Some things that might help you when you're reading things on your computer

These tips might seem like they're obvious to some, though it needs to be stated because I imagine a lot of people arent even aware. I was oblivious for a long time because I'm a dumbass.

Generally if you have eye issues, or you're just about anyone you might have trouble reading on your computer. For me my eyes are okay, but sometimes i have trouble concentrating on things on the screen. I use okay loosely as I'm not sure what's wrong with my vision.

You could size down your windows on your monitor, you dont need to use all of your screen real estate when your browsing the internet, or working in a word processor or chatting. If you're using a 1080p screen(or larger) text will spew across your screen and be harder to read as a result. Size down the window if you happen upon a website that's kind of hard to read maximized.

Drag the corners of the window until they're maybe half of the screen or when it's comfortable to read. Another side effect of not maximizing all your Windows on your screen is you can even have two next to each other. Sometimes that's handy having one thing open for reference while you're working on something.

Also look at scaling options on your operating system of choice if you're using a smaller monitor, or you're using a laptop or your vision is especially bad. Dont down the resolution of your screen, that will only make things harder to read.

While you're browsing the internet you can press the CTRL and + keys to up the size of the text. You can press CTRL - to make it less big and CTRL + 0 to reset it to the default if you went a little crazy sizing up the font.

Not sure about Chrome, but Firefox has a "reader view" it's the left of the bookmark icon, the bookmark icon looks like a star. Some pages it will not show up, you can click it and change whether or not the page is bright text on a dark background, you can change how long the lines of text are and you can also change the size of the fonts and the font itself to a different one you have a easier time with. This feature is handy because a lot website authors choose to pick this really light text on a white background which is really hard to read, at least for me. I prefer dark themed websites.

Generally, the higher the resolution of the screen the easier it'll be to read text on the screen, because of more pixels. So if you still have a old 720p monitor you might want to get something that is at least 1080p. Also monitors tend to be bigger nowadays which will also help.

Not sure if anything larger than 1080p the fonts will be easier to read. Might be the law of diminishing returns there. If that makes any sense. But the more pixels packed into one spot, your eyes are looking at less empty space in between the pixels. You cant see it, but it still makes things harder to read. At the time of this writing 1080p screens are pretty cheap, and you can even find them used since a lot of people are upgrading to higher resolution displays as those are coming down in price.

Sitting around in the dark on your computer isnt good for your mental health (and your eyes)

I liked sitting around in the dark in the past. I felt more comfortable that way. Though that causes eye strain, especially if you're staring at a monitor for hours. The more eye strain, the more anxious you get. The more anxious you get the more depressed you get. So eye strain is a contribution factor in mental health problems.

When you're working on your computer the room should be well lit. You should have a light behind, or above you. Even a dim light is okay just as long as there's a light source other than your screen. In my room I have a light behind my monitor and one behind me, a little bit above.

Generally, when you're looking at something bright like a computer screen at night it causes eye strain. I dont know how else to explain it. Even though for some reason I like to sit in the dark, I dont do it while I'm using my computer because it's not healthy when you learn about it. When you read what the experts have to say.

"Touching grass" is a good idea. Get off your computer, get off your phone a little bit during the day. 

Disabling services on your computer that you dont need is a good idea

One good thing about using Linux is it allows you more control over what's running on your system. I'm not going to tell you what to disable but will tell you how you can figure out what you dont need. This guide assumes you're running a Linux distribution with the systemd init system, such as Ubuntu, Manjaro, or Debian. If in doubt whether or not you're using the it, you could google it. Though a lot of Linux distributions use it nowadays.

To get a list of services you have running open a terminal and type the systemctl command by itself, this will show you a list of services that are running. Scroll down until you see the enteries that end in .service with the page up and down keys, those are the ones to pay attention to because systemctl shows more than the services.

an example of running services

Look up each service and then decide whether or not you need it. If you're not using bluetooth, you can safely disable the bluetooth.service, for example.

You can disable the bluetooth service by typing sudo systemctl disable bluetooth.service, then reboot the system. (you can even type reboot where you are in the terminal if you're too lazy to go into the menu of your DE)

If you want that service back, you can get it back again by typing sudo systemctl enable bluetooth.service.

You can verify whether or not the service isnt running anymore by typing systemctl again and scrolling through you like you did before.

If you dont understand what a service does, it's not a good idea to disable it. If you want to figure out what each service does, type the service name into google maybe with some context like your Linux distribution or the word linux. For example if i wanted to know what the bluetooth.service is a good search term would be "bluetooth.service manjaro linux systemd" or something like that. Keep trying different terms until you find the information you're looking for.

If you want to save some disk space you can even remove the packages in question, though be careful because something else might be dependent on that software. So when in doubt, dont. Though the less packages you have the better because that means you dont need to update so much stuff which saves you time when updating your system.

Having less stuff running on your system makes your computer faster and also makes things more secure because it reduces your attack surface, especially if the software is network related. An example of this is the avahi daemon which is something to do with printers and cups which is also to do with network printers if I recall correctly.

If you want even more control over your system you could try Arch Linux or Gentoo. Though those are more involved than a just works distribution like Ubuntu or Manjaro.