Arch Linux

Alphabennyrosy

Member

Registered: 2019-12-31

Posts: 2

Tearing and GPU issues in Desktop Environments and tiling managers

Disclaimer before reading, I am running an AMD rx 580 GPU 8GB and am using all of the following packages recommended by Arch Linux wiki and a few more that are related to my GPU, both the lib32 version and the 64bit versions. (mesa,lib32-mesa, xf86-video-amdgpu,libva-mesa-driver,lib32-libva-mesa-driver,mesa-vdpau,lib32-mesa-vdpau,vulkan-radeon,lib32-radeon,mesa-demos,opencl-mesa, all packages recommended by lutris for amdgpu, and a a lot more)
Tested linux linux-lts linux-zen

I have been trying to run different Window manager and tiling manager with multiple configuration all giving me results I am not happy with, resulting me in always coming back to Plasma Desktop.

Plasma Desktop has always been the exception and never caused me issues, but I am really happy with the other tiling window managers and Desktop environments available, workflow wise. But all of them had specific problems that I will address here, and those of you who might know better then me might be able to help.

First of all I love gnome and the workflow, but I have a ton of desktop artifacts in this desktop environment (Both Wayland and Xorg) in two computers both running an amdgpu

All window managers/tiling managers  I have tried, this includes the following (Xmonad,i3,awesome,dwm,bpswm,etc) have tons of screen tearing and many other issues
I have tried the following things to fix the issue and these were my results

xorg.conf.d file with Option "TearFree" true - Reduces performance and does not look smooth as plasma when dragging windows
Just Compton with no xorg.conf.d file with Option "TearFree" true -  Not smooth and a little bit of screen tearing
Both Compton and  Option "TearFree" true - appears smoother but performance lacks in games compared to plasma
No Compton or Option "TearFree" true - Lots of tearing

All Option have negatives and all of them gave me less performance then plasma.

Any suggestion because I love the work flow of DWM, and many other dynamic window managers and I cant figure out how to use them while still having everything appear smooth.

This is my first post, btw.

Alphabennyrosy

Member

Registered: 2019-12-31

Posts: 2

Re: Tearing and GPU issues in Desktop Environments and tiling managers

BTW xorg.conf.d file with Option "TearFree" true  mostly got rid of the tearing, Compton did not really fix tearing but helped smooth things out. But in general does not matter, what things were never as smooth, and performance in games seemed to decrease.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: Tearing and GPU issues in Desktop Environments and tiling managers

I'm using an RX480 8GB.

Do you have multiple monitors? Compton aka. Picom should work great on a single monitor.

I use the "picom-git" package from the AUR instead of the normal Arch package. Here's my config if you are interested:

backend = "glx";
# backend = "xrender";
vsync = true;

use-damage = true;

shadow = true;

shadow-radius = 16;
shadow-offset-x = -16;
shadow-offset-y = -12;
shadow-opacity = 0.35;

detect-rounded-corners = true;  # important for xfwm4

shadow-exclude = [
    "class_g = 'Xfwm4'",
    "class_g = 'firefox' && window_type = 'utility'",
    "_GTK_FRAME_EXTENTS@:c",
    "name = 'XOSD'",
    # "!class_g", # trying to catch weird non-windows
    # "bounding_shaped && !rounded_corners",
    # "window_type = 'normal' && !I3_FLOATING_WINDOW@:c",
];

inactive-opacity = 1;
active-opacity = 1;
frame-opacity = 1;
inactive-opacity-override = false;

fading = false;

mark-wmwin-focused = true;
mark-ovredir-focused = true;
use-ewmh-active-win = true;

detect-client-opacity = true;

unredir-if-possible = true;

unredir-if-possible-exclude = [
    "_NET_WM_BYPASS_COMPOSITOR@:c = 2",
    "class_g = 'MComix'",
    "class_g = 'vlc'",
    # "class_g = 'Firefox'",
    # "class_g = 'Nightly'",
];

focus-exclude = [ ];

detect-transient = true;
detect-client-leader = true;

wintypes:
{
    tooltip = { full-shadow = true; fade = true; shadow = false; opacity = 0.85; focus = true; };
    dock    = { shadow = false; };
    dnd     = { shadow = false; };

    # menu = { opacity = 0.85; };
    # dropdown_menu = { opacity = 0.85; };
    # popup_menu = { opacity = 0.85; };
    # notify = { opacity = 0.85; };
};

Important about this is to start picom with the "--experimental-backends" argument, like so:

picom --experimental-backends

It will have much lower latency this way. You can test this by moving a floating window around with the mouse. This "--experimental-backends" seems to work problem-free for me despite being experimental code.

With this config here, picom will disable itself for fullscreen windows. This then side-steps any performance issues for games. To make sure there's no tearing in Chromium or Firefox when using their fullscreen feature or when watching Youtube etc. in fullscreen, you need to force the browsers to use GPU hardware acceleration. For Firefox search how to enable a feature named "WebRender", for Chromium check out the ArchWiki article.

I don't like "TearFree" in the Xorg config. It does completely suppress tearing for me, but it creates a strange stutter in games.

Last edited by Ropid (2019-12-31 07:38:36)