Latest upgrade breaks graphics/screen refresh and brightness controls

Ask Fedora
1

I applied system updates this afternoon and after rebooting, the system was very slow to respond. Interacting with any kind of window is absolutely impossible. I also have lost brightness controls. The screen is stuck on a single brightness (which is dim).

When I log in, there is what I can best describe as a “screen refresh” that takes place running from the top of the screen to the bottom. The mouse stutters from one point to another, so is hard to control. I am using proprietary NVIDIA drivers as my system has both an NVIDIA card and an onboard AMD Radeon graphics chip.

I rolled back to a previous kernel in GRUB boot menu and the system is functional again. I am basically a noob as far as Linux goes. Switched from Windows to Fedora a couple months ago. Last time I used Linux was about 20 years ago. I am technical, so am comfortable on the CLI, just haven’t been in the Linux world for a while.

Update

I tried a few things with the GRUB config based on some posts I read and got myself into a worse situation as I had no usable kernel to go back to. As an experiment, I added a second DE (COSMIC) to my system, rebooted, and then logged into the COSMIC DE. Things are usable here. No slowdowns, etc. No weird refreshes. The system is usable with COSMIC.

Things are running and I am in a stable place, but not necessarily thrilled as I had gotten used to GNOME now, but hopefully the updated information is a help.

Also of note, I still cannot adjust the brightness of the screen

Output of lscpi:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: NVIDIA Corporation TU116M [GeForce GTX 1660 Ti Mobile] [10de:2191] (rev a1)
	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:16cf]
	Kernel driver in use: nvidia
--
06:00.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Renoir [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series] [1002:1636] (rev c6)
	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:16cf]
	Kernel modules: amdgpu

System Details Report

Report details

  • Date generated: 2026-01-01 15:53:22

Hardware Information:

  • Hardware Model: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC. ASUS TUF Gaming A15 FA506IU_TUF506IU
  • Memory: 64.0 GiB
  • Processor: AMD Ryzen™ 7 4800H with Radeon™ Graphics × 16
  • Graphics: Software Rendering
  • Disk Capacity: 6.0 TB

Software Information:

  • Firmware Version: FA506IU.320
  • OS Name: Fedora Linux 43 (Workstation Edition)
  • OS Build: (null)
  • OS Type: 64-bit
  • GNOME Version: 49
  • Windowing System: Wayland
  • Kernel Version: Linux 6.17.10-300.fc43.x86_64
2
  • Graphics: Software Rendering

So you are on Software Rendering with all kernel model working? I am unsure what card your display is connected to (usually can be idenfied by realpath /sys/class/drm/*eDP*)

If the path points to your AMD integrated GPU (usually should be the case for laptops), then is there anything strange from sudo dmesg | grep amdgpu -i?

3

Hi, thanks for the response. I checked things out and all seemed normal, but I am also happy to say that a second round of updates, once I was running under COSMIC, included some GNOME updates and after a reboot my system seems to be okay. I am guessing there was some kind of update within the GNOME updates that fixed the issue.

4

Good as long as the issue fixed by itself, however the render issue and graphical acceleration should be related to sth. with kernel and mesa, so it is really strange. (or some reboot fixed it LOL)