GNOME's Dynamic Triple Buffering Now Latency Optimized For Raspberry Pi & X.Org

[phoronix]

Phoronix: GNOME's Dynamic Triple Buffering Now Latency Optimized For Raspberry Pi & X.Org

While back in December the GNOME dynamic triple buffering was self-proclaimed to be "ready to merge", so far that hasn't happened yet. With the GNOME 46 feature freeze scheduled for 10 February, it remains to be seen if this long-worked-on dynamic triple/double buffering will be ready in time for this six month release. In any event, this past week saw a new optimization queued for this code...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Triple-Buffering-Xorg-RPi

[skeevy420]

That optimization patch is now part of the three-year-old merge request for adding the dynamic triple buffering support to Mutter. We'll see if by chance the feature is merged in time for GNOME 46 prior to 10 February or if it will be held off another cycle and remain patched-in for the likes of Ubuntu 24.04 LTS this spring.

That only makes me wonder why Ubuntu is still using GNOME. Ubuntu requires a bunch of plugins to transform GNOME into something usable that they think is better for the masses and a lot of their work just sits in merge requests for long periods of time. GNOME and Ubuntu obviously have very different end games in how they want the GNOME desktop to act and behave. GNOME wants a modern minimalist desktop while Ubuntu wants a modern functional desktop.

Minimalist and functional together is very difficult. Just look at KDE. Anyone can ship a minimalist KDE desktop and the second their users open up the System Settings they'll get hit by functionality overload similar to how I get menu overload when I look at restaurant menus that are 5 pages deep with 100 items per page in 8pt font...sometimes can be less is more; especially when more is too much. Ubuntu is trying to find the balance between GNOME's three item menu consisting of bottled water, boiled kale, and a bag of unsalted chips and KDE's menu that has 23 ways to prepare the salmon, 6 different kinds of steak, 18 marinades, 42 different buffalo wing sauces, and various beers from every country in the world.

I just see obvious differences in how Ubuntu and GNOME both want the desktop to operate and nothing about any of the situation makes sense when you actually think about it. Why work with someone that makes you kick the can down the road for years on end?

[Malsabku]

That only makes me wonder why Ubuntu is still using GNOME. Ubuntu requires a bunch of plugins to transform GNOME into something usable that they think is better for the masses and a lot of their work just sits in merge requests for long periods of time. GNOME and Ubuntu obviously have very different end games in how they want the GNOME desktop to act and behave. GNOME wants a modern minimalist desktop while Ubuntu wants a modern functional desktop.

Minimalist and functional together is very difficult. Just look at KDE. Anyone can ship a minimalist KDE desktop and the second their users open up the System Settings they'll get hit by functionality overload similar to how I get menu overload when I look at restaurant menus that are 5 pages deep with 100 items per page in 8pt font...sometimes can be less is more; especially when more is too much. Ubuntu is trying to find the balance between GNOME's three item menu consisting of bottled water, boiled kale, and a bag of unsalted chips and KDE's menu that has 23 ways to prepare the salmon, 6 different kinds of steak, 18 marinades, 42 different buffalo wing sauces, and various beers from every country in the world.

I just see obvious differences in how Ubuntu and GNOME both want the desktop to operate and nothing about any of the situation makes sense when you actually think about it. Why work with someone that makes you kick the can down the road for years on end?

When Ubuntu switched from Unity to Gnome, the alignment of Ubuntu and Gnome faded together quite well. The surface up to Gnome 3.38 was quite compatible with the adjustments of Ubuntu.

Since Gnome 40, Gnome has a completely new shell design that does not fit together with the adjustments of Ubuntu. In addition, there is the introduction of the libadwaita, which make design adjustments for Ubuntu and also for all other desktop Environment more difficult, which is why Ubuntu used more and more Flutter.

If Canonical had known that Gnome changes, then they would not have switched to Gnome from Unity. However, the matter is that Canonical simply can no longer afford to operate its own desktop Environment, this was also the main reason for the switch from Gnome to Unity. Canonical makes almost all of his money with the server and IoT. With Linux desktops you don't earn any money, the Ubuntu Server practically subsidise the Ubuntu Desktop.

[johnandmegh]

That only makes me wonder why Ubuntu is still using GNOME. Ubuntu requires a bunch of plugins to transform GNOME into something usable that they think is better for the masses and a lot of their work just sits in merge requests for long periods of time. GNOME and Ubuntu obviously have very different end games in how they want the GNOME desktop to act and behave. GNOME wants a modern minimalist desktop while Ubuntu wants a modern functional desktop.

Minimalist and functional together is very difficult. Just look at KDE. Anyone can ship a minimalist KDE desktop and the second their users open up the System Settings they'll get hit by functionality overload similar to how I get menu overload when I look at restaurant menus that are 5 pages deep with 100 items per page in 8pt font...sometimes can be less is more; especially when more is too much. Ubuntu is trying to find the balance between GNOME's three item menu consisting of bottled water, boiled kale, and a bag of unsalted chips and KDE's menu that has 23 ways to prepare the salmon, 6 different kinds of steak, 18 marinades, 42 different buffalo wing sauces, and various beers from every country in the world.

I just see obvious differences in how Ubuntu and GNOME both want the desktop to operate and nothing about any of the situation makes sense when you actually think about it. Why work with someone that makes you kick the can down the road for years on end?

Barring in-house development, like system76 is willing to pay for (COSMIC) but Canonical already tried and was burned on (Unity), what desktop environment is going to provide a reliably usable experience at the level that GNOME + the Ubuntu Desktop extensions do?

I personally love KDE Plasma, but it is too technically complex on the back-end and too intricate on the front-end for the broad userbase that Ubuntu needs to serve. And AFAICT none of the other DE options are anywhere close to plausible as the interface to a commercial desktop OS product.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

Barring in-house development, like system76 is willing to pay for (COSMIC) but Canonical already tried and was burned on (Unity), what desktop environment is going to provide a reliably usable experience at the level that GNOME + the Ubuntu Desktop extensions do?

I personally love KDE Plasma, but it is too technically complex on the back-end and too intricate on the front-end for the broad userbase that Ubuntu needs to serve. And AFAICT none of the other DE options are anywhere close to plausible as the interface to a commercial desktop OS product.

I have been wondering if they might eventually just adopt COSMIC if it proves to be successful / reliable. Budgie seems like a feasible choice for your criteria too. Ubuntu wasn't in a rush to default to Wayland which would have been one of the big blockers there. Budgie gives them a nice modern looking and easily themeable GTK based DE that supports an always visible launcher, system tray, desktop icons.

[Jumbotron]

Been using a GNOME based distro on a regular basis since at least 2010 after ditching some distro I've long since forgotten that was using KDE 4 if memory serves me and moved over to testing Suse and Ubuntu using GNOME.

The anti-GNOME-ers make me chuckle. The usability complaints, the developer complaints, the plugin complaints, etc., etc. In the nearly 14 years since moving over to GNOME on Suse and Ubuntu before permanently settling on Ubuntu at 16.04 I have never experience a DE crash, hangup, or felt like my DE didn't have enough options or geekery tweekery if needed. I've run GNOME based distros on low end and high end PCs. Never felt sluggish. I still run Ubuntu 20.04 on a Lenovo laptop that's 9 years old and still rocking a SATA hard drive that spins at 5,600 RPM and it still feels as zippy with Ubuntu 20.04 and GNOME than my son's brand new Windows 11 laptop with the same amount of ram and a 1TB SSD. The only obvious difference is upon boot-up. Of course my rig will take longer to boot up. But once booted and not playiing games
( remember my rig is 9 years old and has a spinning rust drive ) there is no real difference, even when I use wibbly wobbly DE effects via plug-in.

And yes, I was there at the time and used Unity on Ubuntu before the switch over to GNOME. No big deal. Unity was indeed nice. But I knew where the winds were blowing for all major Linux distros and that was to server and IoT contracts and not necessarily the desktop and the long hope for and mythical "Year of the Linux Desktop". Hence Canonical making the decision to stop paying for an in-house DE and just taking something off the shelf that was close enough to Unity....that being GNOME.

KDE is the Windows DE of Linux. GNOME is the MacOS DE of Linux. Pick what suits your work requirements and your aesthetic desires and stop whining about either one. I love GNOME and it has never failed me or disappointed me. You may love KDE. Well....party on Garth !

[Myownfriend]

That only makes me wonder why Ubuntu is still using GNOME. Ubuntu requires a bunch of plugins to transform GNOME into something usable that they think is better for the masses and a lot of their work just sits in merge requests for long periods of time.

Maintaining a few plugins and patches to add desktop icons and their dock thing is far less maintenance than creating a compositor from scratch. I suppose they could use Mutter and just maintain their own shell but you lose out on the ability to use Gnome extensions.

Also I don't think this MR shows a difference in vision of the desktop just differences in their standards. If there were no interest in merging this then the Gnome devs would have said it years ago. I've been following the MR for awhile and it was very common for Daniel and others to report new regressions that it introduced. It's only in the past month that he closed the prerequisite MR (which nobody tends to mention) and re-worked this one to remove a bunch of commits. He says this was only possible because changes that happened in Mutter since he started. Another dev even mentioned that they were afraid of their own MR being incompatible with Daniel's but now they should be compatible.

[Yeayo guy]

Plasma is not Windows and Gnome is not MacOS. Plasma is not overloaded. If you see well the Plasma desktop, you don't need to set up anything. All is there by default, and the most used things are one or two click away, besides you have a lot of options if you want to change everything. But you don't need to touch this options to enjoy a fully functional desktop. It's as easy as abc.

[Hibbelharry]

Plasma is not Windows and Gnome is not MacOS.

I agree on this...

Plasma is not overloaded.

But i personally can't agree on that.

If you see well the Plasma desktop, you don't need to set up anything.

While I'd say this is true...

All is there by default, and the most used things are one or two click away, besides you have a lot of options if you want to change everything.

This is where I do have a problem: Whenever you open up any settings panel in KDE or any app you will be in some convoluted settings hell and often miss unification. There are just so many options obviously catering to lots of smaller groups of people cluttering the settings that you just search around trying to locate the 3 main switches between 346 settings. Less is sometimes more.

My advice would be not to try to cater to everyone instead get a clear UI serving really most of the users.

But you don't need to touch this options to enjoy a fully functional desktop. It's as easy as abc.

The same is by the way true for gnome. Without any plugins and settings gnome is pretty usable. I tend to tweak just smaller things on my personal setups and I'm pretty happy with what I get.

[Jumbotron]

Plasma is not Windows and Gnome is not MacOS. Plasma is not overloaded. If you see well the Plasma desktop, you don't need to set up anything. All is there by default, and the most used things are one or two click away, besides you have a lot of options if you want to change everything. But you don't need to touch this options to enjoy a fully functional desktop. It's as easy as abc.

Re-read my statement. Never said what you said. You misquoted me simply and obviously because you misunderstood me. KDE is indeed the Windows DE for Linux. Particularly Windows 10. Not Win 11 simply because it's obvious that Microsoft copied the design aesthetic of ChromeOS. But it would be mostly obvious to a Windows 7 and particularly Windows 10 user when first introduced to a Linux distro using KDE that there was a REAL design similarity to either DE.

That goes as well to a MacOS user being first introduced to a Linux distro with GNOME, particularly Redhat seeing as how their dock is at the bottom of the screen as opposed to the default setup for Ubuntu that being on the left hand side of the screen. Once you change that to putting the dock on the bottom then once a MacOS user sees that and once they click on something and seeing how the windows and buttons look via the GTK, libawaita and GNOME HIG styles, I have personally had a MacOS user with me at the time I introduced him to my Ubuntu rig and he immediately said...."OMG...they copied MacOS. "

In addition, at the tender age of 59 I bought my first Mac computer....An Apple Silicon M3 Pro equipped Mac Book Pro. Never took a tutorial....never looked at a how-to video. After 14 years of using a GNOME based Linux distro learning how to use my Mac was an absolute cinch. Like sliding from a BMW 3 series to a BMW 8 series.