LMDE display physically painful (XFCE, MATE, Cinnamon)

[alkalyzer]

Hello,

I am experiencing totally unpleasant issues with all versions of LMDE. The display (on LCD screens) simply hurts my eyes almost as soon as I watch it. I haven't encountered such a trouble when running the Ubuntu-based version of Mint I tried (Cinnamon, MATE).

Some details, now :

This happens whenever I directly watch the screen of my laptop (an Acer Aspire 6930G) or a screen (Samsung SyncMaster) connected through the VGA port of my laptop.
The graphic card is a Nvidia GeForce 9600M GS and I use the proprietary driver (installed using the "Debian" way). I generated my xorg.conf using nvidia-xconfig and adjusted my settings with nvidia-settings. I set the vertical refresh to 60Hz as I do for Ubuntu-based Mint version.

To check if the divers were not faulty (the version 295.20 was the one present in the repositories), I tried the drivers present in unstable (series 304.), but the problem remains.
I also try to tweak the fonts following different methods to make them as polished as one can find in Ubuntu, but the problem is still present.

The problem is present for every desktop environment I tried so far (XFCE, MATE and Cinnamon).

Some advice or idea ?

Thanks

[karlchen]

Hello, alkalyzer

The display (on LCD screens) simply hurts my eyes

Care to explain which details exactly there are that hurt your eyes?
You might post a screenshot which illustrates what your screen looks like and explain what exactly it is that hurts your eyes.

Kind regards,
Karl

[jjaythomas]

Not sure on mate or cinnamon...BUT

in Xfce (LMDE version) composioning is off by defaul)(at least was). settings>window manager tweaks
also
on a external monitor hooked to a laptop (unless want) both displays will be active and default to the laptop resolution. You can switch the laptop display off and the external monitor to its higher (I assume) resolution. Settings>displays.

hope may help
J.Jay

[alkalyzer]

Karichen : The display looks at first sight totally normal with proper resolution, thus I don't think posting a screenshot might help. It is just that after using it for some time (quite short), my eyes really starts to itch and I have the feeling that an headache is gonna arrive soon. I absolutely don't have this feeling with the Ubuntu-based version of Mint (nor with Ubuntu, by the way) and I can keep on working in front of my screen as long as I need. I think this was more a problem due to bad refresh rate but it seems OK (60Hz as I always use on my different LCD screens) according to the value provided by nvidia-settings and xrandr.

Jjaythomas : I experienced this feeling with and without compositing enabled both while using MATE or XFCE. When I only use the display from my external monitor, it is set at 60Hz which is the comfortable refresh rate that I use when I work with Ubuntu-based Mint.