Some applications started flickering on the screen after updating the driver

Graphics / Linux Linux
1

2026-01-23_11-32-46.mkv.gz (14.9 MB)

Works on: 580.95.05
Broken on: 580.126.09 (see in the video)

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (559.3 KB)

1 Like
2

Confirming, I’ve noticed this also yesterday, most likely after a driver update; running Xubuntu 24.04 LTS. Typing in the terminal is choking (it feels like being connected over a very slow SSH server), most apps are flickering (even for a half a second, e.g., Krita), alt-tab creates a complete chaos.

The entire system becomes almost unusable.

nvidia-bug-report.log.gz (486.9 KB)

3

My temporary solution was to manually downgrade to previous drivers (570) by:

  • Rebooting Xubuntu to a safe mode and just root command line (holding left shift during boot to show GRUB)
  • # apt-get install nvidia-driver-570-open (I had previously installed nvidia-driver-580-open from the standard ubuntu repositories, and this package introduced this bug by its latest update from 580.95.05 to 580.126.09; see below from the package versioning info)
  • # reboot now

and now I can work again. Hope it helps someone out there with the same issue.

Here’s the changes of nvidia-driver-580-open listed in the package manager:

nvidia-graphics-drivers-580 (580.126.09-0ubuntu0.24.04.1) noble; urgency=medium

  • New upstream release 580.126.09 (LP: #2138245)

– Abdur Rahman abdur.rahman@canonical.com Mon, 12 Jan 2026 15:40:57 -0500

nvidia-graphics-drivers-580 (580.95.05-0ubuntu0.24.04.3) noble; urgency=medium

  • Fix dependencies between packages (LP: #2129682)

– Kuba Pawlak kuba.pawlak@canonical.com Thu, 23 Oct 2025 19:54:12 +0200

…

4

Confirming this too. Mentioned on the ubuntu bug tracker at:

5

I too have this issue in some situations while watching full screen video using 590.48.01.

To fix it for me i just turn of adaptive sync.

Think i noticed this in only one game.

6

I also got hit by this on xfce. I tried to downgrade back to my working 580.95.05 driver but was shocked to see it had been deleted and was no longer available. I installed nvidia-driver-590, but that still has the flickering problem (attached video)

7

580.95.05 is affected by security vulnerabilities (fixed in 580.126.09), so many distros are likely going to be quick to get rid of it. Kind of unfortunate when security releases are affected by regressions.