[solved] XFCE makes me sick (not "sick" bur really sick)

bienchen · Last edited by bienchen on Sat Dec 12, 2009 11:39 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi there,

I'm trying to switch from KDE3.5 to XFCE and have encountered 1 weird issue with XFCE.
Everything works fine, so far, but working with XFCE makes me feel sick. After a while looking at the screen I get a bit dizzy and my tummy feels awkward.
I tried to set all the fonts like in KDE, including antialiasing, hinting and so on, but it does not help.
Turning on the compositor feature of the WM makes everything worse.

Anybody any idea?

Greetings,

bienchen

SamuliSuominen · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:41 am Post subject:

Heh

Perhaps try looking at `xrandr` output if the monitors Hz is not what it's supposed to be

... or removing .config/xfce4/xfwm4 before starting Xfce4

bienchen · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 5:56 pm Post subject:

xrandr shows the same values for KDE3.5 and XFCE, .config/xfce4/xfwm4 is empty.

Any more suggestions?

greetings,

bienchen

cyberjun · Apprentice Joined: 06 Nov 2005 Posts: 293

KDE withdrawal symptoms?

--cyberjun

bienchen · Posted: Mon Dec 07, 2009 9:46 pm Post subject:

What does this mean?

greetings,

bienchen

bienchen · Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 9:06 pm Post subject:

So, I have a new clue: It seems like, if I have small fonts around (9pt), the screen makes me sick.

greetings,

bienchen

yther · Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:11 pm Post subject:

It sounds like your monitor's refresh rate might be too low, causing a flicker that you may not even notice. Monitor flicker can cause eye strain (sounds like this could be it since you mention font size) and other problems. It's not as much of a problem with LCD screens as with CRTs, but it can still happen.

I agree with ssuominen, check that the refresh rate and resolution are the same as in KDE. If your monitor has on-screen controls that can tell you the resolution and refresh rate, check those as well to make sure everything is the same.

Good luck, sounds like there is a serious ergonomic problem here and I hope you get it solved!

bienchen · Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2009 10:21 pm Post subject:

Ah! The onscreen refreshrate gives me 74Mhz for XFCE and 75Mhz for KDE.

(0.o) OK, I have absolutely no idea how / what / ...? Can the choice of your WM really affect your refreshrate?

This is so out of my scope.

greetings

bienchen

whiteghost · Guru Joined: 26 Jul 2009 Posts: 374 Location: north dakota

WorldWideOliver · n00b Joined: 18 Feb 2008 Posts: 2 Location: Cleveland

Isn't actually a higher refresh rate supposed to help (I heard?)?

Anyways, maybe your screens just too close, should be at least 20 inches from your face, more if its bigger
Or too bright?
Fiddle with that, its odd that you didnt have any problems with kde vs xfce

bienchen · Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2009 10:51 pm Post subject:

So, a little update...
I tuned the display setting of XFWM to be 50Hz, as whiteghost suggested and I'm happily working a whole evening without any sick feeling. Before the frequency was set to 52, which was the maximum. With 50, my onscreen display shows 75Hz, which is the same as for KDE.

I think I work on like that for a few days, and if everything goes fine, I set this thread to "solved".

Has anybody an idea why I feel sick at 52Hz? I can only suspect, but probably my brain refuses to work with anything +10 to the Answer. (As my monitor obviously tried to tell me by shouting "It's a 4, not a 5!", by using 74 instead of 75 at 52Mhz...or have 2 days of a queer frequency just grilled my brain?

greetings,

bienchen

drhirsch · n00b Joined: 08 May 2004 Posts: 66 Location: Germany

Very interesting phenomenon. 50 Hz or (52) are usually considered way to low for working. I, for one, did still recognize an annoying flicker at 75 Hz, but 85 Hz solved all problems for me. But this only holds true for CRTs.

LCDs hold the data between single frames, so there is no flicker at all. If a LCD flickers, it is from a defective or very cheap background light.

So, do you have a LCD? If so, do you run it on the analog (SUB D, 9 pins) or the digital (DVI-D, more pins) output? And is the DVI output a true digital output, there is a variant which actually transports analogous signals?

I rather suspect it has something to do with blurring or phase-shifting of the analogous signal, which could cause a sub pixel horizontal movement.

bienchen · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:33 pm Post subject:

So, I got an LCD screen connected via DVI on a Macbook Alu 5,1. But I have no idea of the techinques behind all that viewing-machines.

And to be honest, I'm not interested in learning more about it, by myself. If somebody can explain to me what goes wrong, you're welcome. There's so much to learn on the software and hardware side, but monitors have only a very low priority on my list ;-)

Or: Usullay I'm not that guy insisting on stuff to work out of the box, but monitors?

greetings,

bienchen

Jaglover · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 12:45 pm Post subject:

bienchen · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:12 pm Post subject:

Well,

in the XFCE Display-Settings dialoque I set 50, can't remember wether it was KHz, Hz, MHz.
When I open the service menu of my monitor, so really pushing some buttons on the hardware, it shows 75KHz, Hz or MHz.
I did not look at the pixelclock. So this is all monitorside, not graphics card.

But how can KDE ignore xorg.conf?

greetings,

bienchen

drhirsch · n00b Joined: 08 May 2004 Posts: 66 Location: Germany

bienchen · Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2009 1:46 pm Post subject:

bienchen · Posted: Sat Dec 12, 2009 11:39 pm Post subject:

So, setting display to a refreshrate of 50arb., seems to solve the problem...hence I set this issue to solved