Ok, so I'm back with a grim update, this time unrelated to linux.
I recently sold my HP Zbook laptop and tried moving to an inferior machine, which is Lenovo B570 with integrated Intel Graphics. I upgraded the CPU to i5 (it had Pentium B950, barely usable) and added more RAM. To my unpleasant surprise, I wasn't able to use it, because guess what… eye-strain. And this is on Win 7!
First I thought it's the screen (it got one of the worst panels), but then I tried an external display (NEC EA190M, CCFL) and it was the same exact thing. I tried, I really did for several days to soldier through it, blinking my eyes constantly and finally only peeking at the screen with one or the other eye briefly because it's f…ng unbearable. I was almost convinced it's probably something with my eyes now, but… everything changed when as a final and hopeless attempt, I plugged the same exact display into my old ass Athlon-based desktop with no less ancient Nvidia GT 240. And voila, all good. Been using it up till now and typing this post on it.
Apparently, the rumors about Intel Graphics aren't unfounded. I thereby confirm, it is unusable to people like us. Incidentally, I had used this Lenovo laptop on and off before (it's not really mine, so all I did is fixing and installing stuff), but evidently it wasn't long enough for me to detect the problem. So, it seems, what we're facing here is not just a local linux issue but a major multilayered disaster, which, as the time goes by, only becomes worse and ultimately unavoidable.
I'm convinced it's not PWM-related (I checked the screen with my phone, no flicker) nor dithering (I mean seriously, has playing with it solved anybody's issues?). It's something to do with acceleration, which must be producing some extremely elusive side-effect. One thing I noticed though is that when connecting to this laptop the picture seems… a little sharper? Perhaps the gamma is a bit off, like darker things are just a tiny bit darker here. Anyhow, I'm seriously concerned about the future now. Like, now I'm considering buying a new laptop. What the heck am I to buy if all of it is equally unacceptable? It's ubiquitous! Like, you can't even tell anymore if it's the GPU or the display or the OS/drivers or actually a combo, where at least one of these things must be checked anyway. This is no longer a lottery yo, it's just flat out dead end.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm seriously getting bugged by this crap now. I value my time and my vision, and if this is not resolved in the following 1-2 years, I am going to have to leave the modern world behind and stick with older machines for good while fondly embracing their limitations. At the end of the day, they may not be very powerful and will be eventually disconnected from the web along with obsolete Windows versions and whatnot, but one thing they will always be good at is MAKING SENSE. And elusive nonsense of a purely commercial kind is something I'm growing very much allergic to. I don't see any point adapting to it nor spending all of my free time looking for workarounds for all sorts of bs. I'd rather just stop using it altogether and help those assholes go bankrupt. Besides, there isn't much to do on the internet anymore, the world is going to shit anyways. I sympathize with those who need it for work, though. Try finding another job maybe unless this one heck of a funride is really your calling.
Sorry, had to vent.