How to Fix Screen Flickering in Ubuntu 24.04 LTS

Most likely with devices with Intel GPU

4 min readSep 23, 2024

After waiting for the official release of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS, I finally decided to upgrade. I hoped everything would run smoothly this time. I even postponed the upgrade until I completed a client’s project, just to avoid any unpleasant surprises. However, like with other versions, there was an issue with the display. The built-in screen started flickering and displaying strange glitches, almost as if it had been physically damaged.

Initially, I thought my laptop had reached the end of its life, and I’d need a new one. But after a quick Google search, I discovered the culprit: an issue in the new version that affects devices with Intel GPUs.

The Cause: Intel GPU Flickering

I found several suggestions, but the one that fixed my issue was a bug report on Launchpad titled “Random flickering with Intel i915 (Gen9 GPUs in 6th-8th gen CPUs) on Linux 6.8”. This led to two possible solutions.

Solution I: CPU C-States Fix

The first solution came from the bug reporter himself.

He suggested changing something called C-States — a power management configuration in the CPU. If you’re unfamiliar with C-States, they allow parts of the CPU to enter low-power states when not in use.

If you’d like to learn more about this, here are some helpful resources:

Package C-States in Intel 12th Generation Core Processors.
Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) States Supported for the same processor as the first link.
A Github Gist about CPU C-States.

However, I didn’t choose this solution due to the potential trade-off: higher power consumption. If battery life is important to you, this fix might not be ideal.

Solution II

I went through the whole thread to see what’s this all about. A guy named Jeffery Knockel going under the user name of `jeff250` he found the root of this issue. As mentioned in his comment, the problem comes from a change in the kernel itself.

You can check his full comment from here. The changes made to that kernel commit also mention that it may cause problems with older hardware as mentioned in the comment.

How to Apply These Solutions

It’s easier than you think. Just follow these steps for both. I chose the second solution since it disable something we didn’t use in previous versions.

First, you open the Grub configuration file from your command line using this command:

sudo nano /etc/default/grub

You can use whatever text editor you want. I am using Nano here so don’t be judgmental.

Then, you search for the line that says GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT . In my case, I have it as follow:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"

You add the changes mentioned in your chosen solution. For the second solution it becomes like this:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash intel_iommu=igfx_off"

After that, you save and quit your editor. Following that with a Grub update using this command:

sudo update-grub

After you reboot your machine, the flickering should go. As I mentioned, I applied the second solution and didn’t try the first one.

The Official Fix

The issue was fixed in the Linux Kernel under the version 6.11.0–7.7 as mentioned in a later comment in the above thread. From the Ubuntu team I think it will be in newer versions of the 24.xx series, but when? That I don’t really know. As I read somewhere in the Google news feed, Ubuntu 24.10 comes with Linux kernel version 6.9 which is the next one after what’s being used in the current version 24.04.