Workaround is to blacklist the nouveau driver. In /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf insert the line: blacklist nouveau However, recent updates in Sid fix this for me. Packages are libdrm-nouveau1 2.4.18-5 xserver-xorg-video-nouveau 1:0.0.15+git20100329+7858345-3 On my system, this is no longer a bug.