I’m gonna get downvoted to oblivion for this…
I just got my new OLED and weirdly enough, upon booting it I saw something that I didn’t even think of till now. With the new OLED, the sub-pixel arrangement is slightly different than the LCD, and it’s causing white edge (specially on text) to have this green/magenta fringing. It’s extremely faint, and it’s not particular to the Steam Deck since I know of other OLED panels that have the same fringing. However I have heard zero mention of this and I have to say that although this matters close to nothing while playing videogames, it’s something I do see with subtitles.
With this out of the way, the screen looks amazing and I’m more than ready to sell and replace my LCD deck now. I hope the technology gets there where this isn’t an issue anymore!
OLED subpixel layout causing chromatic fringing has been known for years, and needs to be fixed at the OS-level.
It all has to do with how the OS handles anti-aliasing of text. With no AA, text looks blocky and unpleasant to look at, but effective AA makes it smooth and attractive. The process responsible for this AA treatment is called ClearType in Windows, and other OS’s have their own processes. However, it works best with the common LCD subpixel layout as seen above, and is calibrated for this structure. It looks strange on OLEDs. You will need a software fix to address it; maybe Valve will include something similar.
Valve can control settings for text anti-aliasing in Steam, Steam’s Game Mode UI, and in the KDE that it shows with SteamOS, but subtitles and other text in games typically aren’t drawn by the OS but directly by the game’s own renderer. I don’t know if it would be possible for something like Gamescope to apply some sort of “filter” to games to mitigate poor text rendering in games; such filter would have to apply to the whole screen and might cause strange artifacts elsewhere.
Just a small detail, in Linux, the OS doesn’t handle this kind of thing, for SteamOS this is probably handled by Wayland or KDE, can’t say for sure as I’m not actually very up to date on how much of the desktop management stuff was offloaded to Wayland.
You’re talking about the OS
When people say “OS” they do not mean “kernel”. Wayland, compositors and partially even toolkits are very much part of the OS.
They’re not. I have multiple Linux installations that have no Wayland installed and some don’t even have X installed. The OS which is usually called GNU/Linux is the Linux kernel plus a set of GNU tools that allows you to use the system. No Linux user who knows what they’re doing would call Wayland part of the OS.
That Linux users want to be different to the rest of the world isn’t a counterpoint.
Pendatry like this won’t get you anywhere!
If it’s SteamOS and im not talking to people very well versed, it’s part of the OS.
Yes they would, if the context is about “is it hardware or software that handles subpixel rendering”. Nobody is talking about the details of whatever is going on in the software.
Wayland/X is very much part of the OS (unless you run headless). It is not part of the Linux Kernel for sure, but OP didn’t say that.
Nobody called the OS “Linux” or GNU/Linux. Nobody (who knows what they’re doing) calls their OS GNU/Linux. Usually they call it Ubuntu, Fedora or Arch Linux (+ version + edition if it matters) or SteamOS. Only people who try to look intelligent call their OS GNU/Linux. (or maybe if you did LFS…)
You should file a bug as you seem to really know what you are talking about and it could really help the devs with research. Just saying this as open source contribution can come from anywhere including bug reports from knowledgeable users I wish any of my users knew anything at the level you seem to understand. It could help fix garbage text across all of Linux you never know but we can dream.
These are the kinds of problems that Valve can actually participate in improving. Having a huge company like Valve with Linux hardware is such a big deal. It creates an incentive for them to fix these things and improve Linux as a whole.
My understanding is the Deck getting HDR is the first functional implementation of HDR on Linux. Proton is another huge example. Phenomenal for the wider Linux community.
I don’t think the Game mode UI even uses subpixels for font anti-aliasing? Kind of bad news because most games don’t either.
I don’t know for certain, but the fact that they are on a blue background might mitigate fringing slightly. To me, those characters are too good looking for having no AA
ugh, yes. as an owner of the Alienware AW3423DW i have to set the ClearType to monochrome. i really wish vesa would make a standard so that the os can either get this info from the monitor or it’s just done like a driver.