This study mentions blue light as from smartphones as a problem. My phone has a blue light filter which I have on all the time. Linux gnome desktop also has one for late night coding sessions.
After a day or two you don't notice the colour difference anymore.
Definitely wouldn't discount blue light having some effect, but I'm totally on the same page as you here regarding limiting stimulation and I'd have a hard time believing anyone that claimed lighting had anything even close to the effect that other habits did.
Had trouble sleeping for years. Made my bed and bedroom a place for sleep and only sleep. When I go to bed the phone goes on do not disturb, there's no computer/TV/etc in the room at all and no clock (I can't look at a clock without thinking of all the things I have to do!). I just get into bed and lay there until I'm asleep. Some days I'll try and read a little, but I find these days that I don't make it very far at all before I'm asleep.
Haven't even had to go as far as limiting activities before bed or anything all that much. At some point my body and brain got conditioned to sleep when in bed, so it's usually a pretty painless process now.
When I saw the blue-light filter option, I jumped at it because I knew I'd be spending most of my time wearing glasses looking at a computer screen anyway.
The blue filter they treat lenses with is very mild, though. It's maybe a 20% reduction. I now wear the glasses all the time even though I don't really need to, and the filter isn't noticeable at all.
Or you can just filter out some of the light right in front of your eyes and achieve a workable solution today.
As an added bonus, I think you'll find it actually reduces your eye issues. Tried out the filtering basically because I couldn't think of a reason not to and the first time I put the new glasses on it felt like I'd stopped squinting and relaxed my eyes for the first time in years. I get way fewer eye-strain induced headaches now.
It only blocks some small-ish percentage of the blue light. Really roughly, I could describe it as replacing flourescent bulbs with some warm LED bulbs on your entire vision. Just a very light warm tinge to everything.
I stopped noticing it about 20 minutes after putting the glasses with the filtering on. Now I don't know how I lived without it. If I take my glasses off and try and look at my computer screen I feel like I need to squint it's so harsh.
It's almost like having a lamp in your face all the time in the night - of course you can't sleep! We just got used to it. Now thankfully someone has implemented such filters.
Also, redshift is available for at least Linux, the BSDs, and an experimental version for Windows.
At the time, f.lux's devs seemed completely opposed to any kind of adjustable schedule for people who cannot follow the sun.
I use it on cinnamon all the time.