Intel Arc Pro B50, weird color "bleeding" (terrible in Wayland, just bad in X11)

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Hello everybody!

I have been trying to setup my system. My first attempt was F43+Plasma, but liveinst fails before showing anything at all, so I went back to F42 (this is content for another post).

I tried F42+Plasma, and the installation itself went ok. But the graphics were simply terrible. It seems that every line/character rendered “bleeds” colors. Almost like moire if you move the content or “color aberration” if you leave it still.

It was so bad, that if I had a window with black text on white, and I moved it, parts of the text’s lines would randomly look orange or blue.

I fidgeted with my monitor settings, thinking that that may be the problem. It is not. I have another computer (integrated intel graphics), and zero issues.

After a long search, I gave up thinking that it may be Wayland. So I installed my good old F42+i3wm. The text on white now looks better, but other combinations are still super funky: red on white almost seem to add black edges, black on orange seem to have cyan edges, and in general it doesn’t look good.

My other computer also has F42+i3wm, (intel cpu with integrated graphics) and has no issues whatsoever.

My guess is that the xe driver is aggressively adding “sharpness” to the image. That’s why my first thought was that it was the monitor settings.

Here is some info of the new machine:

$ uname -sr
Linux 6.17.10-200.fc42.x86_64

~ 
$ distro
Name: Fedora Linux 42 (Adams)
Version: 42
Codename: 

~ 
$ lscpu | head
Architecture:                            x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                          32-bit, 64-bit
Address sizes:                           43 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
Byte Order:                              Little Endian
CPU(s):                                  48
On-line CPU(s) list:                     0-47
Vendor ID:                               AuthenticAMD
Model name:                              AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3960X 24-Core Processor
CPU family:                              23
Model:                                   49

~ 
$ lspci | rg -i vga
23:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Battlemage G21 [Arc Pro B50]

~ 
$ lspci -k | rg -A 3 -i vga
23:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Battlemage G21 [Arc Pro B50]
	Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 1114
	Kernel driver in use: xe
	Kernel modules: xe

~ 
$ modinfo xe | head
filename:       /lib/modules/6.17.10-200.fc42.x86_64/kernel/drivers/gpu/drm/xe/xe.ko.xz
import_ns:      DMA_BUF
license:        GPL and additional rights
description:    Intel Xe2 Graphics
author:         Intel Corporation
firmware:       i915/mtl_gsc_1.bin
firmware:       xe/lnl_gsc_1.bin
firmware:       i915/tgl_huc.bin
firmware:       i915/tgl_huc.bin
firmware:       i915/tgl_huc.bin

~ 
$ rg -e '\(EE\)' /var/log/Xorg.0.log*
/var/log/Xorg.0.log
12:	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
62:[    19.199] (EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)
65:[    19.199] (EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)

/var/log/Xorg.0.log.old
12:	(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
62:[    19.240] (EE) Failed to load module "fbdev" (module does not exist, 0)
65:[    19.240] (EE) Failed to load module "vesa" (module does not exist, 0)

~ 
$ glxinfo | rg -B1 -A2 "OpenGL renderer"
OpenGL vendor string: Intel
OpenGL renderer string: Mesa Intel(R) Arc(tm) Pro B50 Graphics (BMG G21)
OpenGL core profile version string: 4.6 (Core Profile) Mesa 25.1.9
OpenGL core profile shading language version string: 4.60

Thanks for reading my post.