Flicker-free boot troubleshooting (dual boot)

Hi :wave:, I am having some trouble getting a flicker-free boot on an X1C 8th gen. I still see a black screen in this order:

BIOS --> Grub --> OEM splash --> Black screen --> OEM splash + Fedora logo --> GDM

I am dual booting, but am on UEFI. Maybe there is some issue with dual booting? The ideal end goal is to hide Grub (unless shift is pressed) and have a seamless boot - not sure if this is possible though. Here’s my grub.conf:

GRUB_TIMEOUT="5"
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="$(sed 's, release .*$,,g' /etc/system-release)"
GRUB_DEFAULT="saved"
#GRUB_DISABLE_SUBMENU="true"
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rhgb quiet"
GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY="true"
GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG="false"

There may be some issues regarding recent kernels and i915 support as this user has reported Intel i915 module's fastboot option not working in recent kernels / Newbie Corner / Arch Linux Forums.

If anyone could help I would be greatly appreciative! :heart_eyes:

1 Like

A followup:

Adding i915.fastboot=1 to the command line did nothing.

I found that adding nomodeset actually appears to disable the mode set happening, so there is no black screen. It looks smooth - though compared to the original boot the Fedora logo and spinner appear suddenly and much later after the OEM splash. I compared the two boot times with systemd-analyze and they were about equal.

Not sure this is the proper solution but there is something weird going on.

Again, even nomodeset has its own consequences, it seems that it really makes the display driver wonky all the way into the desktop session! I wouldn’t use it…