X.Org vs. Wayland Linux Gaming Performance For NVIDIA GeForce + AMD Radeon In Early 2023

[Ericg]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?

Wayland has given us desktop users so many problems, so many bugs, so many disasters. What is it all good for? What does Wayland offer that is worth the enormous cost for end users who see their systems not boot, have error messages, lower performance, and other terrible effects. We are now so many years later that most distro's have switched or are in the process of switching, but i see no clear benefits for ordinary users. If they would know that some games / applications drop more than half in performance, what would be the reason to use it? What was wrong with X.org in the first place? Its complicated design may lower performance in theory i guess, but with Wayland having so many years of development it still struggles against X.org in some cases big time. The performance is unacceptable for some titles.

It seems to me perhaps a tiny minority is happy with Wayland and others would have benefited more from a stable and working X.org system?

And is that perhaps the real reason, license stuff? X.org is not GPL, is that the real issue? Linux devs feeling offended that something so vital is not GPL? I've seen the hostility toward ZFS and BSD, so i guess it is possible license stuff is part of the motivation. I lack the knowledge to form a definitive opinion on this subject, but from my point of view Linux desktop is still a hit and miss. Boot up an old Windows and it just works. Boot up a Linux LTS release and even the live CD/USB would show so many errors in the logs. And that is in the most vanilla / pristine state possible before even having it installed! Linux desktop simply has not achieved the stability of Windows yet. The devs seem focused on new toys, instead of getting the existing toys to work and have all the bugs ironed out.

Some examples: vanilla installation of ubuntu cannot play videos properly because of missing Vertical Sync - why? Why is vsync not the default, why do not things just work as they should work? Who wants vsync off when watching movies? Tell me! No one wants that right?! So why is it the default then? The 150% scaling doesn't work properly it works 100% and 200% but fractional scaling is still a mess. Hardware video acceleration often does not work for Firefox and VLC media player. All very important issues to be resolved for ordinary users, in 2023! I expected them fixed in 2000 already - Windows did?!

Velocity, X’s entire operating model is a security nightmare, it functioning mostly relies on ignoring the vast majority of the X11 protocol, and it’s not designed or setup for modern hardware, nor to take advantage of that modern hardware. Fixing all of X’s issues would require breaking the X11 design hard enough that the developers made the well-informed decision to say “if we’re gonna break 85% of things, we may as well just break 100% of things and start from scratch.” Which is basically what Wayland became.

There’s multiple conference videos talking about the problems of X11 and how, even if you could get stuff working, you’re invariably working within a bad system and bandaiding a sinking ship.

[uid313]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?

Wayland has given us desktop users so many problems, so many bugs, so many disasters. What is it all good for? What does Wayland offer that is worth the enormous cost for end users who see their systems not boot, have error messages, lower performance, and other terrible effects. We are now so many years later that most distro's have switched or are in the process of switching, but i see no clear benefits for ordinary users. If they would know that some games / applications drop more than half in performance, what would be the reason to use it? What was wrong with X.org in the first place? Its complicated design may lower performance in theory i guess, but with Wayland having so many years of development it still struggles against X.org in some cases big time. The performance is unacceptable for some titles.

It seems to me perhaps a tiny minority is happy with Wayland and others would have benefited more from a stable and working X.org system?

And is that perhaps the real reason, license stuff? X.org is not GPL, is that the real issue? Linux devs feeling offended that something so vital is not GPL? I've seen the hostility toward ZFS and BSD, so i guess it is possible license stuff is part of the motivation. I lack the knowledge to form a definitive opinion on this subject, but from my point of view Linux desktop is still a hit and miss. Boot up an old Windows and it just works. Boot up a Linux LTS release and even the live CD/USB would show so many errors in the logs. And that is in the most vanilla / pristine state possible before even having it installed! Linux desktop simply has not achieved the stability of Windows yet. The devs seem focused on new toys, instead of getting the existing toys to work and have all the bugs ironed out.

Some examples: vanilla installation of ubuntu cannot play videos properly because of missing Vertical Sync - why? Why is vsync not the default, why do not things just work as they should work? Who wants vsync off when watching movies? Tell me! No one wants that right?! So why is it the default then? The 150% scaling doesn't work properly it works 100% and 200% but fractional scaling is still a mess. Hardware video acceleration often does not work for Firefox and VLC media player. All very important issues to be resolved for ordinary users, in 2023! I expected them fixed in 2000 already - Windows did?!

What Wayland brings as a benefit over X11 is security!
On X11 all applications can see everything on the screen, they can see all the other application's windows, and they can sniff the keyboard and mouse, and do keystroke logging.
With Wayland the application can only know about itself and what happens on its own window.

Also the Wayland is a modern and simple design, it's basically just a framebuffer that you draw on. This in contrast to X11 which was designed in another era with different needs so it its big and bloated and got support for all kinds of stuff like drawing shapes and fonts. Wayland knows nothing about shapes or fonts, just drawing on a framebuffer.

[RejectModernity]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?

Wayland has given us desktop users so many problems, so many bugs, so many disasters. What is it all good for? What does Wayland offer that is worth the enormous cost for end users who see their systems not boot, have error messages, lower performance, and other terrible effects. We are now so many years later that most distro's have switched or are in the process of switching, but i see no clear benefits for ordinary users. If they would know that some games / applications drop more than half in performance, what would be the reason to use it? What was wrong with X.org in the first place? Its complicated design may lower performance in theory i guess, but with Wayland having so many years of development it still struggles against X.org in some cases big time. The performance is unacceptable for some titles.

It seems to me perhaps a tiny minority is happy with Wayland and others would have benefited more from a stable and working X.org system?

And is that perhaps the real reason, license stuff? X.org is not GPL, is that the real issue? Linux devs feeling offended that something so vital is not GPL? I've seen the hostility toward ZFS and BSD, so i guess it is possible license stuff is part of the motivation. I lack the knowledge to form a definitive opinion on this subject, but from my point of view Linux desktop is still a hit and miss. Boot up an old Windows and it just works. Boot up a Linux LTS release and even the live CD/USB would show so many errors in the logs. And that is in the most vanilla / pristine state possible before even having it installed! Linux desktop simply has not achieved the stability of Windows yet. The devs seem focused on new toys, instead of getting the existing toys to work and have all the bugs ironed out.

Some examples: vanilla installation of ubuntu cannot play videos properly because of missing Vertical Sync - why? Why is vsync not the default, why do not things just work as they should work? Who wants vsync off when watching movies? Tell me! No one wants that right?! So why is it the default then? The 150% scaling doesn't work properly it works 100% and 200% but fractional scaling is still a mess. Hardware video acceleration often does not work for Firefox and VLC media player. All very important issues to be resolved for ordinary users, in 2023! I expected them fixed in 2000 already - Windows did?!

But Wayland performs a little bit better most of the times (even with xwayland, which just x on wayland, wonder what it will be with native wayland), and Nvidia doesn't give a shit about it, because it's a shit company with closed blobs. Wayland feels snappier and I don't see any major bugs even in KDE in 2023.
PS If you care so much about x11, you're free to fork it, but you won't, cause you have no idea how to support this old piece of crap.

[mihau]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?

did you even read the article?

Boot up a Linux LTS release and even the live CD/USB would show so many errors in the logs

That's just because you actually get easy access to the logs. You don't need see them if you don't want to. Ever seen Windows Event Log?

Some examples: vanilla installation of ubuntu cannot play videos properly because of missing Vertical Sync - why?

That's just false as of latest Ubuntu LTS. Vsync is on by default. Wayland additionally enforces tear-free presentation so it seems like you'd be quite happy with it.

[pracedru]

But Wayland performs a little bit better most of the times (even with xwayland, which just x on wayland, wonder what it will be with native wayland), and Nvidia doesn't give a shit about it, because it's a shit company with closed blobs. Wayland feels snappier and I don't see any major bugs even in KDE in 2023.
PS If you care so much about x11, you're free to fork it, but you won't, cause you have no idea how to support this old piece of crap.

NVidia on Wayland actually feels a lot snappier than on X11.

[Mitch]

Velocity, X’s entire operating model is a security nightmare, it functioning mostly relies on ignoring the vast majority of the X11 protocol, and it’s not designed or setup for modern hardware, nor to take advantage of that modern hardware. Fixing all of X’s issues would require breaking the X11 design hard enough that the developers made the well-informed decision to say “if we’re gonna break 85% of things, we may as well just break 100% of things and start from scratch.” Which is basically what Wayland became.

There’s multiple conference videos talking about the problems of X11 and how, even if you could get stuff working, you’re invariably working within a bad system and bandaiding a sinking ship.

To add something here, X is so much older than Wayland and look at where it is. It has had little groundbreaking work in recent years and has been in maintenance mode forever. It became something nobody wants to maintain. I don't want bugs anymore than the next guy but Wayland has been great in recent years and will continue to grow and improve things. When the Linux world can say goodbye to XWayland in Wine and other modern software, then it'll be a more apples to apples comparison.

It's a bit analogous to OpenGL vs Vulkan. The former just doesn't break new grounds anymore and is in maintenance mode. Hence efforts like Zink, which are designed to do abstraction like XWayland is doing.

We just have to accept that the people doing the work in these areas are largely letting go of the older way of doing things. They're upfront about their reasons if you look up "Wayland vs X Server" or "OpenGL vs Vulkan".

[dreamcat4]

on the GNOME desktop with Mutter compositor ... across various Linux games. It's been a while since I last ran a X.Org vs. (X)Wayland Linux gaming comparison so today's article is a fresh look

hey phoronix! i dont suppose we could see any reference example to compare against the latest kde plasma too? it doesn't need to be more than a couple of specifically chosen games... just to give us any clue if these 15% average shortfall on nvidia is due either to the nvidia driver, or because of mutter / gnome.

and to echo also the request of others for some sort of testing of a few wine based games. maybe each game chosen on a different engine / frameworks. such as a game for sdl2. and a different game for dxvk, another one for native vulkan. to get some further insight.

of course maybe you want to hold off until getting rtx40 series gpu. but to be able to think ahead and better prepare something to consider in the meantimes. tia love your reporting also on so many other variety of topics... just these nvidia driver gaming happens to be the big one (for me). so hope you can get cards soon. after all this waiting. what a hold up indeed! take care now

[Kombatant]

hey phoronix! i dont suppose we could see any reference example to compare against the latest kde plasma too? it doesn't need to be more than a couple of specifically chosen games... just to give us any clue if these 15% average shortfall on nvidia is due either to the nvidia driver, or because of mutter / gnome.

I have an XTX here at home, and a dual-DE system. Games perform consistently better under Plasma than Gnome. So I imagine both cards will benefit. Plus, gamescope+adaptive sync doesn't hurt. edit: all that on Wayland btw.

[RejectModernity]

NVidia on Wayland actually feels a lot snappier than on X11.

Good to hear, but the performance is not there yet, if you compare it to AMD

[qarium]

If Wayland performance is so bad, what is the reason for its existence?
Wayland has given us desktop users so many problems, so many bugs, so many disasters. What is it all good for? What does Wayland offer that is worth the enormous cost for end users who see their systems not boot, have error messages, lower performance, and other terrible effects. We are now so many years later that most distro's have switched or are in the process of switching, but i see no clear benefits for ordinary users. If they would know that some games / applications drop more than half in performance, what would be the reason to use it? What was wrong with X.org in the first place? Its complicated design may lower performance in theory i guess, but with Wayland having so many years of development it still struggles against X.org in some cases big time. The performance is unacceptable for some titles.
It seems to me perhaps a tiny minority is happy with Wayland and others would have benefited more from a stable and working X.org system?
And is that perhaps the real reason, license stuff? X.org is not GPL, is that the real issue? Linux devs feeling offended that something so vital is not GPL? I've seen the hostility toward ZFS and BSD, so i guess it is possible license stuff is part of the motivation. I lack the knowledge to form a definitive opinion on this subject, but from my point of view Linux desktop is still a hit and miss. Boot up an old Windows and it just works. Boot up a Linux LTS release and even the live CD/USB would show so many errors in the logs. And that is in the most vanilla / pristine state possible before even having it installed! Linux desktop simply has not achieved the stability of Windows yet. The devs seem focused on new toys, instead of getting the existing toys to work and have all the bugs ironed out.
Some examples: vanilla installation of ubuntu cannot play videos properly because of missing Vertical Sync - why? Why is vsync not the default, why do not things just work as they should work? Who wants vsync off when watching movies? Tell me! No one wants that right?! So why is it the default then? The 150% scaling doesn't work properly it works 100% and 200% but fractional scaling is still a mess. Hardware video acceleration often does not work for Firefox and VLC media player. All very important issues to be resolved for ordinary users, in 2023! I expected them fixed in 2000 already - Windows did?!

the real reason is security IBM/Redhat always did want to sell redhat/fedora linux to Governments and big Coproations and Banks and secret intelligence services and so one and so one and linux was always rejected by the government and big corporations because X11/x.org is a security hole and the security holes are essencial parts in the protokoll means no one can fix it.

one app can steal passwords and stuff from another app because x11/x-org allows all apps to do in windows of other apps what they want.

Wayland is not made to be faster but the developers say as soon as there is native wayland apps and games it will be faster.

wayland its primary goal was to fix the security hole with the name X11/X-org... wayland is the security fix,

if you are not the NSA not the CIA not the Banks not the government not highly targeted individual then you don't care

X11/o.org has zero security but you as a desktop user you do not need any security...

but Redhat/IBM can not sell linux workstations to the government as long as this security hole is not fixed and wayland is the fix.