Solved eye strain - on Linux

b0rgcube

I have HP Elitebook 840g9 Intel graphics. 12gen Intel cpu. Very basic FHD display with 250 nits

Under Windows, Linux like Ubuntu, Mandaro etc i experienced very painful eye strain.

Finally I installed Kubuntu 24.04.

Under Wayland session I edited compositor and changed default rendering to Vulkan. You have to edit the config files as this option doesn’t appear in the user menu.

zero eye strain! This is so amazing that I even created account here to share it with you guys. I hope it can help some of you.

Markus

Thanks for sharing this.

Can you name the file and what exactly you changed in the file.

Thank you.

b0rgcube

First you have to choose Wayland session instead of X11.

Then in ~/.config/kwinrc
[Compositing]
Backend=Vulkan

Sure, the screen could have been sharper (only FHD), but at least now I don't feel this pain at the back of my eyes when I look at it.

Let me know if that helped 🙂

moonpie

b0rgcube

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/issues/169

It seems the only person working on KWIN+vulkan isn't done and hasn't even merged his work yet. How are you confirming KWIN+vulkan renderer is active and working?

b0rgcube

This thread is year old. Kubuntu 24.04 was released end of April. The code I pasted is from my own running installation. It’s pretty new tech compared to the graphics core in Linux that is decades old, so there might be something how it handles latest gear. I encourage you to try it as in my case the different was quite striking. You can also update the kernel to version >6.8.40 where the xe driver was finally merged instead of i915 for Intel cards. But it also works on kernel 6.8.33 which ships with kubuntu 24.04

moonpie

You created this thread 2 days ago. Vulkan rendering backend feature does not exist yet. That is why I am asking how you are confirming it is working.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=489233

Xrender was removed but the above suggest "software" enables it still. If you aren't using opengl, you are using software rendering not vulkan.

b0rgcube

moonpie I tried XRandr and OpenGL backends and the image was causing me headaches. It’s only with this latest version of Kubuntu when I put Vulkan as a backend I experience no pain. Vulkan and XRandr backends produce different image quality on my laptop. So I assume Vulkan in my setup is something different than software rendering. I can only say try this setup yourself. I don’t get any bugs and rendering is working.

moonpie

b0rgcube

Vulkan does not exist as a rendering for kwin at all right now so you did not use it.

Xrender was removed 3 years ago so you didn't use it.

https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/1088

"You can set the LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE environment variable to force llvmpipe."

Replace "vulkan" with "software" and you should get the same result. Or you can try the above undocumented way to force llvmpipe.

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=443086

"As a workaround for those that need it, users may add LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=true and GALLIUM_DRIVER=llvmpipe to $HOME/.config/plasma-workspace/env/path.sh. This is however, both unfriendly and not well documented, whereas a checkbox in the settings app would be obvious and user-friendly."

moonpie

Tried this and rendering backend stayed opengl. Couldn't even force software.

Sunspark

If you just want to turn off the compositor, just do it in the settings, or press shift-alt-F12.

ensete

Sunspark On my crunch bang plus plus Debian install, all you have to do is remove the cbpp-compositor line from your ~/.config/openbox/autostart:

(\ nitrogen --restore && \ cbpp-compositor --start && \ sleep 2s && \ tint2 \ ) &

And that disable compositing. That results in a pretty decent desktop for me