7-Way Linux Desktop Gaming Comparison On Ubuntu 14.10

[liam]

Wow, that Gnome Shell hit Counterstrike took looks extremely interesting! I have only been running my Steam games within Gnome Shell (3.10 or 3.12, both I think) and haven't given it a thought that the performance might be bad.

I know it's a hassle for you to test Steam Games, but is it possible for you to test it out with some more games? Only compare Gnome Shell with, let's say, XFCE (since it was pretty stable), and run 4-5 games on it?

I also agree with kalrish that you should try testing it with startx.

It's clearly a bug as, in general, gs was one of the best performing wms. Don't forget that steamos is using gnome shell

[stqn]

It's clearly a bug as, in general, gs was one of the best performing wms. Don't forget that steamos is using gnome shell

Well actually IIRC they have their own compositor, I*don?t think gnome shell is used at all while Steam or a game is in the foreground. See the video from DebConf?

[the303]

Well actually IIRC they have their own compositor, I*don?t think gnome shell is used at all while Steam or a game is in the foreground. See the video from DebConf?

To be exact, Gnome Shell isn't a compositor, Mutter (used by Gnome) is. I have no idea what SteamOS uses though.

[smitty3268]

To be exact, Gnome Shell isn't a compositor, Mutter (used by Gnome) is. I have no idea what SteamOS uses though.

They're using a custom one, but it's just Xcompmgr with i assume a couple tweaks somewhere.

[dungeon]

They're using a custom one, but it's just Xcompmgr with i assume a couple tweaks somewhere.

And it is much aware of nvidia blob extensions, so honest benchmarking on other hardware is not possibile

[mufasa72]

Congrats KDE.

[liam]

Well actually IIRC they have their own compositor, I*don?t think gnome shell is used at all while Steam or a game is in the foreground. See the video from DebConf?

You are absolutely right. I even read the damn article on lwn last night about steam os and x.
BTW, it's based on xcompmgr (which keith packard claims is awful code), but with, I'd imagine, fairly heavy changes.

[Auzy]

Firstly, any chance you can also run a test with a later Enlightenment version. E17 is ancient (we are actually up to E19 Stable).

Secondly, any chance we can grab another test in the near future with an nvidia or ATI card? Very few serious gamers would use Intel..

Thanks,
Andy

[drSeehas]

I only miss mate here. ...

I miss MATE too.

[AnonymousCoward]

Everything except KDE was somewhat predictable. Doesn't KDE have a feature where it disables composition when running fullscreen games? hence why it has such good performance?

Would running a game in windowed mode/wine desktop have negative performance implications in KDE?

I personally use XFCE for my desktop needs, mainly because it's light and looks decent. I would use KDE, but IMO it's ugly. I tried configuring it in the past to make it look decent, but I always ended up with something that annoyed me after one or two weeks of use .