Ubuntu 18.04 Mouse Pointer Blinks and disappears on one screen after setting HiDPI scaling with xrandr

Question

I use Ubuntu 18.04, on Dell XPS 15. There is a huge difference in the resolution of my screens, so when I plugged external monitors, either everything was too big on external monitors or everything was so small on laptop monitor. I used xrandr to setup the scaling as follows:

xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 1x1 --pos 0x2400
xrandr --output HDMI-1 --scale 2x2 --pos 0x350
xrandr --output DP-2-8 --scale 2x2 --pos 2560x0

eDP-1 is the laptop monitor with resolution 3840x2160, HDMI-1 is a VGA monitor with resolution 1280x1024, for which I use a VGA to HDMI converter to connect and DP-2-8 is another monitor with resolution 1920x1200 connected via display port. After doing this, mouse pointer started to blink, and even disappear only on eDP-1 but not on other screens, when CPU is in use. Let's say I open the settings window for Bluetooth, I cannot see mouse pointer, if I open an email, it blinks a couple of times and stabilizes. Does any one have similar problems or any idea what's going on?

Solution 1

Adding an xorg configuration file as mentioned here helped me to solve the problem.

Solution 2

Run the following xrandr command after yours:

xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale 0.9999x0.9999

Comments

[Kylea]

I can confirm the exact same behaviour with my XPS 15 9570: xrandr --output eDP-1 --scale .5x.5 --mode 3840x2160 --output DP-1-2 --scale 1x1 --mode 2560x1440 --fb 6400x2880 --pos 0x0 --left-of eDP-1

[fx-kirin]

I used this method to make xorg configuation file. askubuntu.com/questions/4662/…

[PenumbraBrah]

This worked for me in Linux Mint; I don't know why, but it did.

[Yan King Yin]

Miraculous! thanks :)

[Erveron]

This answer is not really good enough to solve the problem. At least for newbie like me.