I am using Linux comfortably

@degen,

The context is that a couple of years back I had switched from ManjaroKDE to Arch KDE in the name of building my own slimmer installation. However, when I tried Manjaro KDE a couple of weeks back, it seems better than Arch KDE. I learned several things on this during the past couple of weeks. This is all on spinning disk on a laptop. So, not sure how much mileage you would get out of this. But, thought we can compare notes. Here is what I have, for several of which I do not have metric oriented explanations:

Mnajaro KDE version: 20.2.1

1. Manjaro KDE is better than Arch KDE.
2. Manjaro KDE is better than Manjaro KDE Minimal.
3. While installing, Manjaro KDE "Open Source Drivers" option is better than "Proprietary Drivers" option.
4. Partitioning scheme has an impact on eye comfort. Having a single partition for everything is the worst option. Best option is to isolated largely read-only partitions from the other I/O types. For example, / is largely read-only, where as /home is typically read-write, and /var is largely write-only. So, minimally having separate partitions for /, /var, and /home would be good. Separating /boot also may be a good idea. Another variation is to have /var and /home to use the same partition and doing bind mount for /home. Using this separation, I am able to use Manjaro KDEcomfortably on what we would call a crappy (laptop) monitor!
5. If you are using ext4, it may take upto a couple of hours to do lazy initialization after formatting, where disk writes will be higher. Its better not to judge the display quality during this time.
6. The urge to turn-off sub-pixel rendering (SPR) means the installation is already under trouble. In my experience, SPR itself is not the problem, its the slowness of something that is giving the strain. I could easily tolerate SPR on Gentoo KDE (after tuning the USE flags a lot), and FreeBSD KDE (out of the box). The problem with these distributions is that its very difficult to get some things working, such as audio, zoom, slack. Its not impossible, but need to put in a lot of effort. Else, I would switch to FreeBSD KDE without a second thought!

Hope this helps.

ravipra Have you tried KDE Neon and made any comparisons? It's quick to install, or you can run it off a USB stick to try it out.

KM Can you describe the known-good VNC connection in more detail?

K-Moss , I tried it an year back or so, but either it was the same or worse. I will give it another shot. You seem to have good experience with it, right?

ravipra Yes, but my experience is limited. I've only used Ubuntu Unity and Ubuntu MATE. I like KDE Neon better in all ways.

K-Moss , I tried to install Neon on 3 laptops. In all the three the installation (live) usb fails to boot. May be I will wait for the next version and give it a try then.

degen I have tried many distributions on that Dell laptop with Intel UHD 630 graphics

Do you mean Intel UHD 620 graphics @degen ? I thought 630 was just for desktops. In any case, wondering if you ever found a distro that worked on your Dell XPS?

I have found Linux to vary from Distro to Distro

Mint never worked well for me, but Lubuntu with XFCE was pretty decent

I've came across the Trinity Desktop Environment, which is a modern fork of KDE3. Could be worth trying given it's "older".

KM Can you describe the known-good VNC connection in more detail?

KM Thanks a lot. What vnc tool/which version are using from your known-good desktop to connect to another desktop that is not save for you? I.e. which setup do you use to access ledstrain?

KM 30 Hz does contribute to the strain, but not significantly.

KM can you tell us more to the other hardware of you desktop, CPU type and generation? What means compositing disabled, how to enable that? Does current browser usage with Debain 11 cause more strain?

Markus It's a very old system: Dell OptiPlex 755, Core2 Duo E7300 @ 2.66 GHz. Disabling compositing for Xfce means going to "Applications - Settings - Window Manager Tweaks - Compositor" and to uncheck "Enable display compositing". I use the Firefox browser, which has the version 102.6.0esr. By default, it does not use hardware acceleration unless it is explicitly enabled in about:config. I don't think the default settings cause additional eye strain.
I also disabled font anti-aliasing and installed the Microsoft TrueType core fonts (known from Windows XP), which unlike other fonts still look good when anti-aliasing is disabled. A downside is those fonts haven't been updated in years, missing modern Unicode characters (like the search icon in this forum's search bar for example). Disabling anti-aliasing may or may not have an impact, I'm not sure about that yet.

KM can you tell me the full name of the MSI GT710 card. The don't know which name match to the first generation. I will give you setup a try. Thanks a lot for your detailed information.

Markus MSI Nvidia Geforce GT 710 1GB DDR3 PCI-E 2.0 HDMI + DL-DVI-D.
I know there's a later generation of this card. I'm not sure how to distinguish them.

KM Try the Bitstream Vera fonts too, I like the mono one in particular. They're also fully hinted and from the same era. https://download.gnome.org/sources/ttf-bitstream-vera/1.10/

I'm looking for other options as Windows 2015 LTSB isn't cutting it for me. Anyone recommend a comfortable distro I should try?