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

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?

Installed Zorin os lite 17.2, based

on ubuntu 22.10.

Driver - i915.

Disabled xfce compositor(colors became somewhat muted), disabled font anti-aliasing, disabled firefox "hw acceleration" , disabled firefox "pages choose their own font".

Based on short testing, feels good. But needs more testing.

I came across an interesting comment in the kernel (module i915):

'For Display < 13, Bits 5-7 of PIPE MISC represent DITHER BPC with valid values of: 6, 8, 10 BPC.

ADLP+, the bits 5-7 represent PORT OUTPUT BPC with valid values of: 6, 8, 10, 12 BPC.'

I think '13' refers to the 13th generation of Intel; ADLP stands for Alder Lake P.

I wonder if this confirms that ADLP and later generations are free from dithering.

JTL thank you, that is very helpful.

I looked there, found this registers manual that includes info about dither registers:

https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/703047/intel-gfx-prm-osrc-tgl-vol-02-c-command-reference-registers-part-2.pdf

• It's iris xe gen 11th but alder lake n is 12th generation, but the registers are Probably the same
• And yes, registers 7:5 from PIPE_MISC are responsible for dither_bpc, like the source code

WhisperingWind

A. There are a few registers interacting, not only from PIPE_MISC, Probably, so we need to understand them and dump them all to test.

B. Another way to test whether its hardware or software or driver creating the issue is to try Zorin Os with gpu and with the settings I mentioned previously.

When ACM is turned on, the 4th and 8th bits (counting from right to left starting at zero) are set to one. The 4th bit is for Dithering enable, and the 8th is for Pixel Rounding. The dithering is present.

If you set the 6th bit but do not set the 4th bit, the monitor will simply switch to a 6-bit mode without dithering (the FRC module of my monitor goes crazy during Spatial Dithering, so it can be detected).

autobot

I think the most interesting part is the pipeline register.

UPD. I was wrong. I found another interesting register related to dithering: TRANS_DDI_FUNC_CTL_A (0x60400). Bits 22-20 (page 1343), this register works together with the pipeline register.

https://cdrdv2-public.intel.com/703047/intel-gfx-prm-osrc-tgl-vol-02-c-command-reference-registers-part-2.pdf