GNOME Shell & Mutter 44 Release Candidates Bring Last Minute Changes

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME Shell & Mutter 44 Release Candidates Bring Last Minute Changes

The GNOME Shell and Mutter release candidates ahead of this month's GNOME 44 desktop update are now available for testing...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Shell-Mutter-44-RC

[Myownfriend]

Meanwhile not making it for the GNOME 44 cycle is the long out-of-tree work led by Canonical/Ubuntu for the triple buffering optimization.

I assumed that was gonna be the case. I didn't see anything in the pull request that suggested otherwise.

I hope work on that finishes up before Gnome 45 though, just for his sake.

[lumks]

I hope work on that finishes up before Gnome 45 though, just for his sake.

The thing is - it is ready. There is just nobody really interested to land this and I can understand it. From a design perspective you introduce a workaround for a driver/hardware unawareness. Maybe I don't understand something in this process, but wouldn't it be the better idea to add this to Linux/Mesa with an interface where an app can ask for more performance?

For my part I don't like the implementation.

[pranav]

Meanwhile not making it for the GNOME 44 cycle is the long out-of-tree work led by Canonical/Ubuntu for the triple buffering optimization.

I think by the release of GNOME 50, it will be very stable and get merged.

[Vermilion]

Meanwhile not making it for the GNOME 44 cycle is the long out-of-tree work led by Canonical/Ubuntu for the triple buffering optimization.

Well that was expected, the merge request still depends on unmerged work and even Daniel himself said lots of things are still untested and might be broken due to changes in Mutter.

[user1]

What baffles me is that some say triple buffering is the only fix for this, while others say it's a bad workaround and this has to be fixed in the driver. What if this is something that has to be fixed in Mutter itself? I mean that's how game developers optimize their games - they can even optimize certain areas in-game where there is a large framerate drop and they can also stabilize the frametime. How is Mutter different in this regard?
I also wonder how does DWM in WIndows copes with this issue. At least on Windows 10, animations are butter smooth.

[Britoid]

The thing is - it is ready. There is just nobody really interested to land this and I can understand it. From a design perspective you introduce a workaround for a driver/hardware unawareness. Maybe I don't understand something in this process, but wouldn't it be the better idea to add this to Linux/Mesa with an interface where an app can ask for more performance?

For my part I don't like the implementation.

It's not just that, it's also that it directly conflicts with work already being done in this area by the Mutter maintainers. We can see that based on the patch already needs large changes to work with preparations the shell is going through for Off-Thread KMS

Off-Thread KMS should be a noticeable improvement for everyone, but of course this large patch isn't going to be accepted if its going to need to be changed completely again shortly when people can't even agree if its the correct solution.

[Britoid]

What baffles me is that some say triple buffering is the only fix for this, while others say it's a bad workaround and this has to be fixed in the driver. What if this is something that has to be fixed in Mutter itself? I mean that's how game developers optimize their games - they can even optimize certain areas in-game where there is a large framerate drop and they can also stabilize the frametime. How is Mutter different in this regard?
I also wonder how does DWM in WIndows copes with this issue. At least on Windows 10, animations are butter smooth.

Microsoft has the clout to get Nvidia, AMD etc to update their drivers when they make changes to the graphics system on Windows, Microsoft can stop OEMs adopting their components, there's also more driver developers for the platform.

Windows also never had to deal with X11

[RahulSundaram]

What baffles me is that some say triple buffering is the only fix for this, while others say it's a bad workaround and this has to be fixed in the driver. What if this is something that has to be fixed in Mutter itself? I mean that's how game developers optimize their games - they can even optimize certain areas in-game where there is a large framerate drop and they can also stabilize the frametime. How is Mutter different in this regard?
I also wonder how does DWM in WIndows copes with this issue. At least on Windows 10, animations are butter smooth.

Windows does triple buffering. There are known driver bugs that cause tearing and other problems. Ideally the drivers get fixed but in reality, some legacy drivers are no longer maintained and/or proprietary and even if they are maintained, distros can be running older versions for a very long time. So yes, just increasing buffering is a workaround and it comes at a cost but its a common solution. Mutter gets other performance fixes as well but this is one Phoronix has chosen to highlight often, so people aren't aware of the changes as much.

[mangeek]

I REALLY hope this stuff makes it in before Ubuntu 23.04 is totally frozen. It would be good to have this in play for the next few months.