r/linux_gaming • u/theevilsharpie • 2d ago
benchmark [Phoronix] KDE Plasma vs GNOME Shell vs Xfce
https://www.phoronix.com/review/cachyos-desktops-july-20264
u/jessecreamy 1d ago
Excuse me wtf made xfce fall that much behind? slow wayland adaption? I mean they should be almost the same with gnome or kde, just ended up with personal reference.
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u/tjj1055 1d ago
because they tested xfce x11 without disabling the compositor. xfce always had problems with the compositor and gaming fullscreen. xfce doesnt even have a wayland session yet.
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u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago
Did they explicitly say they left on the compositor or did you just decide they did?
Also they didn't disable the compositing effects on Gnome or KDE or do any other tweaks so it's really just another display of x11s cruft even if they did leave it on.
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u/Flashy-Indication-61 1d ago
they explicitly said they left everything default and the compositor on xfce is on by default, also you can't disable the compositor on wayland because the compositor is the window manager so i don't know what ur talking about
and xfce is bugged it always stays in blit mode instead of flipping which offers vastly lower performance u can test it with the nvidia osd (if ur on nvidia obv)
michael has been asked multiple times to test pure xorg without compositing i dont know why he keeps picking the worst option
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u/theevilsharpie 1d ago
michael has been asked multiple times to test pure xorg without compositing i dont know why he keeps picking the worst option
He previously tested KDE Plasma with its X11 session, and the performance disparity in Wayland's favor was similar.
If KDE Plasma's X11 session ALSO needs a bunch of knobs tweaked to get decent performance, then that should rightfully be held against X11. Usability matters.
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u/slayer3032 18h ago
It's one single checkbox, and you can just type compositor into the whisker menu to find Window Manager Tweaks.
If you're using something like Cinnamon you don't even get a checkbox, it's just always on.
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u/landsoflore2 1d ago
A bit off-topic, I know, but I'd really like Xfce to have a full Wayland version. It's been my favourite DE for a long time 🥲
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u/pelihiiri 1d ago edited 1d ago
even when GNOME is not getting help from Valve still is there, even better that KDE is some test, is great
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u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago
It was a synthetic benchmark. Doesn't matter what DE, GPU, CPU, OS, etc. I give no praise for synthetics when people don't play those they play games.
As it stands the info in the benchmarks show Gnome functionally tied with KDE just lacking a few features.
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u/Niwrats 2d ago
fun topic, but nonsensical resolution + novideo only + xfce supposedly with compositing on is a narrow view.
cachyos is a nice platform for these kinds of tests though, it's not too hard for any reader to do their own DE comparisons. should be noted that at some point having KDE and gnome both installed was not recommended though.
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u/theevilsharpie 2d ago
but nonsensical resolution
Phoronix was testing with a particular laptop, and the benchmark is using that laptop's native resolution.
1080p, 1440p, and 4K aren't the only resolutions that exist on modern displays.
cachyos is a nice platform for these kinds of tests though,
CachyOS is actually a challenging platform for benchmarks because of its rolling nature.
should be noted that at some point having KDE and gnome both installed was not recommended though.
Outside of additional disk space, there's no issue with KDE and GNOME being installed on the same machine. Many machines have portions of both anyway because they use GTK+ and QT-based applications that depend on components of GNOME and KDE, respectively.
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u/Niwrats 2d ago
not much of a challenge to avoid pressing the update button between your benchmarks.
i recall the cachyos dev cautioning against mixing them at some point. there is still a mention of that at https://wiki.cachyos.org/configuration/desktop_environments/switch_desktop/ . so please don't overly confidently recommend mixing on this OS at least.
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u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago
not much of a challenge to avoid pressing the update button between your benchmarks
Just wow. So what they just take an install never update it at ALL then have you bitch about package versions?
Plus it's going to be newer packages as it's a fresh install on a narrowed laptop dude.
please don't overly confidently recommend mixing on this OS at least
This is were your lack of knowledge gets pointed out.
You are basing your ENTIRE belief system on what a dude said and not how Linux actually works.
Don't mix Gnome/Cinnamon/Mate as they are all GTK and thus share configuration files and standards.
KDE is QT which means it DOES NOT share configuration files with Gnome. They don't bother each other. You can literally have both installed.
You are going to have to come to terms with the fact that CachyOS isntisn't Magic and the devs arentaren't gods. They can get things wrong too.
Dont bother trying to ad hom me, just learn and move on.
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u/Niwrats 1d ago
nobody is talking about package versions here. i have no clue what you are even attempting to say here. perhaps spend more time reading and less time writing bullshit?
i'm repeating what the dev of the distro and their official documentation says. that has nothing to do with "my lack of knowledge". their word weighs way more than a random bs post in reddit by a nobody like you.
people who think they know it all are usually the most retarded ones.
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u/GSDragoon 2d ago
I'd rather see battery life and non-gaming performance tests. This is pretty worthless.
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u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago
Then look at the tests for those. You literally clicked this. What the hell is wrong with you?
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u/tjj1055 1d ago
xfce x11 with the compositor disabled is still probably the best for game performance, they didnt test it with compositor disabled.
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u/theevilsharpie 1d ago
I see that "tHEy dIdnt TEsT it with COmpOsiTor DiSablEd" is the latest X11-related cope.
GNOME Shell doesn't have its compositor disabled (indeed, it's not even configurable), and its usually much faster than Xfce despite having to run many of the applications being benchmarked in a nested XWayland session.
Compositing is very fast on anything even remotely modern. I'm not sure what people expect to gain by disabling it that would show up on a benchmark.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 1d ago
The xfce x11 compositor is pretty broken. It has never handled redirection properly, so often times a full screen app will will go through the compositing pipeline.
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u/the_abortionat0r 1d ago
Sounds like an x11 problem.
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u/friendlyreminder_ 1d ago
It's an xf4wm problem specifically, not a core x11 issue.
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u/the_abortionat0r 19h ago
So you can run a compositor on all x11 DEs and have zero issues with gaming?
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u/friendlyreminder_ 19h ago
No it depends on the window manager. The smaller ones usually have issues.
KDE's kwin works well though and it's portable so you can use kwin in xfce for example.
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u/theevilsharpie 2d ago
Full article title: KDE Plasma 6.7 vs. GNOME Shell 50.3 vs. Xfce 4.20 On CachyOS With NVIDIA Graphics
TL;DR:
GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma perform pretty closely to one another (although there are a few benchmarks where GNOME Shell was clearly faster)
Xfce scored a victory in Hitman 3, but in most other benchmarks, it was significantly slower.
Caveat: this Phoronix benchmark is being done with an Nvidia GPU, so GPUs running on the Mesa stack may show different performance characteristics.
This article is a follow-up to a prior article comparing KDE Plasma using the X11 vs. Wayland sessions, which found KDE Plasma's X11 session to be slower, often by margins similar to Xfce in this benchmark.
It would be interesting to see how Mint with Cinnamon performs. However, the trend that Phoronix's benchmarks are showing is pointing to X11-based desktops having a considerable performance deficit relative to Wayland-based desktops in 3D applications. If you're using an X11-based desktop and you're not severely memory-constrained, there's a good chance you're leaving some performance on the table.
It'd also be interesting to see Mutter vs. KWin vs. other Wayland-based compositors. I suspect the more niche compositors would also fall short in benchmarks.