Screen tearing on Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I recently switched to Ubuntu 18.04, and had a lot of problems but managed to fix most. I am using a laptop with an i5-7200U and an NVidia GTX950M. I have installed the latest drivers, wine games work just fine.

The thing is: I don't know which graphic card is used in the system, whether it is the integrated one or the dedicated, and I have A LOT of screen tearing while moving things around while scrolling on the browser etc.

Is there a way to force enable vsync or fix the tearing otherwise?

EDIT: As requested by David, here is the result of the first command: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/JXZXcBn56T/

And as for the log: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/rtMyC88sRg/

Answer 1

Nvidia suggests version 390 driver for your GPU. Install it by running-

sudo apt install nvidia-driver-390

Some additional tool like Nvidia X Server Settings will be automatically installed. This program will allow you to see what card is being used or to select the card you want to use.

For the workloads where you want to use Intel integrated graphics (which uses less power but poorer quality), this may solve the tearing-

Create an empty file anywhere using right-click menu. Name it 20-intel.conf Open it using any text editor (like Gedit, Mousepad etc.) and insert the following lines:-

Section "Device"

Identifier "Intel Graphics"
Driver "intel"
Option "AccelMethod" "sna"
Option "TearFree" "true"

EndSection

Save the file. Open your file manager with root privilege (exp: sudo -i nautilus). Paste the file in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d Create the requisite folders if they don’t exist. Restart the system after it’s done. If you experience issues like pixelated graphics, corrupt text, etc. after this, replace the word sna with uxa within the text.