Valve Is Funding Improvements To KDE's KWin & More Work On X.Org

[Baguy]

Wow, there's just so much here that's... off... Don't know where to even start, so I won't....

Back on topic, while I'm thrilled Valve is doing all this work with Steam Play, drivers, now kwin, etc, does anyone have a sense of what their endgame is? Sure, it's terrific for the Linux ecosystem, but what is Valve as a company's bigger play here?

They have a long-term plan of improving the Linux gaming ecosystem to make it a more attractive (free) alternative to windows. And guess what the most popular Linux gaming client is right now? Steam. So while they might not see any payoff for a while, they will most likely see some benefit later.

[tildearrow]

OK, any plans to merge it to master?

This news got my attention, because it pretty much does what my project's doing: using a wait for VBlank function instead of using a timer to paint the screen.

However, I am not giving up on my project yet, since it brings some features which will never arrive to KWin upstream (such as the Close option in Present Windows and full-screen unredirection) because the devs simply don't want to see them anymore.

[aufkrawall]

since it brings some features which will never arrive to KWin upstream (such as the Close option in Present Windows and full-screen unredirection)

It's really beyond my imagining why Martin Flöser denied auto unredirect for fullscreen. It works without any issues in Plasma with Compton and KWin's "pause compositing" feature is obviously stupid by design...

[thechef]

Good news :-)

The main reason I use KDE is kwin. I don't know how other window manager function these days, but I usually had trouble turning off compositing (Ctrl+Alt+F12) on other window managers. The issue is with compositing enabled that even with windowed scenarios that it's not as amazingly fast as as without compositing (obviously).
E.g. Window resize performance is sometimes 2 pixels behind the cursor when compositing is enabled on all operating systems and all window managers.

Depending on scenario I need a glitch-free switch.

[aufkrawall]

The issue is with compositing enabled that even with windowed scenarios that it's not as amazingly fast as as without compositing (obviously).
E.g. Window resize performance is sometimes 2 pixels behind the cursor when compositing is enabled on all operating systems and all window managers.

This inevitable with vsync, it also happens with TearFree instead of a compositor. Though there often is room for improvements, e.g. tildearrow's KWin fork feels really direct with lowest latency setting.

[danielnez1]

loganj Ubuntu got several FTEs working on mutter for both wayland and x11. A bit of contract work doesn’t compare to professionals doing years of day job.

Oh dear, degrading to your old ways again. At least least your current account has probably lasted the longest before being banned. Keep it up.

[R41N3R]

Great to see Roman being contracted by Valve! He did some great improvements to kwin and Wayland. I use KDE Plasma on Wayland only and I do have less and less complains, sure it needs some polish and some important bug fixes, but overall I'm quite happy with it, especially now when kwin get's the necessary attention. I don't know, but Valve is really doing awesome work (Linux, drivers, RADV, Proton, DXVK, FAudio, ...) and they seem to drive the developments into the right direction, I do own already a lot of games on Steam, but with this I'm really forced to get more :-)

[Iiari]

...such as the Close option in Present Windows...

What does that mean? Does it allow closing windows in expose with a middle mouse button rather than the little red "X"? If so, I'm all in, because that decision was baffling...

[R41N3R]

I would like to be able to close windows from ALT + TAB.

Reading some comments here about stopping the compositor or full-screen redirect, I wonder if this is really what users want? Personally I prefer that at all time I can switch back to my desktop and that I'm not blocked to do that by some keyboard locking or missing animations, just like on Android where an app just feels integrated into the desktop and swipe always works fine.

[aufkrawall]

R41N3R Proper switching between fullscreen and desktop is one of the reasons why auto unredirect is superior to Plasma's pause compositing approach, as switching is instant and there is no kind of "locking". Gaming profits a lot by this.
On Gnome, applications can also control if compositor stays on in fullscreen. With Compton, you can define it on a per app basis.