Ubuntu 20.04 Gaming Performance Across Desktops, X.Org vs. Wayland

[ColdDistance]

Sorry if I'm inopportune, but today the only thing I can't do with Wayland is screencasting. I use GNU/Linux for all my tasks: programming, virtualisation with VirtualBox, gaming, common desktop tasks (web navigation, music, video, Prime Video, etc) and I feel it very good. I use Wayland on my laptop Acer Aspire A515-54 and DiRT Rally works stabler on XWayland than Xorg (I had a few hangs on Xorg).

Obviously, to see old applications working on XWayland is not ideal, but the day when OBS works properly on Wayland I can fully migrate. I hope with the passage of time to see the applications migrating to Wayland and see XWayland only patched for some old native games, because Wine games could work better if Wine runs natively on Wayland.

Today I use Wayland on my laptop, but on my desktop, where I do screencasting, I still keep Xorg.

The problem with NVIDIA is NVIDIA's fault to no matching its driver with the standards for the Linux graphics stack.

[skeevy420]

What a magical thread -- no matter what a person's position is they're wrong and stupid.

[birdie]

I don't think Wayland is fundamentally designed badly. What it is, is incomplete.

...

A brilliant comment however you've identified the biggest Microsoft's strength. They didn't release Windows Vista/7 WDDM stacks in a half broken state. Everything worked though sometimes people struggled with compatibility because vendors refused/or were slow to release new graphics drivers. In Linux however, a new graphics stack is being foisted on users even without offering 100% compatibility with all the existing X11 applications and sometimes extremely serious performance issues.

The problem with NVIDIA is NVIDIA's fault to no matching its driver with the standards for the Linux graphics stack.

Once NVIDIA realize Wayland is ready they will most likely change their stance about it. They are a commercial company not in a business of supporting experiments.

[mppix]

Sorry if I'm inopportune, but today the only thing I can't do with Wayland is screencasting. I use GNU/Linux for all my tasks: programming, virtualisation with VirtualBox, gaming, common desktop tasks (web navigation, music, video, Prime Video, etc) and I feel it very good. I use Wayland on my laptop Acer Aspire A515-54 and DiRT Rally works stabler on XWayland than Xorg (I had a few hangs on Xorg).

Obviously, to see old applications working on XWayland is not ideal, but the day when OBS works properly on Wayland I can fully migrate. I hope with the passage of time to see the applications migrating to Wayland and see XWayland only patched for some old native games, because Wine games could work better if Wine runs natively on Wayland.

Today I use Wayland on my laptop, but on my desktop, where I do screencasting, I still keep Xorg.

The problem with NVIDIA is NVIDIA's fault to no matching its driver with the standards for the Linux graphics stack.

I don't use OBS so I cannot comment on the status on this but

https://feaneron.com/2019/11/21/screencasting-with-obs-studio-on-wayland/

[allquixotic]

Yes, it is in maintenance mode. That's the whole point here, so thanks for confirmation it's not being developed anymore. There's a lot of FUD in this thread regarding Wayland, but it seems not everyone is able to face the reality.

Clearly you have never written or maintained large-scale software systems before, as it seems like you have no idea what you're talking about.

We are in the midst of what is likely to be a multi-decade transition from X11 to Wayland. The code of the display server isn't what's hanging everyone up; the biggest blockers are hardware support, and legacy applications (like games, professional design apps, etc.) We are going to need high-quality, production-ready, reliable support for all X11 protocols on top of Wayland for a very, very long time. Application code moves much slower than the systems they depend on; this is an undisputable fact. That's why backwards compatibility exists in the first place.

The "maintenance" of X.org related projects since 2012 has been much, much more than just the bare minimum security fixes, which is what I think you're trying to imply by saying it's in "maintenance mode." X.org has continued to provide new hardware support, new feature support, performance optimizations, and major bug fixes over the time from 2012 to the present. This is the sign of a project that still has much interest, and will continue to be relevant for a long time.

Unlike what you might think of in your head in simplified dream-land, reality is messy. Things happen gradually. Instead of the entire world snapping their fingers and switching from Xorg to Wayland in an instant, this transition will happen one machine at a time, one distro at a time, one user at a time, one game/application at a time, over a period of 1-2 decades.

During that time, both Xorg and Wayland will need to be fully functional in parallel. People who depend critically on an application that doesn't run properly on XWayland will need to run Xorg until either the app is updated or XWayland works around the compatibility issue. People who run hardware incompatible with Wayland will have to stay on Xorg until they can afford to upgrade to hardware that Wayland supports.

Of course Wayland is "the way forward" -- everyone recognizes that, and I'm not disputing it. Of course Xorg is "legacy." But that doesn't mean that either X.org is unmaintained or that anyone who continues to run Xorg for the next 5-10 years is a fool. Xorg will continue to receive bug fixes, performance optimizations, new hardware enablement and even some feature development during the transition.

This is a MUCH larger and more expensive transition than anything we've gone through in the past. This is bigger than KMS. This is bigger than PulseAudio. This is bigger than systemd. Bigger than any change of filesystem from an older to a newer one.

The world isn't black and white. Especially in the case of the Xorg to Wayland transition, it's going to be a long journey, not a sudden bump.

[Britoid]

Classic win32 applications worked blazingly fast under Windows NT 3.1 (released in 1993) and they continue to run that way under Windows 10 64 in 2020, i.e. 27 years later. Oh and don't get me started on RDP which was created around Win32 APIs and works a little bit like libX11 only way faster and more efficiently.

On the other hand Wayland was designed solely to push bitmaps to the screen - this sounds almost like a bad joke to me. What a commendable initiative! Only that's not how Windows, MacOS X, iOS or Android work - all well established OSes with a proven track record. To be honest Android on the surface looks like Wayland only it has system wide drawing APIs which Wayland lacks in any shape or form. Skia could probably become its alternative for Linux but Skia alone is not sufficient (you need to render fonts as well). And Skia still pushes bitmaps and we're back to square one: a bitmap pushing protocol.

The macOS, iOS and Android compositors don't have drawing APIs either. You don't even talk directly to their compositors, you talk through the platform level toolkit, which handles drawing.

[Volta]

A brilliant comment however you've identified the biggest Microsoft's strength. They didn't release Windows Vista/7 WDDM stacks in a half broken state. Everything worked though sometimes people struggled with compatibility because vendors refused/or were slow to release new graphics drivers. In Linux however, a new graphics stack is being foisted on users even without offering 100% compatibility with all the existing X11 applications and sometimes extremely serious performance issues.

So, you're saying Fedora is the only Linux distribution? What a pathetic troll you are. FYI Vista was released being unfinished piece of crap.

[birdie]

The macOS, iOS and Android compositors don't have drawing APIs either. You don't even talk directly to their compositors, you talk through the platform level toolkit, which handles drawing.

Exactly. Wake me up when Wayland has it.

Wake me up when at the very least Wayland compositors share a single configuration file for display settings, input and keyboard (re)mapping.

Wake me up when all the Linux GUI toolkits supporting Wayland share a common font and DPI configuration.

[Britoid]

Exactly. Wake me up when Wayland has it.

Wake me up when at the very least Wayland compositors share a single configuration file for display settings, input and keyboard (re)mapping.

Wake me up when all the Linux GUI toolkits supporting Wayland share a common font and DPI configuration.

Those have nothing to do with Wayland and do not belong in a display server protocol. Wayland only describes the communication between a client and the display server. Font/DPI is handled by toolkits, so you're going to have to try and get some common ground with toolkits, good luck.

But why am I telling you this, you already know.

[Volta]

Clearly you have never written or maintained large-scale software systems before, as it seems like you have no idea what you're talking about.

We are in the midst of what is likely to be a multi-decade transition from X11 to Wayland. The code of the display server isn't what's hanging everyone up; the biggest blockers are hardware support, and legacy applications (like games, professional design apps, etc.) We are going to need high-quality, production-ready, reliable support for all X11 protocols on top of Wayland for a very, very long time. Application code moves much slower than the systems they depend on; this is an undisputable fact. That's why backwards compatibility exists in the first place.

Clearly you don't have a clue what I'm talking about. That's why XWayland exists. However, if you're planning to port every single application on your own or replace developers who left their projects then good luck. I don't care about some legacy mario clone not being able to run natively on Wayland. Even then it will run through XWayland. I also don't care about nvidia support from obvious reasons. Wayland is default in Fedora and overall it's good experience. Are you able to give me example of application that won't run under Wayland session or you're just exaggerating too much?