Why KDE Is Great For Gaming On The Linux Desktop

[cardboard]

There's a window rule called "Block Compositing." When set, KWin will disable compositing when any window marked is created, and will resume compositing automatically when the window is closed.

Alt+Shift+F12 is fine, but I'd rather mark the application and never have to deal with disabling and enabling compositing.

[BoTuLoX]

YES! Agreed! The freedom of choice! But it saddens me that sometimes, I HAVE TO use tools to make something work at all. It's not my choice
But yeah, I agree with you.

This kind of goes hand in hand with what Serafean said, which I also agree with to some extent. Maintenance could be looked upon as something you need to do in order for something to work, (e.g. new drivers to run the game).
But that wasn't really my point though. :P

But anyway, I think we have found some kind of conclusion

Just something to add to all that.

Maintenance is something that's cool the OS (Linux) does for you up to the point of "not messing with your tools".

Windows, on the other hand, only gets slower and slower with time, and you either have to start anew or use third party tools like TuneUp or CCC.

[Shahrizai]

Really, that's how Linux works, we should have tools, but it's up to the the people to use them.

YES! Agreed! The freedom of choice! But it saddens me that sometimes, I HAVE TO use tools to make something work at all. It's not my choice
But yeah, I agree with you.

This kind of goes hand in hand with what Serafean said, which I also agree with to some extent. Maintenance could be looked upon as something you need to do in order for something to work, (e.g. new drivers to run the game).
But that wasn't really my point though. :P

But anyway, I think we have found some kind of conclusion

[Serafean]

But there is a huge difference (in my eyes) between fiddling with things that I want to change myself - because I would like the change - ... and not because I have to do the change in order for something TO WORK.

Fair enough. But this has a downside (I'll take drivers as an example) : You need to keep your system up to date. Namely the kernel. Having an OS isn't install & forget. I always make the comparison to cars which, from time to time have to be taken to the service and get fixed up. Now computers are much more versatile than cars, and hardware support doesn't magically happen. Hence maintaining a system that works out of the box with most things takes work.

(I still haven't found out how to make Ibus Chinese Pinyin input work properly in Kubuntu).

I had to google ibus...had no idea what that was. This brings me to market(developer) share : if there aren't devs that use it, it won't work...

In general I agree that things should "just work", but in the real world that is a nearly impossible task with hardware bugs/quirks, software bugs (an open-office specific hack in kwin comes to mind). Eg : When windows are spaced all wrong, you blame the window manager, but what if it is the app that's buggy? I believe that fullscreen unredirection should be and is enough (from my very limited testing), and any bugs were indeed the application's fault.

Serafean

[BoTuLoX]

But you see, there is a difference there. ElderSnake said it quite accurate:



It is not that I do not like to fiddle with settings. If I didn't want to fiddle with settings, then I probably would buy a Mac.

But there is a huge difference (in my eyes) between fiddling with things that I want to change myself - because I would like the change - ... and not because I have to do the change in order for something TO WORK.

If the default theme is not to my preference, then I will change it. But the default theme will still WORK. See?
Changing things that already work, is not a problem. I quite like doing that.
But, with the fact that I'm using Linux, I quite often have to google for hours until I find out how to make something work at all. (I still haven't found out how to make Ibus Chinese Pinyin input work properly in Kubuntu).

I recently installed Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon. And everything worked out of the Box. EVERYTHING! I was very, very happy. But of course, I changed quite a lot of settings to make it the way I wanted it. But it still WORKED! And that is my point in regards to the post on Phoronix that this whole thread is about:
If KDE works better, then great, but I will probably never notice the difference unless it does it out of the box. If I have to switch off compositing manually, then what if I didn't know about that? I would never find out. Even after getting told, I probably wouldn't bother about it unless it gave me a substantial boost in gaming performance. But if the boost is so substantial, then it means there is something wrong with how the game is handled by the OS, because it would leave everybody who doesn't know about this at a huge disadvantage.
As someone here in this thread said: Turning on or off the Aero-theme in Windows doesn't make much of a difference. And that is how it should be, also for us Linux users.
If compositing have to be turned off for fullscreen games to work properly, then I think that should happen automagically

That really should be up to the user or the distro.

Linux is NOT Windows, don't assume both work similarly, because they don't.

If somebody wants to make a Kubuntu fork, tailored SPECIFICALLY for games, he's free to do so.

Really, that's how Linux works, we should have tools, but it's up to the the people to use them.

[Shahrizai]

"Configurism" is indeed a mental disorder very hard to live with. In my case it means using the best tool for the job in the most efficient & comfortable way possible.
Nothing ever conformed to this need "out of the box". For instance, I have yet to see a DE that comes with a dark theme as default.

But you see, there is a difference there. ElderSnake said it quite accurate:

On Linux, those of us who want to turn every knob to tweak can be satisfied, and those who don't also have options. It's the great thing about it. Not "one size fits all" type of thing.

It is not that I do not like to fiddle with settings. If I didn't want to fiddle with settings, then I probably would buy a Mac.

But there is a huge difference (in my eyes) between fiddling with things that I want to change myself - because I would like the change - ... and not because I have to do the change in order for something TO WORK.

If the default theme is not to my preference, then I will change it. But the default theme will still WORK. See?
Changing things that already work, is not a problem. I quite like doing that.
But, with the fact that I'm using Linux, I quite often have to google for hours until I find out how to make something work at all. (I still haven't found out how to make Ibus Chinese Pinyin input work properly in Kubuntu).

I recently installed Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon. And everything worked out of the Box. EVERYTHING! I was very, very happy. But of course, I changed quite a lot of settings to make it the way I wanted it. But it still WORKED! And that is my point in regards to the post on Phoronix that this whole thread is about:
If KDE works better, then great, but I will probably never notice the difference unless it does it out of the box. If I have to switch off compositing manually, then what if I didn't know about that? I would never find out. Even after getting told, I probably wouldn't bother about it unless it gave me a substantial boost in gaming performance. But if the boost is so substantial, then it means there is something wrong with how the game is handled by the OS, because it would leave everybody who doesn't know about this at a huge disadvantage.
As someone here in this thread said: Turning on or off the Aero-theme in Windows doesn't make much of a difference. And that is how it should be, also for us Linux users.
If compositing have to be turned off for fullscreen games to work properly, then I think that should happen automagically

[Serafean]

No one is talking about locking down. We are talking about dont configuring shit that really shouldnt be touched. Not because it fotbidden but because it is stupid and waste of time.

You have never been bitten in the butt by a default that didn't suit you. A hard drive used as content source for an HTPC shouldn't have the same defaults (namely spindown time) as a laptop hard drive. Yet this is exactly what you're proposing.

"Configurism" is indeed a mental disorder very hard to live with. In my case it means using the best tool for the job in the most efficient & comfortable way possible.
Nothing ever conformed to this need "out of the box". For instance, I have yet to see a DE that comes with a dark theme as default.
Another take on this problem is functionality. "Jack of all trades, master of none" comes to mind. If you want plug and play gaming, get a console. If you want a PC for gaming, get your hands dirty and set it up that way. The defaults you want aren't the same as those of an accountant's office PC let alone those of a physicist who wants to perform calculations on his machine.

As to all those that didn't read the original blogpost, go and read it. Game performance isn't the point. The point is that kwin is (one of) the last WMs that support multiple rendering paths, and does so in a maintable way (code-wise).

Serafean

[ShadowBane]

Well that is the last excuse to keep a global switch for compositing. And your reasoning is valid; This limited use case is not enough to justify a non-compositied desktop path. Keeping this level of configurism is sick and expensive in terms of maintenance. And Kwin sure do suffers from lack of maintenance, one man is not enough.

And here you make it obvious that you haven't read the blog post. Because of how the code is designed it isn't a ton of work to maintain the non-composite mode and would actually cause a fair amount of work to structure it so that 3d acceleration was required (beyond just having stuff that checks and then shuts down if it wasn't.)

[funkSTAR]

Sure, windowed games... Yet, who plays performannce hungry 3D games in window mode? Less demanding games should be fine, though.

Well that is the last excuse to keep a global switch for compositing. And your reasoning is valid; This limited use case is not enough to justify a non-compositied desktop path. Keeping this level of configurism is sick and expensive in terms of maintenance. And Kwin sure do suffers from lack of maintenance, one man is not enough.

[oleid]

Try running games in window mode and you'll notice slowdowns with gnome-shell.

Sure, windowed games... Yet, who plays performannce hungry 3D games in window mode? Less demanding games should be fine, though.