On every boot, the GNOME widgets including those on the bar kinda get all messed up and distorted for some three to four seconds before coming back to the original look. It also happens with the WiFi picker widget which can be triggered from the GNOME panel - the icons are suddenly large and unaligned for a second or two before getting back to their alignment.
And nope! Theming is definitely not the issue here. I felt back to the default theme and the issue is persistent there as well. Any help with stopping this behavior and insight about why this is happening is appreciated.
Letâs confirm that first. It may not be the theme, but some other changes to the configuration for this user account. Could you please create a new user and see if the issue persists there? That will tell us if itâs a user account issue or a system/gnome/software issue.
Eh, yeh, something is wrong there. Usual checks next I guess: wayland or X? Nvidia or nouveau? System up to date? Also worth looking at journalctl now to see if any errors are included there.
Proprietary NVIDIA drivers from RPM Fusion is what I am using.
Most definitely.
I have run a journalctl -xe to check for errors. This is what I have got.
[t0xic0der@ToxicDragon ~]$ journalctl -xe
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- A start job for unit UNIT has begun execution.
--
-- The job identifier is 814.
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon gnome-terminal-[4614]: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:2423:18: '-gtk-icon-filter' is not a valid property name
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon gnome-terminal-[4614]: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:6207:18: '-gtk-icon-filter' is not a valid property name
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon gnome-terminal-[4614]: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:2423:18: '-gtk-icon-filter' is not a valid property name
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon gnome-terminal-[4614]: Theme parsing error: gtk.css:6207:18: '-gtk-icon-filter' is not a valid property name
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon org.gnome.Terminal.desktop[4609]: # _g_io_module_get_default: Found default implementation dconf (DConfSettingsBackend) for âgsettings-backendâ
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon org.gnome.Terminal.desktop[4609]: # watch_fast: "/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/" (establishing: 0, active: 0)
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon org.gnome.Terminal.desktop[4609]: # unwatch_fast: "/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/" (active: 0, establishing: 1)
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon org.gnome.Terminal.desktop[4609]: # watch_established: "/org/gnome/terminal/legacy/" (establishing: 0)
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon systemd[2764]: Started GNOME Terminal Server.
-- Subject: A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully.
--
-- The job identifier is 814.
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon systemd[2764]: Started VTE child process 4621 launched by gnome-terminal-server process 4614.
-- Subject: A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully.
--
-- The job identifier is 829.
Jun 03 00:10:42 ToxicDragon systemd[2764]: gnome-launched-org.gnome.Terminal.desktop-4609.scope: Succeeded.
-- Subject: Unit succeeded
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- The unit UNIT has successfully entered the 'dead' state.
Jun 03 00:10:56 ToxicDragon systemd[2243]: Starting Cleanup of User's Temporary Files and Directories...
-- Subject: A start job for unit UNIT has begun execution
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- A start job for unit UNIT has begun execution.
--
-- The job identifier is 37.
Jun 03 00:10:56 ToxicDragon systemd[2243]: systemd-tmpfiles-clean.service: Succeeded.
-- Subject: Unit succeeded
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- The unit UNIT has successfully entered the 'dead' state.
Jun 03 00:10:56 ToxicDragon systemd[2243]: Finished Cleanup of User's Temporary Files and Directories.
-- Subject: A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully
-- Defined-By: systemd
-- Support: https://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/systemd-devel
--
-- A start job for unit UNIT has finished successfully.
--
-- The job identifier is 37.
lines 2758-2815/2815 (END)
Check the whole journal perhaps. -e only shows the end.
Uh, thatâs another variable. Has the issue always been around, or was there perhaps a driver update?
The only way of testing that out is to use an install without the proprietary driver. Could you try a live image to see if the issue persists? Perhaps one from the respins so you get all the new versions? https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins/
Yup. Checked it throughout. (It was difficult)
Did not find anything wrong except for numerous firmware bugs.
This has been haunting me since a long time now. It has been there when I used nouveau.modeset=0 to exclusively use the i915 drivers and it stiil is when I am using the proprietary NVIDIA drivers.
Did that last night. The issue is NOT present in the live USB.
But a fresh install of the Fedora is just as fresh as the live USB but still the problem kinda persists there.
the live usb does not include nvidia drivers and other changes to the kernel parameters, so these could be looked into,
the live usb also runs Wayland by default
regressions introduced by updates on your fresh install: so comparing the package versions in the liveusb image and your system would be worth looking into.
This type of glitch is not very easy to debug since there are so many components involved, right from hardware, to kernel, to drivers, to the window manager. So the only way here is to go through the possibilities one by one and eliminate them to narrow down to the real âculpritâ.
Thatâs right but even with a fresh install on the hardware - done without an active internet connection so it is just as same of an environment as it is on the live USB - it ends up showing this kind of mess.
Also, the fresh install that I specified about in the previous point has Wayland enabled by default. Still you can see that the mess is made in the GNOME widget.
This is something that even I am not completely sure about.
Iâm not 100% sure about it. Yes, the files are copied, but perhaps there are some steps at the end of the installation process that make system dependent tweaks? Not sure how to verify this, though.
If itâs happening with all users and all installations, live and installed, then it indicates a hardware specific bug maybe at a lower level. Not easy to debug, though. If you canât figure it out soon, itâll be worth going to the gnome channels for more detailed help.
Does a different DE work OK by the way? At least thatâll tell us if itâs limited to Gnome or if it is a general display issue.
True. There is probably no way I could get to know what exact changes take place during the installation. Maybe the hardware specific changes that you mentioned about might be root cause of this issue. Uncertain about that too for now.
I will be specific here. This issue is happening for all the users but on the installed one. The live USB has literally zero issues with this. But yes, it might be a lower level bug.
I am not sure if I should do that. What if the problem is exclusive to Workstation - i.e. the GNOME version of Fedora and what if the cause of this might be the changes made by Fedora on GNOME. (Although I hear that Fedora has the clean undoctored GNOME - I may be wrong)
Except for GNOME, the DEs that I have tried are KDE and MATE and both seem to have no issues. I believe that this issue is exclusive to GNOME only.
That would mean itâs GNOME specific, so it could be the window manager etc. Still not easy to debug, unfortunately. Fedora does not use any downstream patches with Gnome, so itâs pretty much as upstream releases it.
Hi @FranciscoD, it seems that the culprit is the X11 after all. I just briefly moved to Arch Linux and installed GNOME here. Now just because GNOME used Wayland by default, it came along with all the dependencies. I have been using it and since then the problem has completely disappeared.
Though I have not tried doing so with Fedora 32 Workstation, I kinda have questions as to how a time-tested X11 can get this wrong while a fresh Wayland gets this right.
Check the different versions of X to begin with. X on all distros are not identical. Any number of underlying tools could have different versions which could result in bugs.
