How can Ubuntu be made grayscale?

Question

I'd like to make everything grayscale. The utility xcalib can be used to invert the colours displayed (every colour displayed is changed to its compliment) using the following command:

xcalib -i -a

How could I make the display grayscale? Could I desaturate in some way, for example?

Thanks!

Solution

You could also add the following to your xorg configuration to achieve a greyscale output:

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "greyscale configuration"
    Defaultdepth 8
    SubSection "Display"
        Depth 8
        Visual "GrayScale"
    EndSubSection
EndSection

This might work depending on your video driver.

Comments

[Elliott Frisch]

First, why? Second, can you use the monitors color controls and do it at the monitor? Third, you can adjust your color-depth but I don't know if you can do grayscale (might be b/w only).

[loafer]

If you use Compiz you can use the solution provided here Setting a greyscale (or monochrome) color scheme.

[d3pd]

While it appears to apply the saturation changes only to active windows (i.e., it doesn't make everything grayscale), this is a pretty good solution. Thank you

[d3pd]

Thank you for this suggestion. It does not appear to work on my computer, but I have seen reports of success using this approach. I think further exploration is needed.