Display hurtful on LCD screen with Wheezy

[Lionel Trésaugues <lionel.tresaugues@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I am experiencing a physical pain whenever I am in front of my
computer running either Debian (Wheezy) or Debian-based distributions
(such as Mint LMDE, XFCE or MATE edition). Switching from XFCE to MATE
doesn't lead to any improvements .

My eyes start to suffer and soon, I can feel that an headache is coming.

I don't have this feeling at all when I am running either Ubuntu or
any Ubuntu-based distribution (Mint XFCE or Cinnamon edition).

I tried to adjust the fonts using all the different combinations
available with dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config as well as playing
with the hinting and smoothing settings of the fonts without any
improvements.

The proprietary Nvidia drivers are enabled and my screen uses a
resolution of 1366x768 at 60Hz (same settings as the one provided by
the Ubuntu-based distributions). Different Nvidia drivers (series 295
and 302) led to the same effect.

I also used a Samsung SyncMaster (recognized as CRT by
nvidia-settings) through VGA in TwinView mode and the pain is even
worse when I watch this screen (despite using once again the same
settings as the ones I used with Ubuntu-based distributions)

Could you help me to solve this problem ?

Here are the specifications of my system :

Computer : Acer Aspire 6930G
Graphic card : GeForce 9600M GS (with the proprietary Nvidia drivers
(version 302.17) enabled)

My xorg.conf :

# nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig
# nvidia-xconfig:  version 302.17  (buildd@biber)  Sat Jun 30 20:51:21 UTC 2012

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier     "Layout0"
    Screen      0  "Screen0"
    InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
    InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
EndSection

Section "Files"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Mouse0"
    Driver         "mouse"
    Option         "Protocol" "auto"
    Option         "Device" "/dev/psaux"
    Option         "Emulate3Buttons" "no"
    Option         "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    # generated from default
    Identifier     "Keyboard0"
    Driver         "kbd"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier     "Monitor0"
    VendorName     "Unknown"
    ModelName      "Unknown"
    HorizSync       28.0 - 33.0
    VertRefresh     43.0 - 72.0
    Option         "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier     "Device0"
    Driver         "nvidia"
    VendorName     "NVIDIA Corporation"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier     "Screen0"
    Device         "Device0"
    Monitor        "Monitor0"
    DefaultDepth    24
    SubSection     "Display"
        Depth       24
    EndSubSection
EndSection

The output from xrandr (when the VGA secondary display is disconnected):

Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 1366 x 768, maximum 8192 x 8192
VGA-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)
LVDS-0 connected 1366x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y
axis) 353mm x 198mm
   1366x768       60.0*+
HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis)