How can I prevent eyestrain?

I can use a Windows machine for 10 hours straight without the slightest problem, but after around 15-30 minutes of using ubuntu my eyes become sore and dried out.

I currently have 11.04 installed with a dual-boot Windows XP. Same hardware, eyestrain only with ubuntu.

I've also tried different versions of ubuntu on two different machines. Same eyestrain problem. I've tried combinations of fonts and font rendering and installed the microsoft fonts, although I'm not sure it is related to the fonts anyway because I think the fonts look quite nice.

xrandr shows the monitor refresh rate set at 60hz (the only option for my laptop lcd).

Is there anything else I can try? I'd like to use ubuntu, not windows...

If you work at night you can try using redshift. This adjusts the color temperature of your screen so that it get's more redish the later it is. Of course this doesn't really help explain the difference between Windows and Ubuntu but it does reduce stain. Do

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jonls/redshift-ppa

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install redshift

to install it. There are other programs that do just the same thing as well.

There's also an older version in the repos so sudo apt-get install redshift will suffice.

Eye strain is caused in most cases, by tiredness of the ocular muscles. There's a lot of hype that has been spread about various kind of screens, eye drops, blue light lenses etc. But I've found that most of that is just marketing hype. The right way to cure the strain is to not try and treat the symptoms. You have to get to the root cause. I've found this article to be rather insightful and sensible. It highlights for the need for following three solutions to get rid of eye strain over a period of many months.

1. Ensure you get 8 hours uninterrupted sleep each night.

2. Close your eyes and relax your face muscles and neck muscles for a few minutes after 20 minutes of computer use.

3. Ensure you get a well balanced diet of properly cooked food. Especially proteins (for the eye muscles).

In terms of software to assist you in doing this, there's Workrave and Redshift.

For anyone interested this answer might provide solution to eye strain problem on various Linux distro with LCD displays: Laptop screen causes eye strain on all linux distros except Ubuntu and elementary OS

I already found what the problem is. LCD displays uses a frequency known as PWM (Pulse widht modulation). The screen backlight flashes to this frequency, on most monitors is between 200hz - 500hz range.

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.

You need to install intel-gpu-tools

First you need to know your reference clock, this is stored on address 0xC6204. You can read values with the command intel_reg_read, so to read the value you can use the command:

intel_reg_read 0xC6204

Once you know your reference clock you can use the calculator on this page to calculate your desired value. I used 500mhz, so I got 0x7a107a1.

The address for the PWM value is 0xC8254, You can set values with intel_reg_write, so you can use:

intel_reg_write 0xC8254 0x7a107a1

You can see immediately changes. (Sometimes the screen brightness could change, but this is ok, the PWM frequency changes also)

I hope that this info could be helpful to anyone who need it.