That should be easy enough.
I thought maybe compiz might break whatever compositor Ubuntu or Mate were using by default.
I was hoping Wayland in 17.10 would work, but it doesn’t seem to eliminate it much either.
Edit: Even though, everything I’ve read said that Wayland was being designed to eliminate tearing…
It could also just be a shitty monitor.
Also no, default ubuntu doesn’t come with a compositor at all.
Its not ready and the devs are asshats.
Avoid
Install compton, open up a terminal and type in
$ compton --vsync opengl
If that doesn’t work, try a different desktop environment, gnome doesn’t handle vsync too well at times, and cinnamon IS gnome. So install a different DE to test things out, xfce for example. Or, install KDE/Plasma, and just enable “force screen full repaints” from the display settings
Is this true? I use Ubuntu Mate 16.04 (upgraded to 16.04.3) at work, and even though it doesn’t use Compiz by default, it’s an option which you can select and get going without any hassle. Possible that it comes with another package, but I’d have to check tomorrow.
PS, I have to use Compiz, because the default compositor throws my windows around randomly with the hardware I have in my server.
EDIT: Is it possible you meant the Ubuntu server version that comes without a Desktop Environment?
I agree, when an operating system has screen tearing on the desktop, we got problems. But then again, the drivers should be able to fix the problem too yet it’s still there…
Gonna go try this myself when I get home. Will this also work with the R9 390 GPU or is it only the Polaris cards that will benefit from this?
If you are using Wayland then Compton would be the typical compositor. I don’t think the X compositors are going to work under Wayland.
It would probably be a good idea to browse through the Arch Wiki Window Manager Page to see which ones use which compositor. This should help with some of the confusion going on here, so you aren’t trying to fix something in one DE that doesn’t even exist. For reference, Cinnamon uses Muffin.
Some of the compositors can be swapped around, however I would try to stick with something default and get that working, particularly if you don’t know what you are doing, and I’m speaking from experience of not knowing what on earth I’m doing! It will be infinitely more difficult to find help for a Frankenstein build. Given the non-old hardware, if there isn’t already a good solution to the problem documented on the Mint forums then it may not be fixed properly until next summer when they release an Ubuntu 18.04 based desktop, which I guess would be Mint 19.
All of that being said, I got used to the screen tearing in default LXDE, so meh.
Dude just install the mate desktop on fedora for him, set up the amd open source drivers, and let it do its thing. There’s literally no reason to use mint IMO at this point, having used it as my first Linux distro because I was sold on the “stability” of running an older kernel. But as I’ve used fedora for over a year now its turned out to be more stable than mint ever was. I’ve never had screen tearing as a problem, and even though its using the near-latest kernel, the fedora devs do an amazing job at keeping things stable. I actually experienced more problems and crashes on Ubuntu 16.04 and mint than I ever have in fedora. The problem I have with mint is that you are purposefully missing out on the latest optimizations and features even though they’re already stable on fedora. Unless his PC requires a lightweight DE, gnome might be even easier for them to use since the core focus is minimalism and ease of use
Linux Mint basiclly isnt really the most ideal distro wenn you are newer AMD hardware.
Linux mint does however offers the ability to install hardware enablement non LTS kernels.
But i cannot tell if those are working well or not.
There is a difference between LTS kernels and hardware enablement kernels so to speak.
But yeah for the specific screen tearing issue, sometimes installing a different compositor might help.
But that depends on the desktop used and window manager.
Maybe you could try a different desktop like KDE.
Compiz is cpu based.
Compiz is gpu accelerated, so if he’s using older drivers then that could lead to issues (on Mint).
I convinced him to go Ubuntu 16.04.3.
I can at least get screen tearing stopped with that. I’ve got some weird hardware to deal with, and apparently, updating to 16.04.3 fixes all the tearing.
I don’t know why, but it works.
Now, can I still download the cinnamon desktop for this? Or should I even bother with it? He wants to know. I am leery to try it since everything’s working and he can do everything he wants to do. But at the end, he is paying me. So I guess I pretty much have to do what he says with his pc.
Am I right not to screw with it, or is it relatively straight forward?
Just install it, it takes 2 steps and he’s got cinnamon.
http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2016/04/install-cinnamon-desktop-3-0-ubuntu-16-04/
Ok, what if he changes his mind later?
Is it relatively straight forward to un-install?
NVM, I read it. Hard to read on my phone, but I get the gist of it. Instructions for un-install are right there…
Final post on this, and then mods can lock this one.
Got home, and set this up. Got cinnamon installed, and it works great! Brought the PC back to my friend, and he loves it!
Thanks a bunch guys! Another happy Linux convert!
Thanks for the comments, and suggestions, and over all great attitude! I even learned a little bit. I searched around quite a bit, and just couldn’t find any topics close to what I was asking. This is why I keep coming back to these forums. Everyone is awesome, and usually someone has the info I’m looking for!
Thanks again!
And just in case some one else looks in here for an answer later. For this problem on a lot of distros when using X.
In /X11/xorg.conf.d/ you can make a 20-amdgpu.conf file and add.
Section "Device"
Identifier "AMD"
Driver "amdgpu"
Option "DRI" "3"
Option "TearFree" "true"
EndSection
To eliminate tearing, you will probably want to keep a rescue stick ready and if it doesn’t work all you have to do is delete the 20-amdgpu.conf file to get it back to normal.
In my experience it seems like half the time I install a distribution it looks fine, half the time I get screen tearing. If I notice screen tearing I then just hunt down the compositor options and switch it to Compiz and then everything is fine. The fact that any distribution thinks that massive screen tearing out of the box is acceptable does blow my mind though.
For the AMD rx 470, the two commands in the middle caused the gpu to not respond after it went to sleep.
I simply deleted them and everything came back and screen tearing disappeared.
At least that was my experience. YMMV.