Graphical glitches using Ubuntu 18.04 on Dell XPS 13 2019 laptop

My laptop keeps on having weird screen glitches, sometimes for a second, and that goes away just by moving the cursor, sometimes, making me restart the whole thing.

I could still use the play/pause key and it still played/paused the video that was running even though the screen was completely teared.

Also, printscreens actually print a normal screen and do not show the problem.

Some pictures of the screen when it happens : image1 image2

Do you guys know what I could do to solve the issue ?

This is not screen tearing, these are quite severe graphical glitches, which you may find occur more frequently when on battery power. This is probably related to a more recent type of Intel graphics in that laptop, and the kernel mode drivers still need to catchup.

See whether adding i915.enable_psr=0 to your kernel boot line helps. For how to add that particular command line option, I can refer to another post on AskUbuntu. This disables a power saving feature and so will cause your system to use a bit more battery.

Update: I still need the setting in Ubuntu 20.04 on kernel 5.4.0-40-generic

Update: I may still need it on 20.10: after resuming from a blank screen, glitches occurred.

If Vanadium's solution is not effective, it could be a hardware fault between the screen and the graphics adapter circuit on the laptop motherboard. If the ribbon cable which connects the two is unfastened, disconnected, reconnected, and refastened, that has solved the problem in other Dell laptops as well as other makes.

Since there are literally a dozen XPS 13 laptop models, I can't get specific without knowing the Service Tag number from the underside of the laptop with which to look up the model.

However, if it's a 2019 laptop, you probably have a warranty, and should be talking with Dell Support about it if you do.