Graphical Glitches on IBM Thinkpad T40

[Stefan Schmidt]

A variety of graphical glitches shows up during regular usage. I've made a short video showing the glitches and extracted some screenshots. In the video you can see that the dock is invisible at first and that the menus at the top of the screen don't open. At about 1:50 I restart gala via ssh which then shows the dock and the menus at the top. Then I launch several applications to demonstrate the graphical glitches.

Demonstration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmmDJglt2V4

Xorg.0.log: http://git.io/FB8xCQ
dmesg.log: http://git.io/UsMneg
dpkg.log: http://git.io/V9bOpA
glxinfo.log: http://git.io/Uk9H0A
hardinfo.log: http://git.io/hgwulw
lightdm.log: http://git.io/134lLg
lshw.log: http://git.io/X1bCmA
ps.log: http://git.io/m6DNAg
x-0.log: http://git.io/1ynXfg
xsession-errors.log: http://git.io/JYnivQ

[Cody Garver (codygarver)]

This looks like AMD/ATI driver issues. Try it without proprietary drivers.

[Stefan Schmidt (loopkid)]

To my understanding the open source radeon driver is being used, see Xorg.0.log for details: http://git.io/FB8xCQ

[Cameron Norman (cameronnemo)]

Hmm. Possibly try with the 3.2 kernel if it is easy to do?

[Stefan Schmidt (loopkid)]

If I remember correctly luna gets delivered with a 3.2 kernel. I upgraded to a 3.9 kernel, but that didn't improve the situation.

[Stefan Schmidt (loopkid)]

I reported the bug to the xorg folks but no luck so far: https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67981

[Stefan Schmidt (loopkid)]

As a workaround I replaced gala with xfwm4 which resolves most of the glitches without introducing too many new display errors. Plank icons don't bounce and the shadows on slingshot and the top menu are just flat black instead of soft gradients but at least the system is stable and usable.