I recently installed Fedora 34 (KDE) to a new computer. After a while, and very randomly the colors get very distorted, and text is harder to read. Restarting the computer solves the issue temporarily. This has happened over both Wayland and X. The issue is replicated upon installations on two different computers, so I’m reasonably certain this is not purely a hardware issue, but I can provide any required further details about my machine. But I do not know how to even describe the problem clearly enough to find solutions. Any help would be appreciated.
I would try 2 different things.
First “sudo dnf distro-sync” just to verify everything is fully in sync with the software.
If that fails then try creating a new user and see if the problem continues with the new user.
The issue is reminiscent of monitor issues that I have seen in the past with the monitor not properly configured / connected.
Possible sync issues, possible oxidized connections on the monitor cable or connectors (either end), possible failing screen. The fact that it comes and goes leans me toward thinking the connections are the problem
That model is about 8 years old so it likely is the connections oxidizing on the ribbon cable and may be why you were able to buy it.
I would either do the connection cleaning myself or have a tech do it for me, but that is my first suggestion.
If the ribbon cable cleaning does not fix it then the next guess would be the LCD screen itself.
Thanks for responding. I synced everything, tried a different user, even switched between Wayland and X. I am not convinced it is an issue with the hardware, because I have a dual boot with Windows where the issue has never occurred. I have also seen it in happen in another machine I installed the same ISO onto, and it instantly fixes when I restart or even just suspend the session. It reminds me of this issue here which makes me think there might be some subtle kernel or driver issues
There may be a driver issue. Your GPU is intel using the i915 driver and I have seen some problems reported with it on different machines. Most of the ones you linked to are over HDMI but not all.
However, note: that link is to discussion about ubuntu 12.04 and that has been gone for at least 6 years. The last post was 2013.
