Comment 7 for bug 310020

This appears to be a bug somewhere between the X server and libXi, the X Input client library. Obviously it can't be a regression in Firefox, because using the same version of Firefox as before should not cause bugs in the X client or server.

I have confirmed this bug on two _completely_ unrelated systems: Nvidia GTX 280 based system running Ubuntu Jaunty with Nvidia driver 180.16, and a Lenovo ThinkPad X61T (Intel graphics) running Fedora 10 + Rawhide. It seems to be independent of the graphics driver, at least, and the "IgnoreABI" option is not necessary for Intel: they are keeping their open source driver up to date with the Xi and X11 ABIs.

I have spoken with one of the key players in the X.Org development process, Keith Packard, on #intel-gfx on Freenode. Apparently this is a known issue, and as of December 20th or so, it had not been addressed even if you were to check out and compile your own X.Org stack (libraries and server) from FreeDesktop.org GIT. Keith also said that this issue is being worked on.

Unless Canonical has any X.Org experts who can work around this problem, the only "real" solution seems to be waiting for the person who is assigned to fix it (presumably someone at Tungsten, Intel, or Red Hat).

Also, sojourner: I was unable to confirm your stated workaround of reducing the mouse sensitivity, acceleration, or both, in order to stop the bug from occurring. I did notice that the *first* time I hovered over a link after initially changing the sensitivity, there was no flickering; but as soon as I hovered over a different link, the behavior was back. Moving the sliders further after that had no effect.

Just sit back and hope this is fixed upstream before we are too frozen to update the affected packages (most likely libXi and xserver-xorg-core). Since this is a bug that would be fairly sloppy to include in a release, though, Canonical may want to consider a contingency plan of reverting to a stable Xorg 7.4 release for Jaunty.

-Sean