I have a slight screen tearing when watching videos in Ubuntu 11.10 x64, really annoying. Both in Unity and GNOME-Shell. Please focus the answer to GS since it's my primary DE and it's where I want it to work.
This is what I use:
- OpenGL vendor string: Tungsten Graphics, Inc
- OpenGL renderer string: Mesa DRI Intel(R) Sandybridge Mobile
- OpenGL version string: 2.1 Mesa 7.11
- OpenGL shading language version string: 1.20
- OpenGL extensions:
I guess it's because I can't get the screen to sync vertically but I don't know how to fix it. I found a thread talking about driconf and I've set the settings there to "always sync vertically". What can I do more to get this fixed?
Please help, any answer is welcome :) it would suck if I can't watch videos comfortably on my new laptop.
Update:
I thought it might have something to do with the screen refresh rate so I tried to change that manually. I found an online documentation for my laptop (DELL LATITUDE E5420):
There I found that the screen refresh rate was 60 Hz but I don't know how to change that manually in GNOME-Shell, so I tried changing the compiz settings in Unity to see if there was any difference. I still had the issue but I think it was not as severe, it's hard to tell.
Update 2:
The problem exists also in Unity 2D and Gnome-classic. So this problem is perhaps restricted to a display setting or driver problem?
Update 3:
The solution for GNOME-Shell is in the comments to the accepted answer.