I’m on Fedora-43 and using Firefox, but I tried 3 other browsers today, and the graphics flickers in all of them making them completely unusable. They are Flatpak versions of Opera, Vivaldi and Brave. All are from Gnome Software.
That suggests a common cause - any ideas?
If you not have an atomic desktop, did you try the rpm versions of one of this browsers?
Do you have the same issues?
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Sorry, I’ve no idea what this means.
Good idea.
- Opera - No RPM available.
- Vivaldi - The RPM has the same problem as the Flatpak.
- Brave - The RPM installation fails on the command line, using instructions from the Brave website. (Par for the course with instructions to use the terminal
)
If you have Fedora 43 Workstation, try to download “firefox-140-7.0esr.tar.xz” from “https : / / www . firefox . com / en-US / download / all / desktop-esr / linux64 /”. It is a tar.xz, unzip the file and place it in a “Firefox” folder. Does the problem persist?
Does this install a new version of Firefox? How would that fix a problem with Opera/Brave/Vivaldi?
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Hey, it happens sometimes that people not read all details. And then make such proposals … It might help a other person to install the newest Firefox a other time, let’s see it this way 
The flickering is just in the three browsers you mentioned, right?
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Yes, Opera, Vivaldi and Brave all flicker. Firefox is fine, I haven’t tried any others recently.
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A potential common cause is the graphics card/driver since they are all accessing the same one. Another is the fact that all three are basically Chromium in fancy clothes.
Is there any other information you can provide? What graphics card do you have? Does the flickering happen on any website or only when you do something specific? Does the flickering affect the complete application, including the window decoration, or only parts of it?
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@chrisofbristol
Sorry, I didn’t read that correctly. Do you have Fedora 43 or something else?
…
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@ilikelinux
Okay. I completely misunderstood. This isn’t my day. 
Nobody is perfect … and also nobody has to be 
Back to the topic:
There is Helium you could try … it is on copr.
Helium
The Chromium-based web browser made for people, with love.
Best privacy by default, unbiased ad-blocking, no bloat and no noise.
https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/imput/helium/
p.s.
I also changed the the topic to Browser flickering | cromium based browsers
I was thinking if there is a missing extension/codec … however this would affect more the audio right?
However here the link to the Manual:
Good point! I wasn’t aware of that. And Firefox, which works, is not based on Chromium. I’m sure it’s relevant.
Any website all over the window, including parts of the app itself like tabs. I can’t upload a video unfortunately, so here is a screen capture of Vivaldi. The “Start Page” tab and all the webpage icons flicker.
I used inxi -G to get:
Graphics:
Device-1: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RV730 XT [Radeon HD 4670]
driver: radeon v: kernel
Device-2: Brooktree Bt878 Video Capture driver: bttv v: 0.9.19
Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 24.1.9 with: Xwayland v: 24.1.9
compositor: gnome-shell v: 49.3 driver: X: loaded: radeon
unloaded: modesetting dri: r600 gpu: radeon resolution: 1680x1050~60Hz
API: OpenGL v: 3.3 compat-v: 3.0 vendor: mesa v: 25.2.7 renderer: AMD
RV730 (DRM 2.51.0 / 6.18.7-200.fc43.x86_64 LLVM 21.1.5)
API: Vulkan v: 1.4.328 drivers: llvmpipe surfaces: N/A
API: EGL Message: EGL data requires eglinfo. Check --recommends.
Info: Tools: api: glxinfo,vulkaninfo x11: xdriinfo, xdpyinfo, xprop,
xrandr
That’s an R700-based GPU, which is pretty old. The radeon driver for the R700 appears to be mostly complete and apparently still receives updates. I didn’t find anything concrete, but I wouldn’t rule out an incompatibility between this driver and Chromium.
Out of curiosity, do you see the same flickering with Electron applications (1Password, Bitwarden, Discord, Obsidian, Signal, VS Code, …)?
Not knowing what any of these apps are, I just installed them and pressed a few buttons to see what happened:
- 1Password Flickers
- Bitwarden Flickers
- Discord OK
- Obsidian OK
- Signal [Desktop] Flickers
- VS Code Flickers
I think it’s safe to say that this is an issue with your GPU/driver and Chromium (Electron is basically a stripped down Chromium browser to run web applications locally).
You could try if disabling hardware acceleration makes a difference. In Vivaldi, open vivaldi://settings and type ‘acceleration’ into the search field on the top left. You should see an option along the lines to “use hardware acceleration if available” on the right. (I only have Vivaldi installed, I don’t know if the others also expose this option.)
See if toggling it makes a difference. If not, don’t forget to toggle it back.
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Good catch! It’s fine now, I suppose that means I can now use any Chromium-based browser if I can work out how to switch the hardware acceleration off within it.
It wasn’t easy to do with the data-entry field flickering and the cursor jumping back and forth :). If anyone else wants to try this, they can select Performance on the side panel and the tick-box for acceleration will show. I’ve posted instructions on the Opera, Brave and Vivaldi sites.
Thanks Lars!
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