Fedora 23: KDE vs. Xfce vs. GNOME vs. LXDE vs. MATE

[mgraesslin]

Concerning "Suspend desktop effects for fullscreen windows" in Plasma: please note that this option does nothing for Intel hardware. Due to crashers in the past in the Intel driver we deactivated that option for Intel and won't ever turn it on again.

We consider this a useless option for Plasma. If one wants to run games: turn of desktop effects completely. Alt+Shift+F12 to do so, use a kwin rule to set it automatically for a window or use a "game script" (see http://kde-look.org/content/show.php...content=156659). Even games can indicate to KWin that they want desktop effects disabled by a simple property.

Given that we consider turning desktop effects off the correct way to play games on Linux (ideally you launch your own dedicated X Server), we don't care at all about benchmarks like that. We consider them actually a joke. They are done in a wrong way (hey let's test only one hardware and tell everyone that this is the ultimate way to do benchmarks!) and don't say anything useful anyway.

[schmalzler]

I think it is very fair to run the software as is. That's the defaults any user are going to get, than you test what the users are going to experience...
What you are asking is not fair to the other ones. It's like you would have a performance test and your application runs faster because of aggressive caching(Chrome for example), you are satisfied with the result and then somebody has a memory test and sees that your application consumes a lot more memory and you ask them to disable caching and then compare...
You decided to have that tradeoff, than it is absolutely fair to everybody else to run the defaults on everybody and not tune for each case separately...

The test as it was done here was NOT fair. Because gnome-shell actually DOES unredirect fullscreen windows, at least some. The only difference is you can't find a button to disable it in gnome-shell. AFAIR I also read about unredirect feature in xfwm.Those things really should be evaluated BEFORE doing tests and the reader should be informed about the way the test is done. The best thing of course would be several tests for one DE to cover the different possible settings.

[sunweb]

The reason it's not enabled by default in kwin is that it can cause flickering when you switch between the desktop and your fullscreen app (alt+tab).
This is why I leave it disabled and just switch off compositing if I actually need the best performance (alt+shift+f12) and reenable it when I'm finished playing (alt+shift+f12).

Kubuntu 14.04, KDE 4, HD5770, no flickering.

Would you mind tellng me where the "unredirect" is in kde. I have had the disable compositing for a while, but am not sure what the unredirect is (unless they are the same thing?).

In KDE4 go to System Settings -> Desktop Effects -> Advanced check "Suspend desktop effects for fullscreen windows"
In KDE5 they moved it to System Settings -> Display -> Compositor. Though KDE5 issue buggy on many occasions for different sets of hardware.

[humbug]

The reason it's not enabled by default in kwin is that it can cause flickering when you switch between the desktop and your fullscreen app (alt+tab).
This is why I leave it disabled and just switch off compositing if I actually need the best performance (alt+shift+f12) and reenable it when I'm finished playing (alt+shift+f12).

Is this flickering only an issue with KDE?

[edoantonioco]

- cancels Kubuntu 15.10 download -

just disable compositing in fullscreen and you will be ok on kde

[shawnsterp]

Would you mind retesting with the "unredirect and disable compositing when there's a fullscreen application running" features enabled in Plasma 5? It takes two mouse clicks in a config window.

Would you mind tellng me where the "unredirect" is in kde. I have had the disable compositing for a while, but am not sure what the unredirect is (unless they are the same thing?).

[MoonMoon]

First of all, FPS over 60 is great playable, 90 or 100 no matter. Only stupid kid can think other.

Not quite true. At first, there are people out there with 120 or 144Hz monitors. Second, having 100 FPS does tell me that I can enable more visual advancements (better AA, better AF, ...) until I get down to 60 FPS again, so in the end it does matter.

[bug77]

First of all, FPS over 60 is great playable, 90 or 100 no matter. Only stupid kid can think other. Second of all everyone must use what they want and love, no matter Xfce, Gnome, Kde or so on.

That goes without saying, but these kind of benchmarks are more geared towards telling you how the DE overhead measures up against different DEs. Well, unless Michael just presses a button and generates some charts. Then there's not much to learn, besides the default behaviour.

[patrakov]

I'm having a hard time imagining anyone tech-savvy enough to use KDE, but at the same time oblivious enough to not disable redirecting in full screen.

When KDE suppored full-screen color correction, that was THE reason to leave full-screen windows redirected. On wide-gamut monitors, even games absolutely need color correction (so that eyes don't bleed because of otherwise oversaturated colors), and manufacturers are putting such displays even in laptops now.

It's a pity that full-screen color correction is no longer available in modern desktop environments. The line of thought is that it belongs to applications, but nobody is willing to magically fix old binary-only games, either.

[bvbfan]

First of all, FPS over 60 is great playable, 90 or 100 no matter. Only stupid kid can think other. Second of all everyone must use what they want and love, no matter Xfce, Gnome, Kde or so on.