GNOME X.Org vs. Wayland Performance + Power Usage On Fedora 32 With AMD Renoir Laptop

[ArchLinux]

Opinions doesn’t matter. Contributors matter. They all moved to Wayland.

More commits. Less commits.

[Volta]

The flash plugin had (real) hardware video acceleration. SO the problem is Firefox, Chrome and the incapacity.

But you didn't stop you from blaming Wayland from similar reasons. SO your IQ is either low or you're a hypocrite.

[ArchLinux]

I have to say .. it's rather amusing to see this debate... and from my guesses primarily from people not involved in either X11 or Wayland development... and such extreme opinions from people who aren't actually working on it and all focused on a single Wayland compositor implementation only...

Some facts: Wayland probably drives more displays than X11 does at this point, and even if it doesn't, its growing substantially and quickly and is already substantial. Every Samsung smart watch, smart TV and fridge run a Wayland compositor and has done so for a while. That'll be 100's of millions of devices by now. Wayland is real and in production. I do not know numbers from the car infotainment world, so can't say.

For people saying "Why don't you just design something more like OSX or Android", well, Android uses surfaceflinger as its compositor and display system and surfaceflinger is incredibly similar to Wayland in design. They are almost twins. At least in comparison to X11. But let me get to the fun bit.

This is NOT an exhaustive test. It's very simple and I spent only 5 mins getting the numbers (spent much more writing this comment vs getting data), BUT it's a different compositor to Gnome, but like Gnome the experience is "similar" in that it's the same DE/WM/Compositor with same config, same feature-set on the same piece of hardware with the same OS - the only difference is I logged into a text TTY and then either ran startx or just the WM/Compositor directly, then ran 1 terminal and checked for free available memory. About as apples to apples as it'll get, much like Gnome. So not an exhaustive set of apps and so on, but let this be a different point to "I sampled only 1 environment". No - I'm not going to spend hours formulating some battery life tests and others and run it etc. I'm only going to go this far as I have other things to do like sleep. This is just a "there's another side to this coin and take a look here to get an idea".

This was Arch Linux (x86_64), recently updated in the last week or so on an Intel i5-4200U CPU (and GPU) with 4GB RAM, with current git master of EFL+Enlightenment+Terminology (because it's what I work on). Same theme, same user, same config files, resolution, screen etc.

First. We need to find the base system memory usage to log into the TTY and this is a base memory footprint that is shared between both and should be subtracted as it is not relevant to the different display systems, so the simple test, running "free -m" to get system-wide footprint:

total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3844 90 3607 1 146 3562
Swap: 2047 0 2047

So 90M etc. as a base. Now Let's look at X11 (startx):

total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3844 250 3169 62 424 3312
Swap: 2047 0 2047

250M for X11. Now let's look at Wayland:

total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 3844 188 3278 36 377 3400
Swap: 2047 0 2047

188M. So X11 vs Wayland:

RAM SHR BUFF
X11: 160M 61M 278M
WL: 98M 35M 131M
WL/X11: 61% 57% 47%

So... about 40% or BETTER memory savings for WL vs X11. Please calm down a bit and actually get stuck into details and research. If I can, in 5 minutes, show the exact opposite results with a close-as-possible apples vs. apples comparison, then I think you should allow room for there to be vastly differing results depending on what you choose and that Wayland is actually capable of being much better than X11. I write the above because I work on this code so I know what I'm doing. I still use X11 every day because Wayland support is "not there yet", but the direction of flow is clear. I know where it's at and what it does and what is still needed. I know my comparison above is fair (though very limited) because I know the code behind it on both sides. I know the Wayland support could be trimmed down a bit (it also still runs Xwayland in the background always even if not needed for example, and was/is not needed here) so numbers could be even better. Compositor and clients both share the same toolkit here because that's the design. As someone who works on this, Wayland is still pretty new and just beginning to be adopted and worked on really in the scheme of things. Getting a whole ecosystem to change direction is hard - it's worse than trying to change the direction of the titanic. It's trying to change the direction of a whole flotilla of various boats from titanic to dinghy in size, each with their own captains, crew and hecklers on board. It happens slowly because no single entity is in charge and says "We go this way, like it or not".

As an aside, I do think there is something to be said about a "Widget server" style design which can bring even better results if done well/right but don't give Wayland all the beating without doing homework. Please do it. You may find that differences have more to do with the choice of your DE than Wayland itself at all.

You may find that Gnome Shell on the same system will use many times the memory footprint as well so it's a different implementation and design and thus will net you different results. I think the Gnome guys are doing a great job of pushing Wayland forward faster than most others, so give them credit where credit is due. This will all take time, but let Enlightenment be the shining light of "If you spend your time on the nuts and bolts and get it right, there are some serious wins to be had - look here".

That's way too much text around some good stats, but you're apparently only comparing clean just-logged-in sessions with nothing running.

[Volta]

It was released in 2008. Before Obama was elected. The first time. In fact the same month even as Google Chrome and Android.

So it's even worse, but your stupid spam makes no sense.

[Volta]

More commits. Less commits.

No genius. The 'X' development you provided is more about XWayland and other Wayland related stuff. The 'Wayland' itself is also Mutter, Kwin etc. You're too late and your bullshit is not interesting.

[ArchLinux]

So it's even worse, but your stupid spam makes no sense.

You were responding to someone mocking how recent Wayland supposedly is, so that's why your post made no sense.

[ArchLinux]

No genius. The 'X' development you provided is more about XWayland and other Wayland related stuff. The 'Wayland' itself is also Mutter, Kwin etc. You're too late and your bullshit is not interesting.

Well that's actually true, I didn't notice some of that was XWayland, but I'm at least glad how before what I "provided", you had no clue either.

E: And of course, shows how much more relevant X11 still is.

[Volta]

So Wayland sucks or tests suck?

You suck. Stupid spammer.

[Volta]

You were responding to someone mocking how recent Wayland supposedly is, so that's why your post made no sense.

The talk was about something else spammer.

[Volta]

Well that's actually true, I didn't notice some of that was XWayland, but I'm at least glad how before what I "provided", you had no clue either.

E: And of course, shows how much more relevant X11 still is.

That's funny, because it was one of my arguments in another thread. This shows X11 is just becoming Wayland compatibility addon.