Screen tearing: is reboot required to test fixes?

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I’m experiencing screen tearing on a new laptop running NixOS. When attempting to fix it with a configuration change such as those mentioned in the NixOS manual (e.g. changing services.xserver.videoDrivers and/or services.xserver.deviceSection), or changes to services.picom, should a reboot be necessary to test the fix?

I’ve been testing with just nixos-rebuild test. So far nothing has helped, and I wondered if some configuration changes might actually require a reboot to take effect.

For context, this is on a ThinkPad X1 Carbon gen 9, running xmonad and no desktop environment. The screen tearing occurs around 15% to 20% from the top of the screen when scrolling vertically (e.g. in chromium) or watching video.

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You need to restart the X server, not necessarily reboot. nixos-rebuild won’t trigger these events, as most people don’t want their desktop restarted :slight_smile:

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Glad I asked, thanks!

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