I was recently lucky enough to buy an OLED monitor and it’s great. What is not so great is the amount of flickering I get in Gnome now when I have the experimental VRR setting enabled.

Now all OLED monitors have a certain amount of VRR flicker, but I am comparing it to my Windows duel boot and it’s absolutely terrible under Gnome, like just a noticeable increase in the amount of flicker under both games and the desktop versus Windows. The only way I get Windows to flicker as much on the desktop is if I turn on “dynamic refresh rate”, which kind of appears to be what Gnome is doing all the time. I can turn on the refresh rate panel on my monitor and Gnome can fluctuate all over the place, even on the desktop, whereas Windows is steady at max refresh (again one I turn off dynamic refresh rate, which is a separate setting then VRR).

For games the flicker is way worse using proton under Wayland (which GE supports). Hunt Showdown - which I play a lot, looks incredibly flickery when vsync and Wayland are turned on, it basically has a strobing effect.

Anyone else seen this in action? Any suggestions for a fix? Should I swap over to KDE for a bit until Gnome gets this straightened out or will Plasma have the same problems?

Update (11/11/25) I’ve been on KDE basically since I created this post and while there is still a little VRR flicker (it’s the nature of OLEDs) it is far better then under Gnome and it appears to be getting better with each release, or I am just getting really used to it.

I also tried out Gnome 49 briefly to see if this was fixed and sadly it’s still really bad in game, though I no longer noticed it on the desktop.

  • million@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    1·
    5 months ago

    I had the name wrong initially - I just edited it to correct it, but under Windows “dynamic refresh rate” - is distinct then VRR. Settings reads “To help save power, Windows adjusts the refresh rate up the selected rate above”. See https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/29/22555295/microsoft-windows-11-dynamic-refresh-rate-laptops.

    I can turn it off and still have VRR enabled.

    Trust me when I say the amount of OLED flicker is much much higher in Gnome then under Windows for the exact same games. Like give you eye strain and a headache super fast. I still see a little flicker under Windows but it’s not comparable.