This might be a problem with other flavors of Linux as well, but I've had issues with my Nvidia GeForce Go 7600 adapter on an HP dv9000 laptop running Ubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy. This is also using the stock installation of Compiz.
From time to time, I would notice my screen flicker black and then go back to normal. Every once in a while, the screen would freeze entirely for periods as long as a few minutes. Usually the mouse would hang, but sometimes it would move. I run the system monitor applet in the Gnome panel and it would completely freeze up. Most of the time, the screen would come back after a minute or so and then business as usual. Other times, I had to do the old ctl-alt-backspace to kill X and start over.
Here's a trick that seems to make this completely go away. To give credit where credit is due, here's a post where they discuss it:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=398821&page=11It appears that the laptop power management is putting the video card into some sort of power saving mode that slows it down or something. If you run this script against the card at 5 second intervals, the screen will no longer flicker. Save this script somewhere and modify the contents to match what suits your needs. I am going to demonstrate in my home directory in a folder called "bin". Edit "~/bin/glxinfo.sh"
#!/bin/bash
while true; do /usr/bin/glxinfo > /dev/null; sleep 5; doneAssuming you are the only person logging into this computer, modify the file "~/.profile" and add a line at the bottom:
~/bin/glxinfo.sh &Whenever you log in, this will be run as part of your .profile. This will run in the background forever running "glxinfo" every five seconds and dumping the output into the bit bucket. Once this is working, the flickering will stop!!
Craig Deering
Network Engineer
Astro Shapes, Inc. - Aluminum Extrusions
Website - http://www.astroshapes.com
