Screen Flicker with Linux Mint 22

After upgrading to Linux Mint 22 on my Lenovo ThinkPad T470 I began to experience screen flicker.

Research revealed that the problem was introduced to installations using Intel video drivers in the Linux Kernel 6.8 and subsequent releases in the 6.8 stream.

A fix was implemented with a couple of boot options. Instructions on what those options are and how to implement them will follow.

My continued research suggests that the problem is resolved in the 6.9 kernel.

There are ways to start using the newer kernel but for now I’ll stick with the workaround until Linux Mint 22 makes the 6.9 kernel available in an update/upgrade.

The boot options that will prevent screen flickering are:

i915.enable_dc=0 intel_idle.max_cstate=2

To make these boot options semi-permanent, they can be added to the default grub menu template.

Using your favourite text editor with sudo, edit the /etc/default/grub file

Look for a line containing:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""

Note that there may already be some boot options between the “” on that line.

Add the above two options between the quotes on that line (along with any other options, if there are any).

The line in will now look something like:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.enable_dc=0 intel_idle.max_cstate=2"

Then run:

sudo update-grub

Now, reboot your computer and when the grub menu appears you can confirm that the options have been added to the “linux” line in the menu entries.