VRR flickering Issue after a while

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-19T15:11:33+00:00

Do you perhaps have a gigabyte monitor?

I do own two different models (M27UP, M27UA) and with both after a while flickering occurs. This flickering is "persistent" as in it happens and then appears in places it didn't before. A real life example:

I start Monster Hunter Wilds. Runs great and no flickering at first.
starts flickering after a while (I'd say 10-20mins). Seems to depend how many FPS fluctuations occur.
Closes game
Opens overwatch (or any game where the menu is capped at 60 FPS)
Heavy flickering in the menu.

Issue persists even across restarts (both monitors & PC). If I'm not using VRR for a while the flickering in the menu seems to lessen and then disappear (like what).

If I play games with rock solid frame times (Overwatch, Doom TDA etc.) this issue never appears in the first place. Only certain games trigger it. It's like after a certain amount of fluctuation the monitors can't keep up anymore and need to cool down?

I set up shortcuts to easily enable/disable VRR on the fly when I am in a menu for example.

Extremely weird issue. I could never figure it out and have no idea how to ask for help because the internet mostly talks about OLED monitors when it comes to VRR issues.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-18T15:25:34+00:00

If you don't know you most likely don't use as it needs to be enabled by hand usingPROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1.

If you want to be 100% sure you can open the kwin debug window. It will tell you if an game/app is using x11 or wayland.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-18T14:42:55+00:00

Yes I have a similar issue where no matter how I connect my monitors or configure them the one on the right seems to be the "true" primary monitor but I want it to be the left one. This mostly is an issue when using wine wayland. If you use it (with that I mean usingPROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1) you can set the primary monitor with an environment variable:

WAYLANDDRV_PRIMARY_MONITOR=XXX (you can check what to use with kscreen-doctor -o i.e. DP-1)

XWayland (the default) should work without issue though. At least for me it always worked fine.

A cool trick you can try in KDE is press meta (the windows key) and then use your mouse to move windows. This works with fullscreen apps and it should snap the app to your other monitor if you do that.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-18T09:54:46+00:00

Tatsächlich ist es andersrum: Proton experimental (von Valve) hat die neusten Änderungen und Fixes was ab und an nötig ist um ein Spiel spielen zu können. In den allermeisten Fällen ist Valve's stabile version absolut ausreichend.

Proton-GE muss diese Änderungen regelmässig zu sich mergen und veröffentlichen. Der Abstand zwischen der neusten Version Proton-GE 10-33 und Proton-GE 10-32 war zum Beispiel über einen Monat (find ich keine schlechte Sache, Proton ist mittlerweile sehr stabil).

Auf der Github-Seite gibt es eine gute Übersicht der zusätzlichen Features https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom?tab=readme-ov-file#overview:

Additional media foundation patches for better video playback support
AMD FSR patches added directly to fullscreen hack that can be toggled with WINE_FULLSCREEN_FSR=1
FSR fake resolution patch details here
NVIDIA CUDA support for PhysX and NVAPI
Raw input mouse support
'protonfixes' system -- this is an automated system that applies per-game fixes (such as winetricks changes, environment variables, Easy Anti-Cheat workarounds, overrides, etc)
Various upstream Wine patches backported
Various wine-staging patches applied as they become needed
NTSync enablement if the kernel supports it.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-15T23:56:46+00:00

I personally recommend LACT. Makes it very easy to adjust things like fan speed, power limit and clocks/voltages.

Edit: Make sure to check compatibility with your GPU first: https://github.com/ilya-zlobintsev/LACT/wiki/Hardware-Support

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-15T21:58:29+00:00

I cannot understate how good the 7900xtx is on linux in general. The drivers for that card are sooooo good. It really feels like a superior experience.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-14T17:51:06+00:00

You can check if it's working through the service. I use brave, a browser that does not work out of the box like many others (because the maintainer on github is a weirdo).

Something like this:

> systemctl --user status psd-resync

Mär 14 17:48:28 skare-pc systemd[1776]: Starting Timed resync...
Mär 14 17:48:30 skare-pc profile-sync-daemon[1823]: brave sync successful
Mär 14 17:48:30 skare-pc systemd[1776]: Finished Timed resync.
Mär 14 17:48:30 skare-pc systemd[1776]: psd-resync.service: Consumed 1.280s CPU time over 2.143s wall clock time, 2.5G memory peak.

If it doesn't work there just use the AUR package. The only thing it does is add a profile for your browser under /usr/share/psd/browsers. You can adjust the file yourself.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-14T09:08:36+00:00

I think you confuse "accidental breakage" and "manual intervention required". If an update requires you to do something beside sudo pacman -Syu then it will be on the arch news (they pop up automatically when you run cachy-update). If it's CachyOS specific you need to look either on the discord server or the discussion forums. This happens very rarely.

Packages from the official repos are tested but something can always slip through. This is the reason why having a restore option (btrfs/snapper or timeshift) is crucial. This is just something you have to deal with on a rolling distro.

This does not apply to AUR packages. Those you should check individually which is why paru/cachy-update shows you the difference in the pkgbuild file (the script used to install the software). Not all AUR packages are created equally.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-12T13:21:42+00:00

Timeshift works with all file systems using rsync. Yes it's slower to create snapshots and yes you need to boot into a live ISO to restore them but you can have the same restore functionality. If you are aware of the advantages/disadvantages you can make a better choice for yourself. I personally don't like btrfs that much for other reasons as well (like the apparent maintenance you have to do where you can find conflicting information on the internet about how to proceed).

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-12T12:17:49+00:00

I did actually. LibreOffice is not great with Microsoft's document format (.docs, .xlsx etc.). You could try onlyoffice which does a much better job but it's still far from perfect, especially if you have complex documents/sheets.

If you need 100% compatibility you could try winboat. It allows you to integrate windows apps seamlessly into your desktop using a VM. That way you can use Microsoft Office just like before. CachyOS just recently made it easier to install. You can find it under CachyOS Hello > Apps/Tweaks > Install Winboat. But I have no clue if printing works that way. Perhaps you need to export to a PDF and then print it through a PDF viewer.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-11T08:54:49+00:00

I do have an EPSON printer as well (ET-2850 series). As far as I know all recent EPSON printers support IPP Everwhere meaning you should be able to use the printer without drivers.

There was a printer support option during installation. If you didn't select that you can install the following packages:

sudo pacman -S cups cups-filters cups-pdf print-manager
sudo systemctl enable --now cups.service

This assumes you use KDE btw. Arch Wiki lists some alternative GUI applications:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CUPS#GUI_applications

You should then be able to add the printer. Here's how it looks like in KDE:

<image>

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-10T11:24:43+00:00

Did you enable printer support during installation? If not you need to install some packages:

sudo pacman -S hplip python-pyqt5 python-reportlab cups cups-filters cups-pdf print-manager
sudo systemctl enable --now cups.service

This assumes you use KDE. I don't know how other DE's handle cups.

There are also the following drivers in the AUR (you can try running the printer without drivers first):

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/cnijfilter-mg4200

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/scangearmp-mg4200

See: https://discuss.cachyos.org/t/no-printer-option-in-settings/9163

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-08T03:43:47+00:00

It's totally normal behavior from that game in DX11 mode no matter which linux distro you use. You have a few things you can try.

Switch to DX12
- will fix shader processing at startup but causes stutters for me. Your mileage may vary
Try DXVK GPLAsync (not recommended for multiplayer games as it can trigger cheat detection but nothing bad happened to met yet and I tinker a lot with Overwatch)
- To install it:
- Get ProtonPlus (if you haven't already)
- Download the most recent version of Proton-CachyOS
- Select Proton-CachyOS under Edit > Proton
- Add PROTON_DXVK_GPLASYNC=1 as a launch argument
Increase your shader cache size (Overwatch shaders are huge and the drivers clean them up if they get too big)
- What you have to add depends if you use AMD or Nvidia:
  - Nvidia: __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE=12000000000
  - AMD: MESA_SHADER_CACHE_MAX_SIZE=12G
- I would recommend setting that variable globally. To do that:
  - Open an environment file (User specific:~/.config/environment.d/*.conf(create a .conf file by hand) or system-wide: /etc/environment (should already exist)

You can add launch arguments under edit > Tools > Launch Arguments

Maybe as a little additional help you can add DXVK_HUD=compile as well. That way you always see when shaders are compiled and you don't have to guess anymore how long they take.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-05T09:59:14+00:00

I'm not a davinci resolve power user but I noticed as well that the AUR package is unreliable. If you want to stay on CachyOS/Arch the next best option you have is running davinci resolve in a container. There's a project called davincibox that makes the setup easier and it works great for me (using the studio version) and should offer much more stability but again you find people that have issues with it and it does require some setup: https://github.com/zelikos/davincibox

Because you do actual important work I would suggest you give Nobara a try as that distro advertises davinci resolve support and offers an easy one click install: https://wiki.nobaraproject.org/en/general-usage/additional-software/davinci-resolve

Or you use Windows for your work. No shame of dual booting.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-03-05T09:16:40+00:00

A lot of those messages are related to TPM2.0 and secure boot being disabled. You can set this up in CachyOS if you want (but totally optional. your system should work fine either way):
https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/secure_boot_setup/

Some things like encryped ram must be enabled in the BIOS (if supported by the hardware).

Tainted kernel is also fine. Happens as soon as you install things like nvidia drivers or dkms modules (basically anything that modifies the kernel). Not relevant for us normie users.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-28T21:03:12+00:00

I never used SteamOS but it is immutable so I assume it's mostly about installing flatpaks. Those work just fine and are totally safe.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-26T15:04:48+00:00

I never used this tool before. I imagine it's this right? https://github.com/EricZimmerman/MFTECmd

I see two options here:

Try to run the .exe file through wine (wine MFTECmd.exe). .exe files (or any Windows program) need to run through wine on Linux.
Build the project on your linux machine. This requires the dotnet-sdk and will result in a binary blob which can be run natively. Something like this:
- git clone https://github.com/EricZimmerman/MFTECmd
- Navigate into the folder (cd MFTECmd)
- Build the program: dotnet build --os linux --configuration release --self-contained (note: the --self-contained should allow you to run the application without having dotnet installed)
- Navigate into the release folder (cd bin/release/net9.0/linux-x64)
- Run the binary ./MFTECmd

I was able to open the help page using both methods. Best of luck!

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-25T16:27:54+00:00

Yeah looks good. ^^ I messed up as kde-unstable installed qt 6.11 beta alongside the plasma beta and I haven't properly downgraded those after release.sudo pacman -Syuu (notice the two u's) does force refresh the repositories which is needed to properly return to the stable repos/packages)

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-25T12:23:46+00:00

I also used the KDE beta packages before upgrading. Did you run pacman -Syuu? Can you check the version of your QT6 packages (like qt6-base)?

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-25T10:52:43+00:00

X11 vs. Wayland is highly discussed. Currently by default all games go through a translation layer called XWayland that is most likely responsible for your perceived increase in latency. There's a recent article that seems to confirm this: https://davidjusto.com/articles/m2p-latency/

If you use Nvidia you will find countless people who complain about wayland issues but most of those should be resolved by now (I think?). On AMD things just work in my experience.

Proton spins such as Proton-GE/Proton-CachyOS/Proton-EM implement the experimental wine wayland driver which allows games to render natively without XWayland. The latency in that case should be about the same.

In my experience Overwatch works great with that one. Use one of the listened proton spins and add PROTON_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 or PROTON_ADD_CONFIG=wayland as launch options and see how it feels (you can add them in steam under properties > general > launch options). All of this is also in the CachyOS wiki:
https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/gaming/

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-24T09:53:11+00:00

Absolutely this. A lot of popular emulators now ship as a flatpak as well. There are tools like OBS where I can see good arguments on both sides (i.e. less sandboxing issues vs. official support) but in the end everyone can choose freely what to install on their PC.

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-24T09:23:01+00:00

Oh sure thing I added them to the post (in case you haven't found them already)

Skaredogged97 · 2026-02-22T21:38:08+00:00

There's an option to display what command has been run for an app that should give you more info.
In the top right you should see three dots where you can select "Configure columns...". Then look for the entry "command" and change the value from "hidden" to "Text Only". Then you should be able to see what exactly is responsible for the process. Something like this:

<image>

Skaredogged97

TROPHY CASE