Eyestrain when switching from Windows to Linux

hello all!

sorry for eng, I am not native.
I can not believe this thread is exists. Linux is constantly improving. Even the version of my loveliest game with full version available only on linux that I play on linux. BUT, this incredible eye strain every time I restart using linux every years after years just kills my eyes and stopping using linux after few days. I had success to setup clear linux, fedora, opensuse, played this game for hours. Configured and messed with these destros for hours, and my eyes just become exhausted, and my blood vessels in my eyes become red and noticeable, and the feeling that someone with a needle just stabbing your eyes.
I know linux is very powerful on server, on supercomputer etc. But the desktop environment just kills my eyes. I set up Microsoft fonts with anti aliasing off, and with full hinting, with as sharp fonts as on windows. BUT is still very bad. ON kde and gnome too.

Until this issue is not fixed I can not switch to linux ever on desktop. even now when the full version of my precise game is only available on linux only ( reason: $ ).

Config. Amd 3300x and nvidia 1060 gtx asus. ( both gnome and kde were used ), old config was radeon 7850 I remember I got eye strain using linux at leas 10 years back or even more .

Linux on my PS4 Slim is usable. Same as the PS4 itself is usable while running the PS4 OS ("Orbis OS"), which is based on FreeBSD. On PS4 Linux, Xorg is running, 3D hardware acceleration is running, and no eye strain. I was about to look for buyable graphics cards that use the PS4's graphics chips, but it turned out the PS4 uses a custom graphics solution that is not available on the PC market.

What Linux being usable on the PS4 probably means is that Linux itself and the Linux hardware acceleration code is not the per se the cause for eye strain, but rather the combination of GPU and graphics drivers is. Perhaps there are usable combinations out there that we can use with PCs?

The PS4 GPU is from AMD. As the past has shown AMD on the PC uses particularly aggressive forced temporal dithering, this info might not help us much though.

The PS4 Linux I tried uses the default window manager "jwm". Maybe that's a factor, too.

Edit: PS4 Firefox Quantum, hardware-accelerated and no eye strain.

KM I did test some "uncommon" AMD graphics chipsets awhile ago with my capture card setup

https://wiki.ledstrain.org/docs/appendix/tests/dithering/jtl/

setting xrandr dither property to on did enable temporal dithering "snow" as expected.

Wonder if this is helpful on Intel graphics for PWM:

https://superuser.com/questions/707477/laptop-screen-causes-eye-strain-on-all-linux-distros-except-ubuntu-and-elementar

The problem was:

My Linux distro sets a low PWM frequency by default, that's why all the eyestrain. Luckily Intel gpu drivers can change the PWM frequency.

Linked in that forum post is this ArchLinux forum post. There is a command line tool called intel-gpu-tools (link, source) which read/write values for Intel GPU driver. This can be used to increase PWM and (theoretically) shut off dithering (the links above are about PWM).

I also came across intelpwm-udev , a bash script that sets the PWM frequency for Sandy Bridge chips. It uses/builds upon the intel-gpu-tools, specifically intel_reg, to make a nicer CLI tool around it. Here's the GitHub repo.

See also this Reddit thread where I started this research. I Googled "manjoro eystrain" to get these results.

Hope this helps someone. I might give Lubuntu a try on my Thinkpad T430s, since it looks like folks are reporting LXQT might be not bad for eyestrain.

Yeah, these are pretty old posts, I've seen them around, but I think it's a different issue. I've had it on all distros, all GPUs and several different displays. It's not specific to Intel, although that could well spawn some additional issues, which other people had. I also no longer believe it's dithering. I recently did what Wallboy suggested earlier, that is using Nouveau with dithering off and the strain was still there. But I suspect it wasn't always the case, because Nouveau got much much better now. No glitches or artifacts, it works pretty well. Meaning, they may have improved the acceleration somewhat and that in turn may have brought the strain back. It's just a theory, though. The truth is, nothing really helps it. It's just there, period.

P. S. I'm kind of back, still not giving up.

I tried removing mode xrandr --output eDP1 3840x2160_59.97 --set "dithering mode" "off"
but it just spits out unrecognized option '3840x2160_59.97'

Here's the output of "xrandr --props"

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 3840 x 2160, maximum 32767 x 32767
eDP1 connected primary 3840x2160+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 350mm x 190m
m
       EDID:  
               00ffffffffffff004d10761400000000
               311a0104a52313780ed353a85435ba25
               0d525800000001010101010101010101
               0101010101014dd000a0f0703e803020
               35005ac2100000180000000000000000
               00000000000000000000000000fe0059
               32584e44804c51313536443100000000
               0002410328001200000b010a20200056
       BACKLIGHT: 375  
               range: (0, 1500)
       Backlight: 375  
               range: (0, 1500)
       scaling mode: Full aspect  
               supported: Full, Center, Full aspect
       Colorspace: Default  
               supported: Default, RGB_Wide_Gamut_Fixed_Point, RGB_Wide_Gamut_Floating_Poin
t, opRGB, DCI-P3_RGB_D65, BT2020_RGB, BT601_YCC, BT709_YCC, XVYCC_601, XVYCC_709, SYCC_601,
opYCC_601, BT2020_CYCC, BT2020_YCC
       max bpc: 12  
               range: (6, 12)
       Broadcast RGB: Automatic  
               supported: Automatic, Full, Limited 16:235
       panel orientation: Normal  
               supported: Normal, Upside Down, Left Side Up, Right Side Up
       link-status: Good  
               supported: Good, Bad
       non-desktop: 0  
               range: (0, 1)
  3840x2160     60.00 +  59.97*  
  3200x1800     59.96    60.00    59.94   
  2880x1620     60.00    59.96    59.97   
  2560x1600     59.99    59.97   
  2560x1440     59.96    60.00    59.95   
  2048x1536     60.00   
  1920x1440     60.00   
  1856x1392     60.01   
  1792x1344     60.01   
  2048x1152     60.00    59.90    59.91   
  1920x1200     59.88    59.95   
  1920x1080     59.96    60.00    59.93   
  1600x1200     60.00   
  1680x1050     59.95    59.88   
  1400x1050     59.98   
  1600x900      60.00    59.95    59.82   
  1280x1024     60.02   
  1400x900      59.96    59.88   
  1280x960      60.00   
  1368x768      60.00    59.88    59.85   
  1280x800      59.81    59.91   
  1280x720      59.86    60.00    59.74   
  1024x768      60.00   
  1024x576      60.00    59.90    59.82   
  960x540       60.00    59.63    59.82   
  800x600       60.32    56.25   
  864x486       60.00    59.92    59.57   
  640x480       59.94   
  720x405       59.51    60.00    58.99   
  640x360       59.84    59.32    60.00   
  1280x720_334.00 333.81   
  3840x2160_59.97  59.96

Maybe I should try lowering the BPC from 12 to 8 or 6? Haven't figured out how to do that yet on Intel

cizeta Haven't figured out how to do that yet on Intel

I don't know for sure -- but I think the process to disable dithering on Intel should be similar to Windows? The ditherig source code is here: https://github.com/skawamoto0/ditherig/tree/master/ditherig. It won't compile on a *nix system because it uses Win32 libraries.

But from what I can tell, it's writing to a PCI register to disable the dithering. I think you might be able to use the intel-gpu-utils or PCIUtils to do this.

(This is not my area of expertise and this is just speculation / food for thought).

KM

As in the process of dithering isn't supported, or the ability to control it isn't?

I think I'm experiencing minor issues from dithering on Linux.
I keep seeing posts saying that, on newer versions of Windows 10, programs like Ditherig only partially turn off dithering or that the compositor still dithers some UI elements.
So, I'm just looking for a straight enough answer. If I switch to Windows 10 and use programs like Ditherig, will things at least be better?

cizeta I take it you missed my post above. I'd used linux for a year and half maybe until I finally began to notice something was really off and it would bother me more and more. So no, you're not the only one like that. Granted though, I used CRT monitor at first, my problems came with an LCD one, but also not immediately. Strangely, the first signs came while watching some movies. I felt like my eyes were growing intolerant of certain background motion. Eventually looking at the desktop alone became painful enough for me to get off linux and go back to windows where things are fine, but my sight was never the same since.