Most monitors and graphics cards are calibrated by default for 2.2. Macs used to use 1.8 but that changed not so long ago with one of the OSX releases. On my Mac, together with a spider I borrowed from a friend some time ago (Home theater fanatic), I could calibrate my monitor and card to create a custom color space and get it back to 1.8. I like the nice saturated colors of the 1.8. The spider is a piece of hardware that you literary put on the monitor and using software adjust the red, green, blue, brightness and contrast so that one gets a near perfect linear and equal increase in all color channels as the brightness increases. An overkill for us ordinary people but I thought I'd give it a go.

In Windows you can adjust your color profiles using Color Management in Control Panel. There you also have a selection of printer and display colorspace profiles. If you have a spider then you can use the "Calibrate" option to set up your own colorspace. Catalyst from Radeon gives you the ability to set hue, saturation, brightness, contrast and color temperature but does not give you control over the individual color channels. I don't know if nVidia gives one that kind of control. It will most probably be buried under one of the advanced
options. I had to dig around to find the one in Catalyst.

When one starts experimenting with the gain, knee and compression values of the exposure simple, then that linear curve is not so linear anymore.