Best DE for gaming

[mr.raider2]

Now that LM 20 is on the way, and Ubuntu 20.04 is out, which desktop environment is best suited to full screen gaming?

I'm not taking about RAM or resource usage, since thats irrelevant on a gaming rig. I'm talking mainly about games properly deactivating compositing in full screen mode, and secondly, proper rendering of UIs.

For historical reasons I still use KDE Neon on my main gaming rig since I found kwin to be miles ahead of compiz or whatever cinnamon and unity used back in 2017.

This applies to Linux native games as well as proton/Vulkan?

Hardware is ryzen 2700x and rx5700, resolution is 2560x1080

[Marlock]

Why are we talking FPS so much when the OP was trying to direct this question at supported features and avoiding annoyances/glitches?

mr.raider2 の投稿を引用：

I'm talking mainly about games properly deactivating compositing in full screen mode, and secondly, proper rendering of UIs.

As I only ever use LM Cinnamon and also just a casual gamer, I can only provide one bit of relevant info, which is that Cinnamon does provide a way (even from the UI) to enable/disable compositing.

It has one or two more features along this one, but I don't know what these do exactly.

[WarnerCK]

Marlock の投稿を引用：

Why are we talking FPS so much when the OP was trying to direct this question at supported features and avoiding annoyances/glitches?

Because that part is part of the spec.[specifications.freedesktop.org]

_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR

_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR, CARDINAL/32

The Client MAY set this property to hint the compositor that the window would benefit from running uncomposited (i.e not redirected offscreen) or that the window might be hurt from being uncomposited. A value of 0 indicates no preference. A value of 1 hints the compositor to disabling compositing of this window. A value of 2 hints the compositor to not disabling compositing of this window. All other values are reserved and should be treated the same as a value of 0. The compositing manager MAY bypass compositing for both fullscreen and non-fullscreen windows if bypassing is requested, but MUST NOT bypass if it would cause differences from the composited appearance.

Rationale: Some applications like fullscreen games might want run without the overhead of being redirected offscreen (to avoid extra copies) and thus perform better. An application which creates pop-up windows might always want to run composited to avoid exposes.

There are no window managers that are so broken that they won't do that if asked, and you can use gamemode to ask on the application's behalf if it doesn't on its own. So that's a really short conversation. Job done, thread over.

However, people love to chat, and everyone has an opinion on the best desktop environment that they'll happily share with the slightest provocation:
it's the one they use themselves

So, that's why.

[NRG-R9T]

GNU/Linux Debian の投稿を引用：

NRG-R9T の投稿を引用：

even if that is true, 10FPS off of 160FPS or what?

lots of CS:GO professionals, as example, play with 260+ FPS, 1024x768 black bars resolution (im not joking)

You probably mean those Windows Users. 😂😉

[[GNU] Debian ☭]

I could have said "Just load X with xterm" and play on it; but i didnt; i know MATE can give him a superb performance when it comes to games, while being useful at the same time. I aways try to give my best when people ask things.

[Marlock]

@Warner

Loved the replyn fully covered my question, plus gave a great hint about using gamemode to solve any DE shortcomings

[J.P.]

Want the best performance? Don't use a DE at all, just a window manager.

[[GNU] Debian ☭]

J.P. の投稿を引用：

Want the best performance? Don't use a DE at all, just a window manager.

...I could have said "Just load X with xterm"...

[[GNU] Debian ☭]

There are billions of "specialists" here, but most of them never put a professional player to play on their machines with Linux, they never asked a streamer to test streaming on Linux, without using 2 PCs (using the "same" machine for games + OBS). I can guarantee you: it is not easy to give em FPS (performance) + a rock solid system (resilience) + a comfy interface at the same time. You can joke, make fun of people and etc, but that wont take away 22 years of knowledge from people that uses linux since the 90's. And if u wanna make fun telling: "people just recommend what they use"... I use Enlightenment here, as example... , since 2005!!! I dont make fun of people here; so plz, dont make fun of people here too!

[WarnerCK]

GNU/Linux Debian の投稿を引用：

You can joke, make fun of people and etc

Definitely not my intention, except so far as it includes myself. There are hundreds of these "best desktop environment / best distro" threads, here and elsewhere. Apologies for any offence I may have caused.

[Ormgryd]

I heard KDE was nice if you use multiple monitors. I use Ubuntu and Cinnamon and it works just fine for gaming with one monitor. But deep down i think it's just down to preference. It's the good and the bad thing with Linux is all the choices you can make.

[mr.raider2]

Ormgryd の投稿を引用：

I heard KDE was nice if you use multiple monitors. I use Ubuntu and Cinnamon and it works just fine for gaming with one monitor. But deep down i think it's just down to preference. It's the good and the bad thing with Linux is all the choices you can make.

That's one of the reasons I stuck to KDE for a long time. My main screen is 2560x1080 but I use a second 1080p screen rotated 90 degrees for reading text. KDE just makes assigning primary displays and managing panels/taskbars trivial. Back in the day I tried Ubuntu MAte 18.04 but it was quite glitchy. Plus MAte used to have issues with putting a panel on the left side of screen.

Mint XFCE came a close second to doing what I wanted, and I used for some of my non gamung computers in the house, especially for non tech ssavvy users.

I'm glad you had a good experience with Cinnamon. I used Mint Cinnamon for sometime after the Unity debacle, but the desktop effects kept crashing, and some windows were just not rendering right, especially installers where buttons would end up off screen. In the end I came to the conclusion that kwin was just more robust. PLus I can manually disable effects with shift-alt-f12 anytime I need.

I've been experimenting with MAte and Cinnamon in VMs and they seem to have made a lot of progress. Mate still has issues with side panels, but Cinnamon has come a long way, and the workflow seems close to KDE.

[bird-or-cage [👾🐧]]

Linux input lag analysis V2(6DEs + Windows 10 1809)
The post is not mine, just a bookmark I have

[Marlock]

mr.raider2 の投稿を引用：

I'm glad you had a good experience with Cinnamon. I used Mint Cinnamon for sometime after the Unity debacle, but the desktop effects kept crashing, and some windows were just not rendering right, especially installers where buttons would end up off screen. In the end I came to the conclusion that kwin was just more robust. PLus I can manually disable effects with shift-alt-f12 anytime I need.

I've been experimenting with MAte and Cinnamon in VMs and they seem to have made a lot of progress. Mate still has issues with side panels, but Cinnamon has come a long way, and the workflow seems close to KDE.

Yes, Cinnamon has evolved a lot (especially under the hood) since the Unity debacle. I started using it at 17.3 and from that to now at 19.3, it's been night and day regarding stability, glitches and performance (of the DE itself and of bundled apps).

[Chorriwuarri]

I have a question

if I want to play in window mode in gnome or budgie or if any reason does not automatically disable the composition

would it be worse than a desk that can be manually deactivated?

I'm sorry if I don't express myself well, I'm not native English

[y05h1]

Arch + i3-gaps has always worked perfectly for me. Also uses the least amount of RAM even tough you weren't interested in that since.. ahum.. "thats irrelevant on a gaming rig" rofl.