Second screen blanking in MATE 16.04

[andfuv]

Continuing the discussion from Stop the screen from blanking in Ubuntu:

Hi everybody,

I’d like to know if any of you guys have any thoughts or ideas about what’s happening with one of my computers. I’m currently running MATE 16.04 in two machines: My desktop computer (64bits) and a laptop (32bits). The solution that @wolfman originally posted here works perfectly in both my computers when I’m watching videos in the default display. However, I usually use my laptop to watch movies and series on my TV, and when my laptop is plugged to the TV through the HDMI cable, the screen blanks every 10 minutes from 1 to 5 seconds. It always happens. I tried retyping the command that worked in the default display when the TV is plugged (xset -dpms s off s noblank s 0 0 s noexpose), but that didn’t work. Any ideas about what might be happening?

By the way, I’m running MATE 16.04 (32bits) on an Asus X201E laptop. I know it’s a low resource machine, but it works fine for browsing the web, checking email and watching vids. These are the system specifications: Intel Celeron CPU 847 @ 1.1 GHz, 2GB (RAM), Intel Corporation 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphic Controller (rev 09).

I’d really appreciate your help.

[wolfman]

Hi @andfuv,

looking at the specs of your laptop, there shouldn’t be a problem so it may be down to the TV’s HDMI cable, have you tried changing that around or trying a different one?.

Have you done a complete system update?:

Ubuntu Mate Update Guide

These are my own setting preferences, use at your own risk!. AN IMPORTANT NOTE FOR LINUX BEGINNERS. WHEN YOU ARE IN RECOVERY MODE, THE KEYBOARD DEFAULTS TO US ENGLISH, IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER LANGUAGE KEYBOARD OTHER THAN US ENGLISH, WHEN YOU TYPE "Y" (FOR "YES"), IT MIGHT SHOW UP AS A DIFFERENT LETTER, ON MY KEYBOARD I MUST PRESS THE "Z" KEY WHICH EQUATES TO "Y" AS I HAVE A GERMAN KEYBOARD, JUST PRESS "BACKSPACE" AND HIT A DIFFERENT KEY UNTIL YOU SEE THE "Y" SHOW UP!. Click on "Subscri…

[andfuv]

Hi @wolfman,

After you posted that suggestion, I tried 2 different HDMI cables in all the HDMI ports in the two TVs I have at home. It keeps happening. It’s actually weird, because I installed MATE 16.04 (64bits) on my mom’s Dell laptop, and the same thing happened with that computer. However, I ended up installing Ubuntu proper 16.04 (64bits) on that Dell machine and there’s no screen blanking now. Same machine, different distro. That’s weird.

I’ll run the full system update you describe in that post on that Asus machine as soon as I can.

Thanks for your help. I really appreciate it.

[Wimpy]

There are kernel bugs affecting many Intel GPUs that cause screen flashing. One thing you can try is disabling TLP, it is not the cause but can make the issue more prominent on some systems.

I have a laptop that has been affected by this for 9 months, I recently installed an Ubuntu mainline kernel for Linux 4.6 and finally screen blanking was gone.

[andfuv]

Thanks for this valuable info, @Wimpy. I’m kind of afraid of changing the kernel, so I’ll just disable TLP.