Heavy display flickering after Power Saver Blank Screen on Fedora 41

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Hi everyone,

I have a Dell Latitude 5480 laptop (i5 7440HQ with GeForce 930MX) with Fedora 41 installed.
When the laptop is idle for some time, the screen turns off and the laptop locks up. When I wake it up, the screen backlight starts flickering heavily and gradually goes away after about 10-15 minutes.
This happens especially when running on battery power.

Maybe someone has encountered this and can tell me where to dig?
I have already Nvidia drivers installed. In my GRUB configs I have:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet rhgb i915.enable_psr=0 i915.enable_rc6=0 i915.enable_fbc=0 nvidia-drm.modeset=1 nvidia-drm.fbdev=1”

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=“modeprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia.NVreg_EnableGpuFirmware=0 nvidia.NVreg_PreserveVideoMemoryAllocations=1””

Here is some info about the GPUs and drivers:

root@latitude-lin:/mnt/data# lspci -k | grep -EA3 'VGA|3D|Display'
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation HD Graphics 630 (rev 04)
	DeviceName:  Onboard IGD
	Subsystem: Dell Device 07d0
	Kernel driver in use: i915
--
02:00.0 3D controller: NVIDIA Corporation GM108M [GeForce 930MX] (rev a2)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 07d0
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
	Kernel modules: nouveau, nvidia_drm, nvidia

Nothing like this happened on windows 11/10.

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2

I am experiencing the same issue, I am also using a Dell laptop; an Inspiron 3535 with an AMD Ryzen 7 7730U and Radeon graphics.

In my case it happens around 30 seconds after unlocking the screen and goes away if I restart, seems to be specific to Fedora 41 because it did not happen with 40.

Let me know if there are steps to debug/diagnose and I will happily provide the information.

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3

It’s probably the new kernel. There are other reports of similar problems on this forum. I think some people have reported that using an older kernel works around the problem.

For example: Screen blinks blank then completely black after updates - #9 by privacyfreak84

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4

Thanks for sharing your experience. I have the latest NVIDIA drivers installed, but unfortunately, it doesn’t resolve the issue. The flickering consistently occurs after the laptop stays idle on the lock screen for a while, especially on battery power. Even after a reboot, the flickering persists for about 10-15 minutes before gradually stabilizing.
As a temporary workaround, I’ve adjusted the power management settings by lowering the screen blank and suspension times. This way, the laptop goes to sleep instead of staying idle on the lock screen for extended periods. It’s not a perfect fix, but it helps reduce how often the issue happens.

5

That’s a good point—it could be related to the kernel. I’ve been using Fedora for about a year, starting with version 39 and upgrading up to 41. I first noticed this issue starting with Fedora 40, so it might align with a kernel change.
I’ve also tried switching to KDE with SDDM to see if the issue was desktop-related, but it persists there as well. Additionally, I’ve tested multiple NVIDIA driver versions, from stable releases to the latest ones, but none of them seem to fix it.
Since I’m not an experienced linux user, I might be missing something, but it feels like this issue runs deeper—maybe a kernel regression or something in the GPU power management stack.

7

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2333543

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8

The following command will work to install an older kernel (specifically, the one that initially came with the Fedora Linux release you are running):

sudo dnf --repo=fedora downgrade kernel*

You’ll have to manually select it from the boot menu when you reboot. Also, you’ll probably have to hold the SHIFT key to get the boot menu to show. :confused:

You can try even older kernels, from previous releases, if you want by adding --releasever=<N>. For example:

sudo dnf --repo=fedora --releasever=40 downgrade kernel*

If you find a kernel that works around the problem, you can make it the default as explained here: User:Ilikelinux/grubby - Fedora Project Wiki

9

Just for convenience here a short hint from the bug report that helped me:
This is related to the battery mode. When Balanced or Power Saver is selected, the bug happens. Selecting Performance mode will make the bug disappear/not appear in the first place.

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10

FYI: The patch (and related discussion) can be found here
https://lore.kernel.org/all/20241227073700.3102801-1-alexander.deucher@amd.com/

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11

There is also a new kernel release that has patched this issue. 6.12.9 is the affected kernel and it is currently in the test update repos. So currently you can downgrade your kernel or enable the test repo and update the kernel and then disable the test update repo.

instructions on how to enable test repo and then install the patched kernel version

dnf config-manager setopt updates-testing.enabled=true
dnf check-update
dnf update kernel kernel-core kernel-core-modules
dnf config-manager setopt updates-testing.enabled=false

After a reboot you should pop into the new patched kernel. If you are using an older version of fedora that dose not use dnf5 see instructions on how to enable the update test repo here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing#Using_the_updates-testing_repositories

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12

An easier way to temporarily enable the updates testing repo for the kernel update would be to do
sudo dnf update kernel\* --enablerepo=updates-testing
This would only enable that repo for only that one transaction and for updating ALL the currently installed kernel packages. (this syntax works for both dnf4 and dnf5)