They usually appear black with colored dots, though most interactions with my desktop environment (not inside a window) change them. They seem to appear over any render target that was open before sleeping, but not after. Especially my desktop backgrounds and taskbar.
The issue has changed over the past few days. Initially, it was on all three of my monitors on the login screen when first starting up, but as soon as I booted into my computer it was only on my primary monitor. The sleep after that, it was on all 3. Lately, it’s not been appearing on the login screen.
This problem showed up around a week after I updated my system and installed new drivers.
(Screenshot I have from that upgrade, I originally was worried they’d break things and didn’t download them immediately)
I updated my system to install RenderDoc, if that’s at all relevant?
I made this install in October 2025, and haven’t had any graphical issues so far. I haven’t done anything to actively install drivers for nvidia and it’s just worked until now. I don’t think I would’ve broken anything directly.
My GPU has 8 gigs of VRAM, in case that’s relevant.
I can see the non-dkms driver has been flagged out-of-date. That’s not proof of anything in itself, sometimes things are incorrectly flagged.
But, with that in mind, one thing you could try is switching to the -dkms driver. That’ll integrate itself into any installed kernel (provided the header files for any installed kernel are also installed), instead of being built for a specific kernel like the non-dkms driver.
So for example, if you have only the main, and LTS kernels installed, this would install the necessary headers for those kernels, and the dkms version of the Nvidia driver:
yay -Syu linux-headers linux-lts-headers nvidia-open-dkms
Simply put, the non-dkms driver is built only for a specific kernel. nvidia-open can only be used with the linux kernel, and nvidia-open-lts can only be used with the linux-lts kernel.
The nvidia-open-dkms driver on the other hand, can be used with any kernel (one driver to rule them all), provided you have the headers for those kernels also installed. The integration will automatically occur on your system, which takes a little bit of extra time during updates.
The issue still isn’t gone completely. I can no longer consistently replicate it, but my computer just came out of sleep with the exact same artifacts all over any previously open surfaces. I can’t get it to reappear again, so it seems at least mitigated by the dkms drivers.
If it’s not something that’s happening (reliably) in the LTS kernel, perhaps it’s something that’ll hopefully be identified and addressed in the main kernel.
I’m not sure I understand your question, reliably affected?
All I can say is that all three installed kernels have the same issue as the OP when waking from sleep. The login screen is full of the exact same artifacts as the image the OP posted. It does not happen every time the PC wakes from sleep, just periodically.
You had said “all three kernels I have installed are affected by this artifact issue”, so I was asking if all three were reliably affected by this issue.
Essentially, does it happen every time, or only sometimes, which you answered anyway
The only common denominator I’m seeing here is KDE Plasma. I’ve been running artifact-free since first switching to Sway (from Xfce), then now on Hyprland w/DMS. I actually just switched to the Zen kernel after having issues building Nvidia modules with the v6.19 Cachy kernels.
╰─❯ journalctl -b -0 | tail -n 50 ─╯
Feb 15 21:41:07 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:07 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:10 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:10 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:12 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:12 endeavourmsi dolphin[208829]: Could not load default global viewproperties
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started Mousepad - Text Editor.
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libhspell.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libnuspell.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libvoikko.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: gspell_language_get_code: assertion 'language != NULL' failed
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: Failed to load plugin "mousepad-plugin-shortcuts": libxfce4kbd-private-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libhspell.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libnuspell.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:13 endeavourmsi mousepad[225356]: broker.vala:156: Error loading plugin: libvoikko.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Feb 15 21:41:33 endeavourmsi kdeconnectd[185725]: Cannot find Bluez 5 adapter for device search false
Feb 15 21:41:40 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: kitty-224882-0.scope: Consumed 1.675s CPU time over 2min 47.987s wall clock time, 74.8M memory peak.
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty - Terminal emulator.
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi kitty[225874]: [0.047] Could not find included config file: /home/wombat/.config/kitty/current-theme.conf, ignoring
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty child process: 225880 launched by: 225874.
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi fastfetch[225892]: Starting libddcutil. library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225892]: Initializing libddcutil. ddcutil version: 2.2.5, shared library: /usr/lib/libddcutil.so.5.4.1
Feb 15 21:41:41 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225892]: library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:41:42 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225892]: Library initialization complete.
Feb 15 21:41:42 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225892]: libddcutil terminating.
Feb 15 21:41:42 endeavourmsi kitty[225874]: [1.337] [PARSE ERROR] Unknown terminfo property: query-os-name
Feb 15 21:42:00 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty - Terminal emulator.
Feb 15 21:42:00 endeavourmsi kitty[225933]: [0.046] Could not find included config file: /home/wombat/.config/kitty/current-theme.conf, ignoring
Feb 15 21:42:00 endeavourmsi plasmashell[185540]: error creating screencast "Could not find window id {a2df5a87-68af-40e7-862f-ad72301d6b7c}"
Feb 15 21:42:01 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty child process: 225940 launched by: 225933.
Feb 15 21:42:01 endeavourmsi fastfetch[225952]: Starting libddcutil. library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:42:01 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225952]: Initializing libddcutil. ddcutil version: 2.2.5, shared library: /usr/lib/libddcutil.so.5.4.1
Feb 15 21:42:01 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225952]: library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:42:01 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225952]: Library initialization complete.
Feb 15 21:42:02 endeavourmsi libddcutil[225952]: libddcutil terminating.
Feb 15 21:42:02 endeavourmsi kitty[225933]: [1.341] [PARSE ERROR] Unknown terminfo property: query-os-name
Feb 15 21:42:03 endeavourmsi kdeconnectd[185725]: Cannot find Bluez 5 adapter for device search false
Feb 15 21:42:20 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: app-org.xfce.mousepad@033c4d02e1e749638013fc9cfa37c2ca.service: Consumed 11.564s CPU time over 1min 6.509s wall clock time, 79.4M memory peak.
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty - Terminal emulator.
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi kitty[226023]: [0.045] Could not find included config file: /home/wombat/.config/kitty/current-theme.conf, ignoring
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: Started kitty child process: 226032 launched by: 226023.
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi fastfetch[226041]: Starting libddcutil. library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi libddcutil[226041]: Initializing libddcutil. ddcutil version: 2.2.5, shared library: /usr/lib/libddcutil.so.5.4.1
Feb 15 21:42:23 endeavourmsi libddcutil[226041]: library built Not set at Not set. stdout_stderr_redirected=false
Feb 15 21:42:24 endeavourmsi libddcutil[226041]: Library initialization complete.
Feb 15 21:42:24 endeavourmsi libddcutil[226041]: libddcutil terminating.
Feb 15 21:42:24 endeavourmsi kitty[226023]: [1.426] [PARSE ERROR] Unknown terminfo property: query-os-name
Feb 15 21:42:32 endeavourmsi systemd[185331]: app-dolphin@1fb6bbbf121e426a91ae8605d4b31aea.service: Consumed 7.881s CPU time over 15min 7.123s wall clock time, 218M memory peak.
Feb 15 21:42:33 endeavourmsi kdeconnectd[185725]: Cannot find Bluez 5 adapter for device search false
Feb 15 21:43:03 endeavourmsi kdeconnectd[185725]: Cannot find Bluez 5 adapter for device search false
╰─❯
