Jan 28 2026 Mesa and GPU Stacks affecting XFWM4

Tutorials & Guides
1

Not all users will be affected by this.

But the latest updates to Mesa and GPU stacks produce a regression in XFWM4 that will persist even after rolling back the upgrades.

This causes flickering windows and compositor failures.
To keep using the compositor, I needed to disable its use of vblank and syncing:

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/vblank_mode -s "off"

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/asyncXSync -s false

xfwm4 --replace &

The above assumes:

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s true

IF:

xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false

then that is sufficient.
I... want my compositor on.

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2

Does this only affect users with XFCE desktop? Are users of Zorin 17 lite also affected?

3

If using the cutting edge Mesa - for example using the ErsntPPA - then yes, they can be affected. I say that it is possible, though the odds are lower if they are not upgrading their Nvidia drivers or AMD drivers (Kernel) above system updates.

If not upgrading kernel past system release, not using Ernst PPA - 17.3 Lite users should be unaffected.

EDIT:
Mesa 25.3.3
and
DRM 2.4.131

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