Comment # 5 on bug 935527 from Alfonso Garcia

This is weird. I booted with 13.2 stock kernel adding i915.fastboot=1 to the
boot command line. And faster it booted, and also skipping the mode change
avoided the tearing and flickering.

However, the X mouse cursor was solid black, no matter which theme I selected
in KDE control centre.

But then, forcing a mode change by switching to a text console with CTR+ALT+F1
made the tearing and flicker appear again, both in text and graphics mode. But
this time the cursor appears normally.

So it is definitely the mode change functionality that is broken in 13.2's
driver.