X280 Flickering Screen in Fedora 43
Date:
[12th Dec 2025]
So I switched from Arch to Fedora 43 on one of my laptops (X280 Thinkpad) and started noticing the screen flickering a bit. Turns out it's a power saving "feature" to reduce power draw from the screen. Not sure if it's a bug or whatever.
Fix:
Check if PSR (Panel Self Refresh) is running with sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/1/i915_edp_psr_status.
If PSR mode: enabled edit /etc/default/grub and add the following to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=.
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.enable_psr=0"There's possibly a bunch more stuff there for example if you use LUKS or blacklist drivers, etc. Just add i915.enable_psr=0 to the end.
Update grub with sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
Reboot and check if PSR has been disabled with sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/i915_edp_psr_status.
Can also disable Frame Buffer Compression and Mode Setting though I didn't really notice a difference.
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="i915.enable_fbc=0 i915.modset=0"