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Does Using GNOME On Wayland Save Power?

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  • Does Using GNOME On Wayland Save Power?

    Phoronix: Does Using GNOME On Wayland Save Power?

    One of the commonly asked questions is whether using Wayland will be more power efficient or save power compared to running the same software under an X.Org Server environment. Here's a simple test of GNOME on Wayland in Fedora 21 while monitoring a laptop's battery use...

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    I'd say try the test on something power-hungry like a GTX 480 or a R9 290. Might make the results a little more apparent. Intel's graphics are designed to be power efficient so I don't think you'd see much of a difference with that.

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    • #3
      Was there any reason to think Wayland would make a difference to power use? The only things that differ between the two scenarios are the gtk+ backends and Mutter version - and something is very wrong if these components are using enough CPU to have a significant effect on power consumption...
      Last edited by Delgarde; 30 December 2014, 12:03 PM.

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      • #4
        Yeah, i thought the same thing. Although I've seen tests in the past that show gnome in general drawing more power than other DEs. So, it was probly worthwhile to check.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
          Was there any reason to think Wayland would make a difference to power use? The only things that differ between the two scenarios are the gtk+ backends and Mutter version - and something is very wrong if these components are using enough CPU to have a significant effect on power consumption...
          When there are wayland compositors which can utilize hw overlays I would expect big savings in some scenarios. It is pretty common perf/power trick done on mobile devices. That and taking advantage of buffer-age.

          I wouldn't expect, at this stage, any difference between gnome-shell wayland vs gnome-shell x11, since they are doing basically the same amount of drawing at this point. (Ie. I don't think g-s wayland is even taking advantage of buffer-age yet.)

          A better comparision to get a feel for what is possible would be to benchmark against weston.

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          • #6
            Originally posted by robclark View Post
            A better comparision to get a feel for what is possible would be to benchmark against weston.
            x11-weston vs wayland-weston?
            or
            x11-gnome vs walyand-weston?

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            • #7
              Am I the only one who thinks Mir is better next-gen Display server than wayland?

              To me, it seems Mir is already kicking the ass of wayland.
              Looking at the video updates of Mir work progress, I notice mir+unity8 is already much more smooth than any of those wayland DEs.

              Plus, native X server games(like Dota2) run at same frame rates on Xmir as they do on native Mir. While we notice performance drops on Wayland whith Xwayland.

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              • #8
                Originally posted by Kemosabe View Post
                x11-weston vs wayland-weston?
                or
                x11-gnome vs walyand-weston?
                all three.. plus maybe throw in xfce or one of the lightweight x11 based desktops, perhaps..

                Weston vs x11-gnome is not really an apples-to-apples comparision, but it should give a feel for what is possible in theory (esp. if testing on some gpu with hw overlays).

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                • #9
                  Originally posted by yash View Post
                  Am I the only one who thinks Mir is better next-gen Display server than wayland?
                  Ignoring the fact, that Wayland isn't a display server... Yes, you're the only one.

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                  • #10
                    Originally posted by yash View Post
                    Am I the only one who thinks Mir is better next-gen Display server than wayland?

                    To me, it seems Mir is already kicking the ass of wayland.
                    Looking at the video updates of Mir work progress, I notice mir+unity8 is already much more smooth than any of those wayland DEs.

                    Plus, native X server games(like Dota2) run at same frame rates on Xmir as they do on native Mir. While we notice performance drops on Wayland whith Xwayland.
                    Yep, your definitely the only one. Personally, I really hope mir dies a bloody painful death. There is absolutely nothing worse than splitting the talent pool for the limited number of people that are capable of doing that type of coding.

                    Hopefully Canonical dies right along with it. All they did was increase the time scale. It's a damn shame.
                    Last edited by duby229; 30 December 2014, 05:32 PM.

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