The screen itself is not a problem; the graphical rendering is.

Nickonomic

I've made an experiment on an unusable device. I've installed Ubuntu Server with no GUI, only the standard console (TTY). It causes no symptoms. Claude Code, Codex CLI and other tools can be installed and run. Backend coding can be done too. Many hours with no symptoms. Downside is that brightness can't be adjusted (increased) and the resolution can't be lowered (even the biggest font is a bit small).

Then I ran simplest GUI-based consoles like xterm, kitty etc. Got immediate symptoms. For those who don't know Linux, imagine having two console windows that look almost exactly the same - if fact they can be made identical - but one causes symptoms and the other is symptoms free. And it's the same screen, same OS, even the same runtime. You wouldn't even know the difference but your brain would.

macsforme

Did you run xterm in a barebones X environment? In case the GPU driver is at fault, did you try blacklisting it and utilizing the basic framebuffer driver (fbdev?) or an alternative driver if available, and did that make a difference?

Nickonomic

macsforme

Not sure what 'barebones X environment' means exactly. It's Ubuntu Server TTY out of the box that works; and 'startx' to start xterm or any other graphical process that hurts. No, I haven't installed or tried any drivers. The kernel Intel i915 is at work

I briefly read some posts here on turning off dithering on Linux. I would like try if there's an easy instruction.

macsforme

Nickonomic Yes, what you are describing is the barebones X environment. I would suggest blacklisting the Intel driver in your kernel boot arguments and see if that makes a difference in comfort. This may not be a permanent solution, especially if your workflow requires accelerated graphics (and brightness adjustment, like you mentioned), but it would be a starting point at least.

Nickonomic

macsforme

Today I've upgraded the system and it installed 'xe' Intel driver (my laptop has newest hardware). I was able to regulate brightness and other things without X. It's still comfortable inside TTY (no graphics). So, I don't need to modify kernel boot for that matter.

As for disabling the driver, I basically started from this state. What change would it make? I never could tolerate Linux GUI. The surprise is that TTY feels well. It's like BIOS. But BIOS has more colors and better mouse than gpm. If we could extend the bare TTY state to bios-like, it would be great. OR somehow downgrade color acceleration and dithering and all sh-t in X.

Nickonomic

Something totally unexpected has just happened. I may have made linux usable somehow. What I did:

- disabled dGPU (RTX 5070) from BIOS;

- switched to intel i915 driver;

- disabled dithering by writing to GPU register `0x70008` using `intel_reg` from `intel-gpu-tools`

- installed Wayland's Sway component for GUI with foot terminal;

- disable keyboard backlighting.

I've spent the last 2 hours testing and experimenting with this setup -- and got no eyestrain. This is actually the first time every i'm able to use a linux distro with no strain. It has always been the most aggressive environment for me causing neuro symptoms very fast with any desktop or even barebone X server. Take a look at the screenshot:

Fully functional. I haven't installed a desktop environment (DE) yet -- but frankly who needs it when everything's working from terminal including any GUI app?

What's most surprising? I'm running it on a completely unusable (otherwise) notebook! Honor MagicBook with Intel Core Ultra 9 285H (Arrow Lake). It's a top-notch mobile processor. It caused massive pain on ALL Windows (Windows 10 1809 and higher, Windows 11 3 or 4 different builds), on standard linux DE setups.

I'll be testing in the next few weeks to confirm. If my condition holds stable, this is a massive breakthru. Let's see.

Some info about the display after LLM examination:

Your display reports as a 10-bit panel (10 bits per color channel = 30-bit color total).

Panel: TL160MDMP01

Advertised: 10-bit per channel

Interface: DisplayPort

However - and this is important:

Many panels that advertise 10-bit actually achieve it through FRC (Frame Rate Control), which is temporal dithering.

The fact that disabling dithering (register 0x70008) massively helped your eyes strongly suggests this is a 6-bit or 8-bit panel using FRC/dithering to fake 10-bit.