New installation looks "washed out"

[powerchord84]

Hi all. I just installed Mint 19 MATE on a HP ProBook G60 which has a Radeon HD 8750m video card. Everything looks so washed out! I tried changing to Cinnamon but no go.

I'm not sure how to tell which video driver I'm using. If anyone has any insights they will be greatly appreciated!


https://ibb.co/4pfCQRg

[Pjotr]

Please generate an overview of your system like this:
- Launch a terminal window (this is how to launch a terminal window);
- make the terminal window full screen, to avoid chopped lines;
- Copy/paste this command into the terminal:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

(if you type: the letter F is a capital letter)

Press Enter.

Copy/paste the output in your next message.

[powerchord84]

Code: Select all

brian@ProBook:~$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: ProBook Kernel: 4.15.0-46-generic x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 7.3.0 Desktop: Cinnamon 4.0.9 
           Distro: Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa base: Ubuntu 18.04 bionic 
Machine:   Type: Laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP ProBook 650 G1 v: A3009DD10303 serial: <filter> 
           Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 2101 v: KBC Version 16.38 serial: <filter> BIOS: Hewlett-Packard v: L78 Ver. 01.05 
           date: 04/29/2014 
Battery:   ID-1: BAT0 charge: 55.7 Wh condition: 55.7/55.7 Wh (100%) model: Hewlett-Packard Primary status: Discharging 
CPU:       Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Core i5-4300M bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Haswell rev: 3 L2 cache: 3072 KiB 
           flags: lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx bogomips: 20751 
           Speed: 898 MHz min/max: 800/3300 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 817 2: 839 3: 828 4: 805 
Graphics:  Device-1: Intel 4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: i915 v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:02.0 
           Device-2: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Mars [Radeon HD 8730M] driver: radeon v: kernel bus ID: 01:00.0 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.19.6 driver: ati,modesetting,radeon unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
           OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Mobile v: 4.5 Mesa 18.2.2 direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor HD Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel 
           v: kernel bus ID: 00:03.0 
           Device-2: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 00:1b.0 
           Device-3: AMD Cape Verde/Pitcairn HDMI Audio [Radeon HD 7700/7800 Series] driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
           bus ID: 01:00.1 
           Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.15.0-46-generic 
Network:   Device-1: Intel Ethernet I217-LM vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k port: 4080 bus ID: 00:19.0 
           IF: enp0s25 state: down mac: <filter> 
           Device-2: Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n driver: wl v: kernel port: ef80 bus ID: 03:00.0 
           IF: wlo1 state: dormant mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 465.76 GiB used: 9.02 GiB (1.9%) 
           ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: HGST (Hitachi) model: HTS545050A7E680 size: 465.76 GiB 
Partition: ID-1: / size: 457.45 GiB used: 9.02 GiB (2.0%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1 
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 32.0 C mobo: 0.0 C gpu: radeon temp: 31 C 
           Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:      Processes: 262 Uptime: 1h 21m Memory: 3.75 GiB used: 1.00 GiB (26.8%) Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Compilers: 
           gcc: 7.3.0 Shell: bash v: 4.4.19 inxi: 3.0.27 
brian@ProBook:~$

[Pjotr]

Well, everything looks OK. You have the right drivers....

[karlchen]

Hello, powerchord84.

I have looked closely at the screenshot, which you had added to your initial post in order to illustrate the "washed out" look.
I admit that I am not sure what precisely looks "washed out" to you.

The only thing, which I could imagine is this:
Starting with Mint 19, when using the new default Mint theme, the colour of black fonts is less black than in the past, more like dark grey. There has been a small number of threads, where users complained about "reduced contrast".

Could you perhaps elaborate a bit what precisely looks "washed out" to you?

Best regards,
Karl

[powerchord84]

I am looking at the screenshot on another computer and it looks perfect :/

Everything is too bright, hard to read, very...washed out. Maybe I should take a phone pic.

[powerchord84]

https://ibb.co/yB8Xg7d

I took a pic side by side with my MacBook which looks fine. The pic doesn't do the difference justice: the one on the left is WAYY lighter and harder to read.

[MrEen]

I can see a difference in that pic. Looks like the Mac is using a dark theme. Have you tried that on the HP yet?

[RIH]

That would be my recommendation too - try a dark theme instead.

Like you I am not a fan of the concept of grey on grey, for someone getting on in years & failing eyesight it is just not an option for me.
Indeed without resource to darker themes I would have had to look elsewhere for an operating System than the standard 19.1.
I know that light themes & transparent windows look elegant, unfortunately, for me, they are just not practical - luckily Mint still has plenty of options..

[powerchord84]

It's not the theme...the GREEN part is completely different. I noticed it on my work machine today as well (it looks fine and it's Windows).

[rene]

Sounds like you have a backlight issue. Do the keys on your keyboard to adjust brightness work? If not, does this? https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310. Note, that specific BusID will assumedly be incorrect for you; identify your intel GPUs bus id from the output of lspci. Also see the comments, especially the recent dave_robbo one.

[Pjotr]

https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310

Not too recent (Ubuntu 17.10?), and the author advises sudo gedit....

This progressive scheme for fixing brightness issues that I wrote *is* up to date, and contains no wrongful use of sudo:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... y.html#ID4
(item 4 and further)

[catweazel]

Sounds like you have a backlight issue. Do the keys on your keyboard to adjust brightness work? If not, does this? https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310. Note, that specific BusID will assumedly be incorrect for you; identify your intel GPUs bus id from the output of lspci. Also see the comments, especially the recent dave_robbo one.

I agree. That the first image looks perfect on my screen indicates that the GPU is correctly providing the image to the screen shot application on request. It makes sense then that the issue is not the driver or the GPU, but something after that, which leaves only the screen itself.

[AndyMH]

Looked okay to me, but try playing around with the colour profiles for your monitor, in cinnamon preferences > colour.

[powerchord84]

None of these worked. But thanks for trying. I suppose I will give up on this particular machine and try another.

https://itsfoss.com/fix-brightness-ubuntu-1310

Not too recent (Ubuntu 17.10?), and the author advises sudo gedit....

This progressive scheme for fixing brightness issues that I wrote *is* up to date, and contains no wrongful use of sudo:
https://easylinuxtipsproject.blogspot.c ... y.html#ID4
(item 4 and further)

Can you explain what you mean by wrongful use of sudo?

[JoeFootball]

Can you explain what you mean by wrongful use of sudo?

The author of the cited article is mistakenly advising to use sudo with a GUI-based application.

sudo is for command line tools, such as a non-GUI text editor like nano.

For GUI applications, such as gedit, you'd want to use pkexec (for LM 19.x and later), or gksudo (for LM 18.x and earlier).

Joe

[AndyMH]

Colour profiles - different colour profile, in this case artiflex PS RGB profile, certainly not 'washed out':

Default colour profile:

Or do I just not understand the question?

[powerchord84]

I could not change or do anything under color profiles. I installed it on another ProBook and same exact issue. I gave up on them. Currently trying with a Dell Latitude E5570

[Moem]

I could not change or do anything under color profiles.

If you go there and click on 'Add profile' then a list of available color profiles should show up. I would try and see if any of them looks better.

[powerchord84]

I added a couple but nothing happened.