Eyestrain when switching from Windows to Linux

Pudentane · Sep 30, 2020

Alright, apparently what Wallboy says is TRUE. Sooner than T60p, I got this T43 15" (1440x1050 FlexView/IPS ?) with ATI Mobility X300 and have been testing it under older linux distro (opensuse 11.2) using free radeon driver. No eyestrain. For the first time in my life there was NO eyestrain under linux + LCD display. I'm pretty sure it's nothing to do with thinkpad display IPS or not. I was also thinking of trying out proprietary driver too, but I don't really want to break this system as 'fglrx' is known to cause more issues than any free linux driver ever did. With Ndivia is the other way around, though.

So, now that we are really getting somewhere, perhaps, a few more people should join the experiment and play with their old hardware.

SSunspark · Sep 30, 2020

Pudentane It's good to have at least one good old system that works well, but I feel older hardware is not the answer when a lot of modern software that people need for work just won't run on it. There is always new stuff coming down the pike, in 2021 we will see microled displays finally, etc. The T43 is a fine machine, but it's also a single-core 32 bit cpu.

JJTL · Sep 30, 2020

Sunspark but it's also a single-core 32 bit cpu.

I know someone who had one of the first 64-bit dual core laptops in 2006.

Pudentane · Sep 30, 2020

Sunspark Oh, but I'm not saying we should all go back to ancient machines. T43 as well as all T's from 40 to 60 is just a little vintage passion of mine, which I also took advantage of to kindly provide this input. Obviously, I like to think it was somewhat useful. At least now we can tell them "But it's not present on older GPUs!". It's definitely something as opposed to complete ignorance we were facing earlier. Now the million dollar question is: what exactly went wrong and when?

Gggp110 · Oct 8, 2020

I facing the same problem here! I used to think the problem was only mine. Thanks God i found this forum. I will try disabling dithering.

Pudentane · Oct 13, 2020

ggp110 not going to help i'm afraid. At least it never helped me nor too many people in here. Some claim they just can't disable it, though I found no issues doing that, just that it doesn't fix the eye-strain at all. The truth is, you can't really do anything about it. We have tried everything and all we have concluded so far is that a) It's non-existent on certain legacy GPUs and b) It seems to be absent if using very basic video drivers like VESA, since they don't harness the full potential of your GPU and therefore the problem is not triggered. What we could do is an in-depth research and report it to AMD, Nvidia and Linux devs in every minute detail and perhaps they could finally do something about it. I don't think we can fix it ourselves, it's just too delicate.

jowCode · Oct 15, 2020

Hey there. I am glad to find other people with the same issue. As I am a developer I usually sit about 10 hours a day in front of my screen and the most important thing for me is: NO EYESTRAIN.
For my work I have to use a Windows 10 Machine with no issues. Privately I switched to linux but just can't use it for longer than 10 minutes which makes it useless for me even though I'd loved to use it.
I have read all posts here and can confirm everything. I also fiddled around with the mentioned settings with no luck so far. I will try to reach out the issue to the askNoah show. I am sure he will try its best to help because he supports people who are switching from Windows to Linux.

Pudentane · Oct 17, 2020

jowCode but just can't use it for longer than 10 minutes which makes it useless for me even though I'd loved to use it

Boy, I wish I had a dollar every time I heard that... welcome aboard, comrade in misfortune. Just one question: have you tried the basic VESA driver? Also, have you seen this thread: https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/eye-strain-from-certain-video-modes-drivers.53468/ ?

Ssi_edgey · Oct 18, 2020

jowCode For my work I have to use a Windows 10 Machine with no issues. Privately I switched to linux but just can't use it for longer than 10 minutes which makes it useless for me even though I'd loved to use it.

Just to clarify - are you booting Linux on the same hardware that Windows 10 runs on without issue?

HHAL9000 · Oct 20, 2020

Recently my Lenovo z500 died a nvidia related death so I replaced the motherboard with an ebay one, it doesnt have an nvidia chip on it now, I swapped the same CPU over and installed Ubuntu 18.04 - was ok. Ubuntu 20.04 though? - NOT OK. Text looks fuzzy and it gives me some strain. Its better on 18.04 but that goes out of support soon. I also tried Kubuntu but this is similar.

I may try to put W10 on it but I dont think the hardware was ever supported as its quite old. (it had W8 on before the board swap) and this machine was fine for me to use with its built in and external screens on the HD4000 graphics. (but I would guess the external screens used the nvidia chip it had at the time - which it doesnt have now)

Pudentane · Oct 20, 2020

HAL9000 you don't happen to be on freenode, do you? There is someone with a nickname just like yours on my channel

HHAL9000 · Oct 27, 2020

Pudentane

Nope, not me

Pudentane · Nov 12, 2020

Breaking news: some folks report an absolutely strainless distro, which is ROSA Linux. Anyone cares to test it out?

SSunspark · Nov 13, 2020

Pudentane I am skeptical that any version is fine, but I do have a question since I was curious enough to look up this distro. The people reporting this, which version were they using? 11.1 uses the 5.4 kernel and 11 uses the 4.15 kernel.

JJTL · Nov 13, 2020

Pudentane Who are "some folks"?

If a definite "good version" on a hardware setup is identified, should be able to isolate what's different with some work.

Pudentane · Nov 13, 2020

Sunspark no idea, but I don't think it really matters. Probably the latest one. I also got a response from kernel.org to whom I recently addressed this issue and here's what they say:

Thank you for writing your concerns. Unfortunately, we can only offer
help with kernel.org infrastructure, not any technical aspects of the
kernel itself. I suggest you email dri-devel@lists.freedesktop.org with
your concerns.

So, I forwarded the complaint to these guys. I also provided the link to this thread in the letter.

Who are "some folks"?

People on https://www.linux.org.ru. I created a respective thread there too and turns out a handful of them are also affected by it and they also confirmed the issue being non-existent on much older hardware.

SSunspark · Nov 14, 2020

Pudentane no idea, but I don't think it really matters. Probably the latest one.

I went to that forum and looked for the thread and found it. I saw two people who said it was ok, one specified that it was 11.1 so the 5.4 kernel but neither of them specified which DE they were using. It's not really a big deal to check all of them since there's only 4. I still don't think it'll make a difference as the hardware used does matter, but I'll take a look this weekend. Hopefully the installer includes multiple languages.

(Btw, I'm not Russian, I was using computer translation.)

SSunspark · Nov 15, 2020

So, as promised, I took a look at the Rosa 11.1 spins. They are bootable off a flash drive, which if using Rufus needs to be written in DD mode not ISO.

Overall, old and no real surprises. I looked at LXQt, Plasma 5, KDE 4, XFCE. Of the four, I found Plasma 5 and XFCE to be the worst. KDE 4 was meh and the UI is atrocious now. The best one was LXQt. So the kernel is 5.4, and this was version 14.1 of LXQt being used here which uses the 5.11.2 QT libraries. The window manager it is using is the default, Openbox. (FYI, the difference between the older LXDE and LXQt is the toolkit library it is using. LXDE was GTK and also that they are separate projects with some overlap, but it is not a rewrite)

While it couldn't be changed at this time due to running off the usb flash drive, of the 4 graphics drivers that are an option for use (UXA, modesetting, i915 and VESA) I believe the stick was booting up using the i915 driver which is a clue.

Overall I was pleasantly surprised that LXQt was not awful and I will be taking another look at it again, perhaps in a different distro.

If someone wishes to take a look at Rosa's version of LXQt, grab the torrent and throw it on a usb drive. http://mirror.rosalab.ru/rosa/rosa2016.1/iso/ROSA.Fresh.R11.1/

SSunspark · Nov 16, 2020

Interesting.. I threw Fedora 33's spin of LXQt on a stick and took a look. It's using a different graphics driver compared to Rosa. The image didn't look as good. I kind of want to try OpenBSD to see how it compares visually, except for the fact that I can't boot off an external usb drive with it which is a problem since I don't have space on the internal drive right now.

The screen in Rosa lxqt of course is not as good as Windows, but it's definitely better than what I have seen elsewhere in Linux.

BBienias · Feb 12, 2021

I have the same problem with Linux. In the last years, I work mostly on Windows Machines because of Visual Studio.
But once per while I need to change to full Linux Desktop. Yesterday I worked like 9 hours on Mint 19 with Nvidia GT1050. After 10 minutes I had enough, after 2 hours I started to take a painkiller for a headache, after 9 hours and a half bag of painkillers, I was completely wasted. I survived just to return home, take more painkillers and sleep 12 hours because of eye strain and headache.
For me it starts a few years ago with Linux, I tried to find on the internet some solutions, fonts, change drivers, dpi, etc. Nothing works in past. Today thanks for your forum - I ordered old AMD 6570 and I hope it works. I will update in next week results.