Firefox very distorted, unusable

Joseph

3/13/24, 9:43 AM

Out of apparently nowhere, I now find that the Firefox app (running as a snap on Ubuntu) is very distorted when launched. And it experiences further strangeness (like imprints of previous content) as I proceed to use it.

Aside from the regular system updates, I haven't made any config changes recently. Also, every other app (including other snaps) is working properly.

Here are some screenshots showing the problem. You can see that the titlebar and mouse pointer are unaffected:

Here's some system information I thought might be relevant:

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 22.04.2 LTS
Release:        22.04
Codename:       jammy

$ sudo snap info firefox
name:      firefox
summary:   Mozilla Firefox web browser
publisher: Mozilla✓
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/firefox
contact:   https://support.mozilla.org/kb/file-bug-report-or-feature-request-mozilla
license:   unset
description: |
  Firefox is a powerful, extensible web browser with support for modern web application
  technologies.
commands:
  - firefox
  - firefox.geckodriver
snap-id:      3wdHCAVyZEmYsCMFDE9qt92UV8rC8Wdk
tracking:     latest/stable/ubuntu-22.04
refresh-date: 12 days ago, at 07:44 GMT
channels:
  latest/stable:    110.0.1-2    2023-02-28 (2391) 251MB -
  latest/candidate: 111.0-2      2023-03-10 (2432) 253MB -
  latest/beta:      111.0b8-1    2023-03-03 (2404) 191MB -
  latest/edge:      112.0a1      2023-03-13 (2439) 197MB -
  esr/stable:       102.8.0esr-2 2023-02-16 (2364) 185MB -
  esr/candidate:    102.9.0esr-2 2023-03-10 (2431) 186MB -
  esr/beta:         ↑                                    
  esr/edge:         ↑                                    
installed:          110.0.1-2               (2391) 251MB -

$ lspci -v | egrep -i --color 'vga'
2f:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Navi 14 [Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M] (rev c5) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])

$ sudo lshw -c video
  *-display                 
       description: VGA compatible controller
       product: Navi 14 [Radeon RX 5500/5500M / Pro 5500M]
       vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:2f:00.0
       logical name: /dev/fb0
       version: c5
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom fb
       configuration: depth=32 driver=amdgpu latency=0 resolution=3840,2160
       resources: irq:100 memory:e0000000-efffffff memory:f0000000-f01fffff ioport:f000(size=256) memory:fcc00000-fcc7ffff memory:c0000-dffff

1896

1 + 2

firefox

22.04

Jos

3/13/24, 10:16 AM

Just a guess but there is a setting, on the General page, under Performance: "Use recommended performance settings". Uncheck that, and uncheck "Use hardware acceleration when available" (or check it if it wasn't already checked). Then restart the browser. Does that help?

Joseph

3/13/24, 10:45 AM

@Jos Yes, you're correct. This solves the problem! Thank you! It was quite a struggle to find those settings with everything so distorted, but eventually I managed to do it and now everything is clear! Please feel free to go ahead and post this as an answer and I'll mark it as correct. Thanks again! :-)

Score:6

Ubuntu

Jos

3/13/24, 11:00 AM

Turning hardware acceleration off helped in OP's case:

Go to the Settings page.
On the General tab there is a section Performance.
If "Use recommended performance settings" is checked, uncheck it.
An option "Use hardware acceleration when available" appears. Uncheck it.
Restart the browser.

It may or may not make a noticeable difference.

+ 2

Joseph

3/13/24, 2:05 PM

Thank you, this made a noticeable difference in my case. Still not sure why the issue suddenly occurred after a year of smooth operation though.

mishan

3/13/24, 7:41 PM

maybe driver updates?

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Firefox very distorted, unusable

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