#1 2019-10-05 11:12:04

chrisdb

Member

Registered: 2019-09-12

Posts: 50

[SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

Hello, just installed Debian Buster with xfce. The installation went without any problems. However when I login, whenever I start an application, my session is completely suspended. If I open an extra application, it gets even worse. The second window looks transparent until after a long time it becomes visible.

I installed Compton, checked the journal, the log files in /var/log and my home directory, but I can't find anything wrong.

Do you guys have any idea?

Last edited by chrisdb (2019-10-07 05:52:02)

chrisdb

Member

Registered: 2019-09-12

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

Ok so I found a solution, but I'm not quite sure what it does. I have to add the following to my GRUB config:

amdgpu.dc=0

Does this mean it is a kernel issue? Where should I have spotted this?

Thx

hhh

Gaucho

From: High in the Custerdome

Registered: 2015-09-17

Posts: 16,169

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

Link to where you found that grub edit?

---

I don't care what you do at home. Would you care to explain?

chrisdb

Member

Registered: 2019-09-12

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

Link to where you found that grub edit?

I found several links where they recommended this option, but this one was closest to what I'm experiencing:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread. … -is-opened

nobody

The Great

Registered: 2015-08-10

Posts: 3,655

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

amdgpu is the in-kernel module of the "modern" AMD graphics stack, comprised of mesa in userspace and the amdgpu DRM driver in the kernel.

The setting you found seems to disable the display core driver part initialization of that specific kernel module (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/ … pu-dc.html).  Apparently it's the modern display stack. IDK if that has quality or performance impact.

Not sure whether moving to a backports kernel is going to help here looking at how Debian's graphics userland stack is not moving forward at the same pace. If the current configuration works well performance-wise then good for you. If you were on a rolling distro, I'd say always update to the latest version of the graphics stack (userland as well as kernel) -- maybe debian backports has a newer mesa version as well?

Anyway, this is a hardware x kernel x userland graphics issue and probably hard to spot without having a AMD GPU and exactly that kernel/software version combination.

chrisdb

Member

Registered: 2019-09-12

Posts: 50

Re: [SOLVED] Xfce not working properly

amdgpu is the in-kernel module of the "modern" AMD graphics stack, comprised of mesa in userspace and the amdgpu DRM driver in the kernel.

The setting you found seems to disable the display core driver part initialization of that specific kernel module (https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/ … pu-dc.html).  Apparently it's the modern display stack. IDK if that has quality or performance impact.

Not sure whether moving to a backports kernel is going to help here looking at how Debian's graphics userland stack is not moving forward at the same pace. If the current configuration works well performance-wise then good for you. If you were on a rolling distro, I'd say always update to the latest version of the graphics stack (userland as well as kernel) -- maybe debian backports has a newer mesa version as well?

Anyway, this is a hardware x kernel x userland graphics issue and probably hard to spot without having a AMD GPU and exactly that kernel/software version combination.

Thank you @nobody for your answer. It really clears up things now