Ubuntu
libsdl2 package

Display flicker when starting/stopping SDL2 game

Bug #1768693 reported by Braden Obrzut
10
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
libsdl2 (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When starting a game based on libsdl2 (gzdoom or my own project ecwolf in particular) there seems to be a strange side effect of causing other applications to flicker. In particular Firefox will blank (white screen) and recover (awhile back it would blank and never recover, but that has since been fixed). As of late however a new issue has popped up where by after closing the SDL2 program the desktop environment would start rapidly flickering to black.

The former always occurs. The latter usually doesn't happen, but requires the desktop session to be closed and restarted to get it back to normal. Firefox and SDL2 seem to be part of the equation but I suspect other hardware accelerated programs can cause the issue. I just have little reason to run others side by side.

I suspect that this is a graphics driver issue, but it's possible SDL2 is to blame.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: libsdl2-2.0-0 2.0.8+dfsg1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-20.21-generic 4.15.17
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-20-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: KDE
Date: Wed May 2 21:31:19 2018
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-09-16 (228 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Alpha amd64 (20170913)
SourcePackage: libsdl2
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to bionic on 2018-04-26 (6 days ago)

Revision history for this message
Braden Obrzut (blzut3) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

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

Changed in libsdl2 (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Denis Smirnov (dennwc)
tags: added: groovy
Revision history for this message
Braden Obrzut (blzut3) wrote :

I guess I should add that this is caused by SDL hinting that the compositor should be disabled even when the game is running windowed. I've unchecked "Allow applications to block compositing" awhile ago and forgot I even made this ticket.

I do still occasionally (once or twice a week) get accelerated applications failing to redraw, but since either 19.10 or 20.04 this only happens at the application level instead of the whole desktop and simply restarting the application (or dragging the tab to a new window in Firefox) works around the issue.

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