Ubuntu 21.04 - X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance

[oiaohm]

Personally I’m waiting for a VNC or VNC alternative before I make the switch to Wayland

Edit: I am aware of wayvnc, it does not currently work with gnome

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Mutter/RemoteDesktop

Gnome does include a VNC option with gnome-remote-desktop with Wayland but its lacking all the nice security features like encryption and passwords.

So I think you need to state what you want better lyamc.

[lyamc]

That’s a great idea, let’s run VNC without passwords or encryption

And you think I haven’t tried that? It does not work, or at least it didn’t work when I tried about a month ago.

No, I’m going to wait till it’s working correctly

[oiaohm]

That’s a great idea, let’s run VNC without passwords or encryption

And you think I haven’t tried that? It does not work, or at least it didn’t work when I tried about a month ago.

No, I’m going to wait till it’s working correctly

I did not say it was a good idea. The problem is that is enough that the question "Does gnome have VNC support" is yes it does. You want VNC support with encryption and passwords like wayvnc offers.

[blacknova]

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Mutter/RemoteDesktop

Gnome does include a VNC option with gnome-remote-desktop with Wayland but its lacking all the nice security features like encryption and passwords.

So I think you need to state what you want better lyamc.

I've tried several times to setup gnome remote desktop on Fedora 33 without any success.

[Danny3]

It would be nice to see these comparions on KDE too like on Kubuntu.

[ripper81]

I have tried Wayland on KDE Plasma 5.21 after upgrading all my systems to Kubuntu 21.04. Sadly it didn't went well on my end. On my Tuxedo Notebook the synaptic touchpad wasn't detected when using the Wayland-session. Instead the system recognized it as a PS2 Mouse, so none oft the touchpadgestures where working and the cursor movement was slow and dragging. On another machine with an old AMD A10 APU the performance went to a stuttering slideshow while it works flawless under X11/X.Org.

Gaming also has its problems with Wayland. Some games (native and nonnative) refused to start. Another problem is the missing VRR/Freesync support. The usability of Freesync is limited on linux by X11/X.Org but at least it works for exclusive fullscreen OpenGL/Vulkan games. I guess i will wait another full year before trying Wayland again. Maybe it will be in good shape by the time Kubuntu 22.04 will be released.

[zoomblab]

Why does a game need X? Of all kinds of programs I suppose games should only care about initializing a window, and then ok receiving input. EGL does the window initialization IIRC.

[Azrael5]

The comparison will be exhaustive when a game based on pure Wayland is compared with the same game based on Xorg. However X-Wayland gives some increase in performance.

Wayland should have been integrated before Linux gaming was spread by gaming platforms because the innovative approach is more simple than the transitional approach. It is more simple to make a new Os based on pure Wayland than to adapt a present Os to Wayland. So happens for gaming. Wayland should have been integrated 5 years ago. Many economical operators calculate the transitional timing where just a day can distinguish the available result from the impossibility to get the result. Flexibility is the key to improve the speed in transitional phase reducing the time on replacing the legacy with the innovation. Indeed, games based on legacy are not competitive. This means that all that is based on Xorg must be dismissed quickly and replaced by programs based on Wayland.

[blacknova]

Why does a game need X? Of all kinds of programs I suppose games should only care about initializing a window, and then ok receiving input. EGL does the window initialization IIRC.

Until just recently most games used GLX for OpenGL, as the X in the GLX imply that interface is designed for X11 and work only with it.

[oiaohm]

I have tried Wayland on KDE Plasma 5.21 after upgrading all my systems to Kubuntu 21.04. Sadly it didn't went well on my end. On my Tuxedo Notebook the synaptic touchpad wasn't detected when using the Wayland-session. Instead the system recognized it as a PS2 Mouse, so none oft the touchpadgestures where working and the cursor movement was slow and dragging.

This sounds like you have been depending on the legacy synaptic driver not the new libinput and have not reported a libinput bug here.

PS the old synaptic driver in X11 bare metal is on the commercial distribution chopping block by a kernel update at some point. So testing your X11 bare metal with only libinput could be a really good idea.

Gaming also has its problems with Wayland. Some games (native and nonnative) refused to start. Another problem is the missing VRR/Freesync support. The usability of Freesync is limited on linux by X11/X.Org but at least it works for exclusive fullscreen OpenGL/Vulkan games. I guess i will wait another full year before trying Wayland again. Maybe it will be in good shape by the time Kubuntu 22.04 will be released.

Missing VRR support is case of KDE/Gnome limitation not a general Wayland one. wlroots based Wayland compositors have had the support for a while now.

Some games have incomplete wayland support and need to be force started with XWayland to work with the fact lot of those games are no longer getting updates that work around is the way it going to be to play those game into the future. So without the list of games here I cannot go though and say if you lucked out on just trying a stack of buggy. Yes there are some emulators with the same problem.