I just upgraded my Framework 13 (Fedora 42) from an Intel 11th gen board to an AMD 7840U, to get better battery life and improve performance and DEAR GOD WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE SCREEN?!
There are a bunch of things wrong by default, at least five things.
First off, the colors are simultaneously too-bright, washed out, and low contrast; and text is washed out and low contrast. I know the screen is supposed to look better than this. I saw it looking better just a few minutes ago. The last time I saw a display this fucked up (can we swear here?) it was on a $200 laptop. Did the … profile… get lost? Maybe I’ll go to KDE’s Display Preferences. No matter how much I screw around with the color profile, “Color accuracy” (is this something to do with software vs. hardware rendering of something or other?), “sRGB color intensity”, “brightness”, and “Extended Dynamic Range”, it still looks like trash.
I can’t even see a difference between “efficiency” and “accuracy”. Neither of these is anywhere near accurate and – well, now the display is frozen. That’s a kernel oops on new hardware. Hopefully it’s a software issue. I guess. Is that better or worse? Let’s power the laptop off and try again.
Oh look at that. If I change from “Power Save” to “Balanced”, suddenly the display looks reasonable. At least it looks close to right. Wait, I remember reading vicarious frustration! All I have to do is type “AMD” and a bunch of profanity into a search engine… and sure enough, “Vari-Bright”. Who even – that sounds like a name for the paint I’d drink to start thinking this feature was a good idea to turn on silently by default.
Imagine one day, my car starts driving like crap. I take it to a mechanic, and he goes “oh yeah, I snuck into your garage and removed 2nd and 3rd from your transmission,” exhibiting a toothy grin. Considering homicide, I stare at his overalls. “Don’t worry,” he says, “the parts are in your trunk if you want them.”
Ok, so, the thing for me to do, is to leave this ABM thing enabled, but make sure it’s always turned off except in extreme circumstances, the two times a year when I am desperate enough to behold its effects. Hold on. I could almost… Yes. My browser window is growing dimmer and brighter without me changing the backlight settings. It is doing this of its own volition, on the fringes of my perception. Into my field of vision, creeping incongruity, white or whiter?
All of the Internet stuff is talking about Power Profiles Daemon. Which Fedora helpfully replaced a few versions ago with, I guess, tuned. But I don’t know that yet. More emissive, less emissive. As tendrils of darkness likewise creep, splay, writhe, impinging on the edges of my sight…
“tuned-adm”, is this even the right thing? It doesn’t seem to have any settings I can set with it, only these randomly named profiles. If I’m taking this long, I’d better just use the kernel setting to disable ABM entirely.
The sun’s moved into the room a bit more, so I try to adjust the brightness upward. The brightness on the laptop does not change. First it was changing by itself. Now it is not changing when I press the buttons. Oh, 1% through 8% is all the same backlight level. Someone broke the brightness controls. The map is misshapen. 1% is no longer 1%. 8% is 0%. Is 100%?
I change the brightness to 100%, to check. It sears, it blinds. I think it might only be 94%. I watch the search page, without dark mode. It is lunch time, but I have already eaten my retinas.