who can use Linux but not windows? Share your Linux setup

WhisperingWind no i915. Maybe haven't installed the GPU driver. new to linux.

autobot

I tried Ubuntu 18.04, but my graphics card didn't work properly; it has the Xe architecture. I looked and didn't see the Xe module among the kernel modules. So, it turns out that support for the graphics card is missing, and perhaps the improvements are specifically due to the lack of the necessary driver and hardware acceleration out of the box.

The i915 module is necessary for the operation of any Intel graphics card, but it seems that it is not loaded on your system due to the lack of support for the Xe architecture in the old kernel.

P.S. Intel's Xe architecture is a part of the Intel UHD Graphics lineup.

WhisperingWind Could be it's because of lack of GPU.I'll try looking at the ubuntu 22.04 based system, see if the driver is there.

autobot

If I'm not mistaken, support for Intel Xe should be available starting with kernel version 5.15. Run the command

uname -r,

it will show the kernel version.

I am using the last Ubuntu 22.04, and I can confirm that Xe support is available in this version.

Sunspark

The drivers for graphics devices in the Linux kernel can be found in the drivers/gpu/drm directory. These drivers are included with the kernel itself, and some of them continue to receive updates and improvements over time.

Mesa, on the other hand, is an implementation of graphics APIs such as OpenGL and Vulkan, and it operates at a higher level than the device drivers themselves. However, Mesa includes what are known as DRI drivers, but these are not device drivers in the traditional sense and are part of the Direct Rendering Infrastructure (DRI). These DRI drivers interface with the actual device drivers in the kernel.

In simple terms, Mesa is a way to make hardware acceleration faster by shortening the path from the application to the kernel's graphics device drivers.

P.S. Based on my experience of "digging" into the kernel, although I might be missing something and there might have been something like that in the past.

I'm curious, wouldn't this be a decent strategy(even for games), on the desktop, against strain:

1. Buy a desktop with a strong multi-core CPU, and disable the GPU driver, to use software rendering

2. Use the rendering layers above the GPU that cause the least strain?

,,,,,,,,,,,,

DisplaysShouldNotBeTVs

I ran into some color management issues that I need to figure out.

The video recorded by the device uses Limited Range 16-235, which makes white look gray. Switching between Limited Range and Full Range in BetterDisplay for the recorder doesn't fix the issue.

The recorder can also take screenshots (a separate feature from video recording). These screenshots are in TGA format, and in those, the white background in the browser looks white with a value of 255. But there are differences in shades between the screenshots taken directly on the M1 Mac and on the recorder because the profile generated by macOS is not accurate (?). I also tried standard profiles, and it's the same story everywhere; the shades differ.

TGA should be lossless (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truevision_TGA), but the presence of something similar to aberrations around some colored objects seems strange to me. I need to figure this out as well.

Below are links to screenshots taken directly on my M1 Mac (Screenshot_X.png) and screenshots taken through the HDMI recorder (Recorder_X.tga): https://file.io/7N0aPzOsfdPg

If you need frames directly from the video, let me know, and I'll send those too, but they are in Limited Range 16-235.

I came across something interesting. In Linux, if I enable 6-bit color, it seems that the FRC module on a 6bit+FRC monitor continues to strain my eyes a bit when reading. I replaced the Linux profile with the one from macOS. The eye strain when reading text disappeared, and the screen became a bit calmer. I've been testing this for two days now, and there's no mistake - the effect is almost immediate in terms of eye strain when reading text or lack thereof.

It's possible that an incorrect color profile set by default in Linux could have affected color conversion, leading to incorrect interpretation of the 6-bit signal. This might have triggered FRC activation for compensation, even if the output was specifically set to 6-bit. But this is just a hypothesis for now.

WhisperingWind the presence of something similar to aberrations around some colored objects seems strange to me

if you see this, these are pretty much what's going on

1 (2011, Samsung):

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241222779_Depth_Perception_Enhancement_based_on_Chromostereopsis

2 (2017):

https://www.rose-hulman.edu/class/cs/csse451/Research%20paper/2019-papers/ChromaBlur.pdf

3 (2018, continuation of 2, funded by Intel Labs):

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6126933/

prior work that eventually lead up to this goes back to the mid-2000s, possibly earlier

https://jov.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2121865

jordan

The monitor's color profiles have different triangle coordinates (color gamut), different white points, and different gamma. Here's an example comparing two color profiles of my monitor from macOS and Linux. As you can see, there's a shift towards the yellow spectrum in Linux, which theoretically could be interpreted by the monitor as coordinates beyond the 6-bit range (but I'm not an expert in this): https://ibb.co/mRd9YtN

I checked the color profiles for my TV: the triangle coordinates (color gamut) are the same, but the white point and gamma differ, which should not cause dithering at 8+ bits (TV has 8+FRC). This means that not all devices may have the issue; it definitely won't be a problem if the monitor doesn't support FRC.

What PC is this? The a770 one?

I don't know if Windows generates color profiles, but it can be checked.

jordan

Try Ubuntu 18, which the autobot installed. It seems that it doesn't support the Xe architecture, on which the A770 is based. It’s necessary to check that the i915 and xe modules are not loaded using the lsmod terminal command.

If Ubuntu 18 is comfortable, so the monitor should be fine and the graphics card in basic mode is also okay. If that's not the case, then there's probably not much that can be done here without changing hardware. But it's hard to say for sure, as everyone has different sensitivity in their eyes, but for me, reading in this case is quite comfortable.

If everything is okay, then you can switch to newer versions of Linux where video card support is available and try different desktop environments with various compositors. Try turning off text anti-aliasing in Ubuntu Tweaks (apt install gnome-tweaks).

P.S. I agree 100% with JTL: you need to understand what specifically strains your eyes (vivid colors, contrast, high brightness of white areas, etc). This way, you'll have a set of small tasks to address, with the ability to check the results. This will be more manageable.

moonpie What if we disable the GPU, aim at a reasonably expensive fast CPU(for ex. $500-600$), with the goal of running all steam games before a given date(for ex. before 2018) ?

Would this work reasonably well , for those who are willing to settle on the gaming experience?