Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor

Post by simoncion » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 3:18 PM UTC

simoncion wrote: post #261

gryn wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only on the primary display. once you had more than one display there were only workarounds.

I don't know what "workarounds" you're talking about, or what unwanted behavior that I presume you're talking about. Would you be more specific? I ask because just a few minutes ago, I ran VRRTest [0] on my dual-monitor machine and saw no screen tearing on either monitor. Because VRR is disabled in multi-monitor setups, I saw juddering on both monitors when I commanded VRRTest render rates that weren't a multiple of…

       Option "TearFree" "boolean"
              Set the default value  of  the  per-output  ’TearFree’  property,
              which  controls  tearing prevention using the hardware page flip‐
              ping mechanism.  TearFree is on for any CRTC associated with  one
              or  more  outputs with TearFree on.  Two separate scanout buffers
              need to be allocated for each CRTC with TearFree on.  If this op‐
              tion is set, the default value of the property is ’on’  or  ’off’
              accordingly.   If this option isn’t set, the default value of the
              property is auto, which means that TearFree  is  on  for  rotated
              outputs,  outputs  with  RandR  transforms applied, for RandR 1.4
              secondary outputs, and if ’VariableRefresh’ is enabled, otherwise
              it’s off.
              

Post by jchw » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

com2kid wrote: post #238

jchw wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that we can improve latency of even old machines by simply attaching a display output that supports a higher refresh rate, or perhaps even variable refresh rate. This can negate most of the unavoidable latency of a compositor, while other techniques can be used to avoid compositor latency in more specific scenarios and try to improve performance and frame pacing. A new display is usually going to be chea…

Plenty of brand new displays are still sold that only go up to 60hz, especially if you want high quality IPS panels. They aren't as common now, but when making a list of screens to replace my current one, I am limiting myself to IPS panels and quite a few of the modern options are still 60hz.

Post by kllrnohj » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:19 PM UTC

josefx wrote: post #254

mikkupikku wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compositor overhead even with cheapo Intel laptop graphics is basically a non-issue these days. The people still rocking their 20 year old thinkpads might want to choose something else, but besides that kind of user I don't think it's worth worrying too much about.

It isn't always pure overhead, but also jitter, additional delays and other issues caused by the indirection. Most systems have a way to mostly override the compositor for fullscreen windows and for games and other applications where visible jitter and delays are an issue you want that even on modern hardware.

Post by kllrnohj » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:24 PM UTC

ok123456 wrote: post #20

jchw wrote: post #3

I hope that XFCE remains a solid lightweight desktop option. I've become a huge fan of KDE over the past couple of years, but it certainly isn't what you would consider lightweight or minimal. Personally, I'm a big proponent of Wayland and not big Rust detractor, so I don't see any problem with this. I do, however, wonder how many long-time XFCE fans and the folks who donated the money funding this will feel about it…

Why does Wayland "feel like the future?" It feels like a regression to me and a lot of other people who have run into serious usability problems. At best, it seems like a huge diversion of time and resources, given that we already had a working GUI. (Maybe that was the intention.) The arguments for it have boiled down to "yuck code older than me" from supposed professionals employed by commercial Linux vendors to sup…

Post by fragmede » Wed, Jan 28, 2026, 4:41 PM UTC

ok123456 wrote: post #288

hurricanepootis wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LibreOffice works for me on wayland lol. I don't know why you would wanna do fractional scaling on a per app basis whenever you got one screen. But, for your libreoffice woes, try using a different backend? Libreoffice includes support for gtk3, gtk4, Qt6, and other backends: https://github.com/LibreOffice/core/blob/master/vcl/README.m... Maybe you need to try wayland with an alternative backend?

> Maybe you need to try wayland with an alternative backend? And this is the inherent problem with Wayland. Now we have to deal with a combinatorial explosion of things to try to get something that "just works."