Why KDE Is Great For Gaming On The Linux Desktop

[Shahrizai]

Yes, what is important is that stuff WORKS.

It is also important that stuff works without me having to do anything. I am a noob... or ... what you guys apparently like to call "power user"? Someone who simply use the OS without knowing what is happening under the hood? Yes, that is me.

In that retrospect: Neither do I want to push any hotkeys to turn off compositing managers, or fiddle with some special settings somewhere to make it happen...

All I want to do is:

1. Install OS
2. Install gfx drivers
3. Install game
4. Run game and have fun

I don't want to think about Kwin, Mutter, Compiz... whatever is running... I just want my OS to WORK and also work efficiently ofc.

Oh, and of course, if it looks ghastly and disgusting, then I will install something else, which is why I run Kubuntu instead of Ubuntu

I have forgotten why I wrote this post. Do I have a point? I don't think I do ...

[ElderSnake]

Yay. A POWER USER feature to toggle everytime you need a batman kapaaauw. Repetitive micro management of nonsense anti-features is one of the most universal psychological evidence when someone is f***ed in the head. Hoarding, procrastination, CDO(the way it is meant to be) and pathological KDE configurism is all alike. Good sleep, fatty acids, vegetables, exercise and a sane compositing desktop with the ability to non-compositing/unredirect screens/windows is the only cure.

Is something wrong with you? I've only ever seen you rant and rave like a lunatic. KDE works great for me (and many others) and that's all that matters.

[judgen]

No

Wow this thread is a mess. KDE would be dead without Martin's work over the past years, yet he gets hate for a blog post about changing screen resolutions within games.

You are wrong in that regard i think. Allthough i love the qt apps that are within the KDE sc i never ever use their plasma crap. Plasma is and has always been for non-me interfaces. If someone likes it, fine. but that does not make killing kicker obsolete. I think razor-qt and Trinitiy (wich has the most helpful community i have ever seen) has done good work, and i prefer their panels to the entire plasma desktop anyday.

[a user]

Wrong way around there, Mutter had this feature long before Compiz, as did Xfwm and KWin. It is Compiz that is finally joining the party.

as i wrote above, for KWIN i couldn't find this working. though i found via google a description how it possible could be done but i didn't bothered to test it.

on mutter it works out of the box since i know mutter.

[a user]

@ those saying Compositing slows down Game performance... this is what the whole "Ubuntu fixes Unity Redirect fullscreen" news was all about... Games that go full screen present [b]directly[b] (ie, avoid compositing) to the backbuffer. This is mostly likely what Windows does. IDK how Mutter/Muffin/Gala/Xfwm handle this, but even if they don't do it now, there's nothing stopping them from following along.

actually mutter does the same. i am using gnome shell 3.6 (well at the moment 3.7.2) with mutter and it works fine. i have vsync while on full screen using xbmc.

i tried kde out again 2 weeks ago. i didn't liked it. but what annoyed me the most was that i could get tearing free video playback. well, after a search via goodle i found out how to "fix" kwin for this, though i didn't tried it. i couldn't stand the de anyway. there is absolutely nothing i liked and a lot i dislike and want to get rid of it.

but this is my taste and my needs, except for the not working vsync in fullscreen xbmc. that's a really unaccaptable thing.

[Hamish Wilson]

@ those saying Compositing slows down Game performance... this is what the whole "Ubuntu fixes Unity Redirect fullscreen" news was all about... Games that go full screen present [b]directly[b] (ie, avoid compositing) to the backbuffer. This is mostly likely what Windows does. IDK how Mutter/Muffin/Gala/Xfwm handle this, but even if they don't do it now, there's nothing stopping them from following along.

Wrong way around there, Mutter had this feature long before Compiz, as did Xfwm and KWin. It is Compiz that is finally joining the party.

[Nuc!eoN]

With intel ivy bridge drivers the compositing works incredibly well. When I play a fullscreen game on one monitor I have good performance even though the other monitor is still composited. There is one occassion when it gets horribly laggy: When there is an overlay like notifications or the volume indicator when changing the volume, i.e. when the fullscreen game is composited.

Same on Windows.

The performance hit caused by compositing is very strong, regardless of DE/WM. It's your enemy for gaming, and fullscreen isn't your friend on GNU/Linux (unable to alt-tab in most games, also it hides date/time and other stuff).

Same for MS Windows

I'm still waiting that you name your champ-of-DE.

I guess f**kSTAR uses Windows, 'cause Linux suck sooo bad

[pingufunkybeat]

Yay. A POWER USER feature to toggle everytime you need a batman kapaaauw. Repetitive micro management of nonsense anti-features is one of the most universal psychological evidence when someone is f***ed in the head. Hoarding, procrastination, CDO(the way it is meant to be) and pathological KDE configurism is all alike. Good sleep, fatty acids, vegetables, exercise and a sane compositing desktop with the ability to non-compositing/unredirect screens/windows is the only cure.

No need to get all upset.

You can still use something that's easy enough for you to understand. That's the power of choice -- something for power users, something for grandma checking email.

[gcala]

Yay. A POWER USER feature to toggle everytime you need a batman kapaaauw. Repetitive micro management of nonsense anti-features ...

systemsettings has a setting to automatically turn off composition when an application goes full-screen...

I'm still waiting that you name your champ-of-DE.

[RealNC]

Yeah they do actually. It's rather well known in the gaming community that you want to turn off Aero for gaming if you want the best framerates.

This has been benchmarked multiple times. Aero doesn't affect games at all if left enabled. Note that I'm not talking about running them in a window, but rather full screen.

Running a game works like a treat on Windows. On Linux, developers can't even see why fullscreen, exclusive control over the screen is actually useful for games. They think a game is just nethack running in xterm or something. They've come up with countless standards, like notifications, systrays, redundant IPC implementations, but they can't be bothered about a standard for getting fullscreen control for gaming.

Sometimes it's rather hard to tell that they're not actually actively trying to sabotage Linux for gaming.