Our Java 2D application exhibits screen tearing when run on Linux. It does not exhibit any tearing when running on Windows. We've spent significant time analyzing our code, and haven't yet found a cause there. While I'm never one to decide that it must not be my code at fault, I'm also entertaining the possibility that the issue is with the Java 2D rendering pipeline on Linux. By the way, please note that we see the tearing with both Java 6 and Java 7. When running on Java 7, we see the tearing regardless of whether we enable the XRender pipeline or not.

We are of course using double-buffering via a `BufferStrategy`. The `BufferStrategy` implementation we get when we call `Frame.createBufferStrategy(2)` is a `java.awt.Component$FlipSubRegionBufferStrategy`. In addition, calling `isPageFlipping()` on the `BufferStrategy`'s `BufferCapabilities` returns true, and calling `isFullScreenRequired()` on the capabilities returns false. We are not running in full-screen exclusive mode, though we have tried doing so and it did not resolve the issue. `BufferCapabilities.getFlipContents()` returns `FlipContents.UNDEFINED` (but I suspect that is not relevant).

Since page-flipping is supposedly supported and we're getting a page-flipping `BufferStrategy` (rather than a blitting strategy), I would not expect the rendering pipeline to be causing the tearing. However, I found a mailing list message written by Chet Haase back in 2006 addressing a screen tearing problem which states, "It's possible that the Flip strategy on your particular platform is actually doing a copy behind the scenes, which would be the same as the BltBufferStrategy, which runs smack into the refresh artifact."

**How can I determine if the flip strategy we're getting is not actually page-flipping?**

Chet also states, "Running fullscreen with a BufferStrategy is a decent way to work around this; depending on the platform and the situation, we will usually give you a Flip strategy, which is (usually) synchronized with the vertical refresh of the display to avoid tearing."

**How can I determine if the strategy is synchronized with the display's vertical refresh?**

(See <http://www.mail-archive.com/java2d-interest@capra.eng.sun.com/msg03743.html> for the full message from Chet Haase referenced above)