Strange Artifacts on the Panel

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

I've been seeing strange things on my panel for about a week or two.
 They are triangles or lines extending horizontally from a region of
some color, narrowing to a point.  They last generally for up to about
30 seconds.  Attached is a picture of such an artifact
(PanelArtifact.jpg), taken with my cell phone.  Note the black stripe
just above "System Information".  Has anyone seen anything like this

System: Fedora-32 all updates installed
Processor:  4 x Intel i5 4460 CPU at 3.2 GHz
Memory:  15.5 GiB RAM
Video System: Xorg (not Wayland)
Graphics: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600
KDE Plasma: 5.20.5
KDE Framework: 5.78.0

[Doug H.]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 7:49 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  I've been seeing strange things on my panel for about a week or
> two.  
>  They are triangles or lines extending horizontally from a region of 
>  some color, narrowing to a point.  They last generally for up to about 
>  30 seconds.  Attached is a picture of such an artifact 
>  (PanelArtifact.jpg), taken with my cell phone.  Note the black stripe 
>  just above "System Information".  Has anyone seen anything like this 

It sort of looks like it would be coming from whatever icon is to the left of the
clipboard icon. When this stops happening, is there another icon there?


-- 
 Doug Herr
fedoraproject.org(a)wombatz.com

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2021-01-28 at 08:57 -0800, Doug H. wrote:
>  On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 7:49 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  > I've been seeing strange things on my panel for about a week or
>  > two.  
>  > They are triangles or lines extending horizontally from a region of
>  > some color, narrowing to a point.  They last generally for up to
>  > about 
>  > 30 seconds.  Attached is a picture of such an artifact 
>  > (PanelArtifact.jpg), taken with my cell phone.  Note the black
>  > stripe 
>  > just above "System Information".  Has anyone seen anything like
>  > this
>  
>  It sort of looks like it would be coming from whatever icon is to the
>  left of the clipboard icon. When this stops happening, is there
>  another icon there? 
There is another icon there, the kalarm icon.  But I don't think this
has anything to do with the issue.  Artifacts appear all over the
panel: they appear to be extended from any icon on the panel and seem
to have something to do with the cursor.  I had thought it had
something to so with overloading the system; I frequently run Firefox
with many windows and tabs; but the artifacts appear whether or not
Firefox is running.

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2021-01-28 at 07:49 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  I've been seeing strange things on my panel for about a week or
> two.
>   They are triangles or lines extending horizontally from a region of
>  some color, narrowing to a point.  They last generally for up to
>  about 30 seconds.  Attached is a picture of such an artifact
>  (PanelArtifact.jpg), taken with my cell phone.  Note the black stripe
>  just above "System Information".  Has anyone seen anything like this
>  
>  System: Fedora-32 all updates installed
>  Processor:  4 x Intel i5 4460 CPU at 3.2 GHz
>  Memory:  15.5 GiB RAM
>  Video System: Xorg (not Wayland)
>  Graphics: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600
>  KDE Plasma: 5.20.5
>  KDE Framework: 5.78.0 
Could it be a hardware issue?  It has an intermittent quality that
looks like hardware trouble; but then why would the artifacts happen
only in the panel?

[Doug H.]

On Thu, Jan 28, 2021, at 9:53 AM, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  Could it be a hardware issue?  It has an intermittent quality that 
>  looks like hardware trouble; but then why would the artifacts happen 
>  only in the panel?
>   
You can move the panel to the top and see if the artifacts follow.


-- 
 Doug Herr
fedoraproject.org(a)wombatz.com

[Jonathan Ryshpan]

On Thu, 2021-01-28 at 09:53 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  On Thu, 2021-01-28 at 07:49 -0800, Jonathan Ryshpan wrote:
>  > I've been seeing strange things on my panel for about a week or
>  > two.  They are triangles or lines extending horizontally from a
>  > region of some color, narrowing to a point.  They last generally
>  > for up to about 30 seconds.  Attached is a picture of such an
>  > artifact (PanelArtifact.jpg), taken with my cell phone.  Note the
>  > black stripe just above "System Information".  Has anyone seen
>  > anything like this
>  > 
>  > System: Fedora-32 all updates installed
>  > Processor:  4 x Intel i5 4460 CPU at 3.2 GHz
>  > Memory:  15.5 GiB RAM
>  > Video System: Xorg (not Wayland)
>  > Graphics: Mesa DRI Intel HD Graphics 4600
>  > KDE Plasma: 5.20.5
>  > KDE Framework: 5.78.0
>  
>  Could it be a hardware issue?  It has an intermittent quality that
>  looks like hardware trouble; but then why would the artifacts happen
>  only in the panel? 
Continuing: It does look like a hardware issue that affects only KDE
Plasma.  I see these things intermittently and only in plasma, i.e. the
desktop, the panel, and the start menu.  They have become more
pronounced, often flickering between this (normal)

and this (black panel, etc)

I'm planning to replace the CPU intel i5-4460 with an intel i7-4790.
 Let's see it it makes a difference.