Re: MX-23 Rpi Respin -- Beta testing

[chrispop99]

Found one decent thread about cursor blinking on the Pi 5:

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=361313

I'm thinking the best we can do is put a paragraph in Tips with options mentioned there and in other threads:
--disable conkies
--change monitors
--use a larger SD (supposedly 128 is recommended; Pi 5 shipped from Cana with 256 and I see no blinking--but it's not Xfce)
--turn off Xfce4 compositor
--switch to compton

Disabling Conky works.
I'm struggling to see this as a monitor issue, but all mine are the same make, so can't test.
Again, I fail to see this as a solution, as long as the card has plenty of space, but will check later if I have a large enough card.
If the Xfce4 compositor is turned off, Conky loses transparency, so you get the black box around the Conky.
I haven't tried Compton.

Chris

[Jerry3904]

I don't have another monitor either, though I might try to use the nice portable screen I use with my phone.

Compton works fine for me and, if I need a conky on all the time, that's what I'll use. (Reminder to self: conky toggle for just critical info).

[chrispop99]

I connected the Pi 5 to my smart TV, and the flickering persisted.
I 'borrowed' a 128GB SD card from a GoPro, and the flickering persisted.

Perhaps rather than show unproven suggestions in Tips, just list a clear guide to enabling Compton?

Chris

[Jerry3904]

Perhaps rather than show unproven suggestions in Tips, just list a clear guide to enabling Compton?

That along with conky toggle and no conkies would certainly cover all bases--thanks for testing.

I suspect that it is xfwm itself (on this hardware), since neither compton nor the rudimentary xcompmgr shows the problem. I tried disabling xfwm's shadow under docks setting, since compton has it disabled, but no change. Also posted on the Xfce Forum about this, but am not hopeful...

[Mike913]

Bonjour,
Mon système est sur un m2 de 256 Go , et j' avais ce problème de clignotement du curseur qui commence dès que le Conky démarre.
En changeant le compositeur pour compton, plus de problème avec le bureau Xcfe.
Par contre le clignotement continue sur les autres Bureau (Budgie et Cinnamon)

[chrispop99]

Compton hasn't been maintained for a while; it appears common wisdom is to use 'picom' instead. We have that installed by default, and it fixes the flickering issue for me.

Perhaps the 'Tips' should say something like:

Some users experience problems with the mouse cursor flickering. Suggested ways to stop this are:

1) Use Conky Toggle to turn the on-screen system monitor off.

2) For users who would still like to use Conky, change the default compositor to the pre-installed 'picom' in the following way:
Go to Settings>Window Manager Tweaks>Compositor, and uncheck 'Enable display compositing'.
To check this fixes the problem, in a terminal, type:

Code: Select all

picom -b

If this fixes the flickering problem, make picon start at boot like this:
Go to Settings>Session and Startup>Application Autostart. Click 'Add'. Fill in the 'Name' and 'Description' fields with whatever seems suitable. Type picom in the 'Command' field.
Reboot to check all is working.

Chris

[Jerry3904]

Yeah I wanted to try that after DO mentioned it, but just haven't yet--thanks for the directions (I assume that anybody trying this would also need to first turn off any compositor in MX Tweak).

Window Manager Tweaks, "Compositor" tab is off by default for me.

[Jerry3904]

That does not work for me, even after log out/in. Will try a reboot--no diff.

Code: Select all

$ picom -b
[ 12/19/2023 07:44:07.175 open_config_file_at WARN ] This compositor has been renamed to "picom", the old config file paths is deprecated. Please replace the "compton"s in the path with "picom"
[ 12/19/2023 07:44:07.175 parse_config_libconfig WARN ] Option `menu-opacity` is deprecated, and will be removed.Please use the wintype option `opacity` of `popup_menu`and `dropdown_menu` instead.
[ 12/19/2023 07:44:07.175 parse_config_libconfig WARN ] The refresh-rate option has been deprecated. Please remove it from your configuration file. If you encounter any problems without this feature, please feel free to open a bug report
[ 12/19/2023 07:44:07.175 parse_config_libconfig ERROR ] vsync option will take a boolean from now on. "none" in your configuration should be changed to "false"
[ 12/19/2023 07:44:07.175 main FATAL ERROR ] Failed to create new session.

[Mike913]

J' ai les mêmes erreur que pour Jerry3904, alors qu'il n'y a aucun problème avec compton.

[Jerry3904]

I'm pretty confident that DO is looking carefully at this so will just chill.