• OS

  • I am using Linux comfortably

On my PC. Nvidia Quadro K4000. Connected by DP to BenQ EW3270U. Usually very comfortable with my standard Windows 2015 LTSB setup.

For the umpteenth time, I decided to try modern Windows 10, so I clean installed 20H2. It was really not comfortable. Obvious shenanigans displayed while outputting the default wallpaper. Very noisy.

Now I installed Mint 20.1 Cinnamon Edition. It's great! In Nvidia X Server Settings, I am running 450.102.04 and dithering is disabled.

I would say it is slightly inferior (need more time to determine how much) to Windows 10 2015 LTSB using Chome with hardware acceleration disabled (as should now be common knowledge, browsers add eyestrain in addtion to the desktop environment). However. It is very nice to use a modern OS. it is certainly usable.

Now, I had been under the impression that Linux was absolute trash when it came to eye comfort. If I had tried it soley on my Dell XPS 15 7590 with Intel UHD 630 graphics, I would have been confirmed in that believe. After my successful experiment on my desktop PC, I did try Mint 20.1 on my laptop. It was extremely painful, far worse than the already bad Windows 10 20H2 on that same system (and Windows 10 2015 LTSB is very comfortable on that device). This is the opposite to what I experienced on my desktop PC, where Linux was better!

I have tried many distributions on that Dell laptop with Intel UHD 630 graphics, and it has been a tortuous experience each time, consistently leaving me with the warped perception that modern Windows 10 builds are a stronghold of eye relaxation.

What I have gleaned from my experiences is that whatever modern Linux is doing with newer Intel graphics adapters is really just the worst. I would rather stare at some PWM-ridden Samsung phone. On the other hand, and to my great relief, this problem does not seem to extend to the entire Linux "graphics stack" (whatever that means), at least for me! With an (old and pre 9xx and 10xx) Nvidia adapter, I can enjoy a comfortable and modern Linux OS environment.

    I had this small Linux eye strain with any GPU/device/display I have tried so far. Even with ARM boards like Raspberry Pi, ODROID... which have GPUs different from Intel, AMD, Nvidia. As you say the eye strain is not super strong like in modern Windows, but it's there, and for me accumulates over time. Looking at Internet browsers, as usual, is even worse.
    It might still (partially?) be a matter of just finding the right GPU/device, but I can't dismiss the idea that Linux in general does something, when directly connected, that is unnecessary and causing eye strain. I currently (on Android TV) use a Linux distro (Armbian) over the network via a known-good VNC connection, that, as I don't have any eye strain, obviously does not transmit those eye-strain-inducing signals (whatever they are). The downside is that I can't do anything that requires fast video update (YouTube etc.), but at least I can use a desktop, office programs, and browse the Internet with any browser without having eye strain.
    I should mention that deactivating temporal dithering via xrandr (nouveau), Nvidia-X-Settings, Raspberry Pi boot file, provided those settings truly disable all dithering, did not fix this Linux eye strain issue for me.
    The open source nouveau driver for me was better than the official Nvidia one. Might be worth to always test both of them on a new hardware setup.

      KM For what's it worth, during development of VideoDiff I wasn't able to see any inherent flickering or motion on Linux with a "good" GPU other than moving mouse cursor, or blinking cursor in a text box.

      Enabling dithering with amdgpu driver and xrandr did enable dithering, which had severe flicker with certain applications.

      https://wiki.ledstrain.org/docs/appendix/tests/dithering/jtl/

        6 days later

        I can add another data point confirming this. My main device is an Intel Hades Canyon mini-desktop with the AMD Vega graphics. Linux (Ubuntu 20.10) works great on it wih zero issues.

        Trying Linux on my laptop (Asus Zephyrus G14) was a miserable experience though. Not sure what is going on here. I have detailed my experience in another post, so won't repeat it here. For now I am trying to figure out a usable configuration with Windows LTSC and will mess around with Linux later.

          5 days later

          owmyeyes Which Linux distros did you try, and is the Windows 10 significantly more comfortable?

            6 days later

            I have now installed Linux Mint Debian Edition on my old PC that has a GeForce GT 710. The small Linux eye strain is there. It turns into annoying eye strain quickly when I force-enable Firefox's hardware acceleration. The dithering controls seem to do what they should (on my display only noticeable in 6-bit depth), but either there is another dynamic dithering active all the time (is that even possible?) or the source of this small Linux eye strain is not dithering but something else that we have no theory for so far.

            5 days later

            KM After more testing, I agree that it is small, but there, and accumulates over time. Not sure what I'm going to do after things stop working on Classic Windows, which seems far off and yet not so distant at the same time.

            Really glad the Android TV setup with VNC has been such a great solution for you. I hope that TV never dies!

            Does Windows XP still play a role in any of your setups?

            • KM replied to this.
            • KM likes this.

                degen I still have Windows XP installed on the old PC, but it's not like it's very useful nowadays for anything else than some retro games, let alone secure for online use.
                I have a jailbroken PS4 that I have installed an Arch Linux on (psxitarch) some days ago. It seems the Linux eye strain is not there on the desktop. So there may be hope that it's not Linux's or X11's fault. It may all depend on the GPU/driver. The PS4 is x86_64, but sadly has no graphics card that is compatible with a regular PC. As I don't get Wi-Fi nor Ethernet to work, I can't use the PS4 as an Internet PC.
                The PS4's CPU/GPU is from AMD. Maybe it is time to explore more recent AMD GPUs/APUs, just in case they have changed something. I remember some years ago we avoided AMD due to their alleged temporal dithering and instead focused on Nvidia cards.
                Take all this with a grain of salt as I have only used the PS4 Linux for some hours and not used anything hardware-accelerated yet. Sometimes the first impressions can be wrong.

                The last AMD card I tried still used the old radeon driver instead of the newer amdgpu driver. It seems the newer cards are based on a new architecture. Perhaps they are eye-friendly on Linux? To know that I would have to buy a whole new PC with the risk of not being able to turn it into something usable. The amount of money we have to spend on our eye strain journey is unreal at times.

                    16 days later

                    KM I am wondering if we could use Windows 7 32 bit which should have access to 32 bit Windows XP XDDM drivers. No platform update / IE11. And using the XDDM driver should disable some of the rendering changes MS made with Vista and 7.

                    I was looking at Vista with a "Kernel Extender" but of course 7 has better driver support and it seems that pre-Platform update the desktop compositing can be turned off completely but it’s not really the case post-update, even if the option is there. At least that’s how I’m understanding it.

                      8 days later

                      I'm using Fedora 33 with Kernel 5.8 on the Dell XPS 7590 now (UHD 630). It seems like they forgot to install the severe eyestrain. Really not bad at all when not looking in a web browser. Needs more testing for overall comfort, however I feel comfortable saying it's better than Linux Mint 20.1 Cinnamon on the same laptop. Although I think I mentioned before that Linux Mint is better on the Skylake desktop I have with Nvidia graphics, and that's still true.

                      I tried endeavourOS. It was immediately painful on the default Xfce install and the output was very noisy. I think even a normal person might notice all the static.

                        5 days later

                        degen I'm trying out Manjaro KDE (Kernel 5.10) on this laptop now after I saw @ravipra praise of it. I compared it to KDE Neon. Manjaro KDE is clearly better for the eyes than KDE Neon. Less tension in the eye muscles and temples. The text antialiasing seems a bit aggressive though on Manjaro KDE, but if I turn it off it's unreadable.

                        Next I will try and compare Manjaro KDE to Fedora. It would be great if it was better since KDE feels at home coming from Windows. I just can't get a handle on Gnome. Fedora 34 will transition their KDE environment to use Wayland as well so maybe I will wait for that to make my comparison instead of Gnome.

                        My first impression upon switching from Fedora to Manjaro KDE was that my eyes felt way less burning and irritation, but that text was harder to focus on. Need more testing.

                        Post 1507 Windows 10 is just not working for me so I need something that will work on newer hardware which 1507 is struggling to support (currently resorting to hacked drivers on a Comet Lake laptop..). So far my impression is that Manjaro KDE falls somewhere between Windows 1507 (good) and Modern Windows (bad). I'm excited since any improvement over Modern Windows is welcome.

                        Having fun with it as well.

                          @degen , does your laptop, on which you installed Manjaro, have spinning disk or nvme?

                            ravipra Nvme.

                            Only have a desktop with a SSD and a secondary spinning drive, and I don’t usually install OS to the spinning drive. If you think there’s something to that I would give it a try

                            also I accidentally edited your post with my reply. I fixed it now.

                              @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.

                                              4 days later

                                              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.

                                                dev