54.03/README/wayland-issues.html

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

A potential fix is in progress:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/1120

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Francois Thirioux (fthx)]

Is there any progress on this?
Nvidia Wayland session is unusable because of this.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

A large chunk just landed upstream:
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/967

I'm not sure if that's the only fix required...