simply running xrandr with radeon drivers makes screen flicker (also, it's slow)

Furthermore, it seems that program that uses RandR makes the screen flicker - tested with krandrtray.

This makes me think the problem is with the X server (driver), not the individual programs.

I can confirm this on an X1300 card. Although not so slow, "time randr" shows it take 0.4 seconds.

FWIW, I see the same flicker when I start compiz, and compiz does not use xrandr as-is (AFAICS with ltrace and strace).

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. In the development cycle for Intrepid there have been some vast improvements in the open source ati video driver and we could use your help testing them. Could you please download the latest Alpha CD image of Intrepid and test this particular bug just using the Live CD? You can find the latest image at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . Your testing can help make Ubuntu and the open source ati driver even better! Thanks in advance.

I'd say this isn't quite a duplicate. Unless xrandr is relying on gtk for some reason, this is a different issue and should either be considered not a bug or just something that won't be fixed at the worst, and hopefully fixed at best. If this would infact be a bug in itself and related to bug #245383 without the problem in this case being in gtk, then the problem in gtk would be invalid as simply a workaround of a problem actually in the ati drivers or the xserver and just exposed by gtk.

In any case, it probably is fixed now; if you can reproduce it on current Intrepid, feel free to undupe (or file a new bug). make sure to include your /var/log/Xorg.0.log.