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.

Thanks for sharing this.

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

Thank you.

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 🙂

    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

    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.

      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.

        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."

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

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

          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

            3 months later

            ensete Thanks for the tip I tried this (pasted those lines one by one, don't know how else to do it a .sh file?) and I get this error message:

            "tint2: another systray is running, cannot use systray"

            What shuld I do?

            Well, the first thing you should do is know what environment people are using.

            My comment was for KDE, ensete's was for openbox wm, yours is for xfce.

            I don't agree disabling compositing is necessary every time.

            But for xfce, you can do this: settings > desktop settings > select Xfwm4 instead of Xfwm4 + compositing

              ensete oh I think I got it! It's working really well, I think it solved my problems on my 2014 asus laptop!!! Now do you think I would ruin everything if I install chromium, parsec (with its dependencies) and qredshift? what should we avoid installing for our case? Thank you

              Sunspark I'm a complete noob with linux, I just tried this crunchbang os and I'm loving how the screen feels, so I'll use it with VNC to my main machine

              19 days later

              Solus 4.6, KDE Plasma 6.2.4. Vulkan is available in system menu both for Wayland and for X11

                Ivan_P does this setup work well for you? vulcan rendering on Wayland/KDE?

                  reaganry no difference between software/Vulkan/OpenGL.

                  I don't know if Vulkan working properly on my laptop since with with it I couldn't open any system viewer like settings viewer or files manager

                  dev