its not only performance, wayland has also solved weird artifacts, screen tearing and laggyness that xorg used to have for me. overall wayland just feels smooth and a much superior desktop experience.
i use Nobara 37 with a 6900xt. OC works super with CoreCtrl full controll open. I love it. Played since Windows 7, 10, 11. But now i use Linux Nobara and i am so happy. All works what i need. I only want to play, nothing more.
@@m.m.3753 Do you have issues with that GPU? I got myself a 6900XT too and I think mine is broken. There are so many reports of people that installed the latest AMD driver on windows (which I also did) that apparently fried the card.
Wayland works like shit. Have you even watched how the game worked in each one? I have also tried kde plasma with wayland and xorg. The wayland version has a lot of issues. Animations and other functionalities do not work well on wayland.
Obs is much better optimized on wayland than on x11 because obs devs dont care about linux and wayland support to obs was added by redhat while x11 was added by obs devs. You should try the tests without obs because then the performance should be the same (or better with x11).
Part of the performance boost is the ability to bypass copying raw pixels sometimes. Instead the compositor can give OBS a reference to the gpu memory of the window content, allowing OBS to avoid uploading and downloading data to the gpu, instead only needing a download.
@@monkev1199 True, and thats actually also possible with x11. It's just that nobody has implemented that yet. There is a pull request in obs to do that with nvidia on x11. Note that bypassing copies on wayland is not possible with nvidia even if they finish their wayland support because nvidia doesn't support vaapi, so an nvidia specific implementation is needed to use nvenc without copies.
Im not up on this sort of tech but i cant help but see an issue with your logic. If obs devs dont care about linux, why would their linux implementation be better than redhat's, regardless if its on X or Wayland? Unless you mean to say the very fact that Wayland doesnt have an obs implementation made by obs devs suggests a lack of interest.
On a laptop, 8th gen I-5 processor, the difference between x11 and Weyland was staggering. I don't have numbers but race driver grid was a slideshow in x-11 and is definitely playable in Wayland. Same goes for several other racing games, need for speed Hot pursuit, driver San Francisco, burnout Paradise City. I wonder if very low spec systems is where the difference is most noticeable.
Some good examples of how Wayland will bring a lot of benefits to gamers on Linux when it's finally mainstream! While the Steamdeck doesn't actually use a windowing system (afaik) in game mode, most linux gamers on desktop are gonna get some tasty performance boosts within the next couple of years, and finally put Linux firmly ahead of Windows in performance (despite running many games in Windows translation containers!)
@@poly9306 Valve have publicly said they're not currently using wayland for gamemode or their spin of KDE. It wasn't stable enough at the time of development in their view.
@@merthyr1831 Gamescope is Wayland compositor, it does not have X11 mode, but indeed KWin is running under X11. So probably it's KWIn under X11, SteamUI under X11, actual gameplay under Wayland
@@LowTechLinux I believe that's how it works at the moment, running terminal emulator of choice as a game on steamdeck, and listing environment variables shows, that there is wayland compositor running: "GAMESCOPE_WAYLAND_DISPLAY=gamescope-0", so I'm pretty sure games on steamdeck run under wayland via xwayland. EDITI: Running wayland-info also list information about supported wayland protocols, so yeah, there is proper wayland support available by default. EDITI2: Acording to gamescope's README: "It's getting game frames through Wayland by way of Xwayland, so there's no copy within X itself before it gets the frame."
it also depends what hardware you use.. i have nvidia 1650 with current nvidia drivers (520) and wayland has a noticeably frustrating input lag.. switch to xorg and it is noticeably more responsive.. of course this now low end hardware but on newer systems the difference would be far less obvious
Thank you for the video! Im trying to switch from Windows 10 to Kubuntu (because my system does not meet the minimum requirements for Win11 for some reason?) and was wondering which one to choose. Ive been using Linux on and off for around 6 years now and finally decided to make the switch. Do you know if both of them are any different regarding the perfomance with the Steam Proton compatibility layer?
You are not going to have any problem running games with proton on wayland Wayland makes my games run smoother and with less input lag than X11 For the best experience just make sure you are using a recent kernel version, and install wayland + pipewire KDE has some problems with multiscreen setups in wayland, nothing too bad, but has VRR variable refresh rate (like Freesync) Gnome does not have VRR
true i will recommend you to use: Linux Distribution = Fedora. Desktop Environment = KDE Plasma (for Responsiveness) or GNOME (for Smoothness). Windows Manager = Kwin (KDE) or Mutter (GNOME). Windowing System Composer = Wayland. Multimedia Framework = PipeWire. Kernel = Xanmod.
I think fedora is great, but I don't necessarily think it's right for an absolute beginner either. I also don't care for snaps. And honestly I don't care for flatpaks equally. For a very first distro I think kubuntu is fabulous to get the feet wet.
Great video, I would test to the latency between input and display output. The time between a mouse click and display change, then measure the difference. Given Wayland would add to another translation layer...it would be nice to know if the added latency is worth all the hoopla
Actually I tested that very thing between windows vs Xorg, and the latency is so miniscule, no human can detect it until it's multiplied like a hundred times. Lol
From the PoE part I think to see that Xorg is more balanced. The minimum FPS on Wayland are mostly much worse (i.e. 3:05+) and while Wayland has overall the slightly higher average and more FPS when you are standing still, doing nothing, it seems that Xorg would be the better experience, especially in high intensity situations, where Wayland often dips down really low. Not too convingin show by Wayland, yet ..
@@jasonfanclub4267 i saw the reasons they gave for not having it, but a multimillion dollar company should be able to think about something, works just fine on AMD, so yeah
Nvidia has always wanted to support Wayland, but only their way, not the Linux way. Nvidia is starting to come around and is finally working to make it work. X is no longer being maintained and many of the x devs are now developing for Wayland. Wayland is already better than x in many ways and it will only get better. QT6 will only support Wayland and I expect the next gnome will also and most distros don't have the manpower to support a dying system. Wayland is the future
@@LowTechLinux you know maybe i am making some drama, but everytime someone says "X will only support wayland" and i see in the back of my mind is me getting fucked in the a$$ because said X wont work in xorg that im using because its the only thing that work with my card and i being stuck with old software, basically in the hands of NVIDIA, and i dont like that a bit
For me on AMD graphics Wayland is rock solid and better than x ever was or could be. I game everyday and haven't been in an x session in about 8 months. It is still the case though if you're on Nvidia graphics your mileage may vary.
@@roccociccone597 cool so of I have multiple screens with different resolutions this should work now? I remember where only the same resolution was shown for all screens
Thank you for the video! You can change 1) DE KDE Plasma to Gnome = for example after installing portproton, ue5? Is it possible to change 2) graphics server = Wayland to X11 Xorg after installing portproton, ue5?
If Gnome and KDE can develop their Wayland stuff on wlroots, Wayland may have future. It is a mess on Wayland now, it lacks lots of features which have been existed on Xorg long time ago. Where the hell is the color management? When can I use the Remote Play in Steam on Wayland? Where the hell is the HDR support? Isn't Wayland the new technology?
Xorg doesn't really have much in the way of a colored managed pipeline or HDR. Xorg doesn't do anything to SDR or HDR content for tone mapping assuming you can even display it and the extent of color management is pretty much just applying ICC profiles but not ensuring colors are properly color/tone mapped. Xorg can be put into for example 10bit color mode but I dare you to try and run steam or anything using vulkan with 10bit color enabled and I think MPV is the only player even equipped to run in that mode ATM. Bringing up color management and HDR in regards to Xorg just means you literally know nothing about it because Xorg literally handles neither it just barely functions with them enabled. The only Desktop OS that actually handles color management and HDR properly is MacOS. Wayland HDR and Color management is being worked on to actually do it properly but its a lot more complex than people think it is. You dont just apply ICC profiles, you need to properly map the content to the displays color space/capabilities.
HDR hasn't been supported on X11 and never will (XOrg is basically on maintenance mode now), but it's coming to Wayland in the future. They already have the 10bit color in the protocol IIRC. What kept Linux from getting HDR support all this time was X11 tbh, it is software originally made with 40 year old hardware in mind, and it's full of technical debt
I only use Wayland. For me (on AMD video card) it works a lot better than X. I also have a touchscreen laptop where the touchscreen is borked and Wayland has its own settings to disable touchscreens. X on its own doesn't have this.
Nice video, but I see real problem in this test. Thing is that author is using GL in desktop as well. And god know how it that configured for wayland vs for gl. Which should be greatly impacting GL performance.
I think that makes it a better realish world test. Most people using Linux are not optimizing for maximum optimizations and should feel this at least to some degree.
You are correct. In fact it's been so long since I zoomed I had forgotten about that little hiccup. I just tried again just for the sake of good journalism (from a truck driver LOL), and it still doesn't work.
It's my understanding that the newest Nvidia drivers work with Wayland. This may depend on the distro you are using. And I'm not sure it's fully publicly released yet as I don't have Nvidia.
The most important thing is it is more secure than Xorg (not 100% but nothing is), Xorg is mostly abandoned and just waiting for big security attack as it has less 👀 , also Samsung , Google, Microsoft, Redhat, many automobile companies and many more are investing in Wayland. I get 1.5x performance boost on Wayland. Some apps requires little bit tinkering but it works in comparison to Xorg which was horrible even before Wayland was thing.
Modern electron works fine, the issue is with garbage like discord that uses uber outdated electron versions in their client, if you instead use it in the browser or through a webapp, it'll work just fine
As far as my limited research can find Nvidia has been working on Wayland and xwayland support for a while. Starting with (I think) Nvidia driver 5.15 Nvidia will have a driver helper in the Linux kernel. I know they are working on it but afaict it's not quite there yet.
@@LowTechLinux i try to use wayland on nobara project and 5600x+1650 super much stuttering haha,xorg running fine but maybe ill go for radeon gpu since i choose to single boot on linux,thanks for reply sir
its not only performance, wayland has also solved weird artifacts, screen tearing and laggyness that xorg used to have for me. overall wayland just feels smooth and a much superior desktop experience.
Mouse gestures and much more, but the hardware acceleration is a pain in the ass...
i use Nobara 37 with a 6900xt. OC works super with CoreCtrl full controll open. I love it. Played since Windows 7, 10, 11. But now i use Linux Nobara and i am so happy. All works what i need. I only want to play, nothing more.
@@m.m.3753 Do you have issues with that GPU? I got myself a 6900XT too and I think mine is broken. There are so many reports of people that installed the latest AMD driver on windows (which I also did) that apparently fried the card.
Wayland works like shit. Have you even watched how the game worked in each one? I have also tried kde plasma with wayland and xorg. The wayland version has a lot of issues. Animations and other functionalities do not work well on wayland.
Good to mention that Wayland can do multi-finger touchpad gestures like mac whereas Xorg can't
Amazing tests, thank you so much. I am switching to KDE Neon since it ships with plasma 6 and Wayland now.
Cheers
wayland is clearly better than xorg but at the end of the day its the software compatibility that make our bed.
chicken and egg
It does have reverse compatibility with xorg although it’s not complete
Wayland works like shit. Xorg is muche better. Wayland has a lot of bugs, animations do not work correctly on wayland and many other functionalities.
Thanks for the benchmark!
Obs is much better optimized on wayland than on x11 because obs devs dont care about linux and wayland support to obs was added by redhat while x11 was added by obs devs. You should try the tests without obs because then the performance should be the same (or better with x11).
I was wondering about that. I should look into it more :)
Part of the performance boost is the ability to bypass copying raw pixels sometimes. Instead the compositor can give OBS a reference to the gpu memory of the window content, allowing OBS to avoid uploading and downloading data to the gpu, instead only needing a download.
@@monkev1199 True, and thats actually also possible with x11. It's just that nobody has implemented that yet. There is a pull request in obs to do that with nvidia on x11. Note that bypassing copies on wayland is not possible with nvidia even if they finish their wayland support because nvidia doesn't support vaapi, so an nvidia specific implementation is needed to use nvenc without copies.
@@notuxnobux do you mind linking the request?
Im not up on this sort of tech but i cant help but see an issue with your logic. If obs devs dont care about linux, why would their linux implementation be better than redhat's, regardless if its on X or Wayland? Unless you mean to say the very fact that Wayland doesnt have an obs implementation made by obs devs suggests a lack of interest.
On a laptop, 8th gen I-5 processor, the difference between x11 and Weyland was staggering. I don't have numbers but race driver grid was a slideshow in x-11 and is definitely playable in Wayland. Same goes for several other racing games, need for speed Hot pursuit, driver San Francisco, burnout Paradise City. I wonder if very low spec systems is where the difference is most noticeable.
Some good examples of how Wayland will bring a lot of benefits to gamers on Linux when it's finally mainstream! While the Steamdeck doesn't actually use a windowing system (afaik) in game mode, most linux gamers on desktop are gonna get some tasty performance boosts within the next couple of years, and finally put Linux firmly ahead of Windows in performance (despite running many games in Windows translation containers!)
Steamdeck uses Wayland for gaming mode (gamescope compositor purpose made for games).
@@poly9306 Valve have publicly said they're not currently using wayland for gamemode or their spin of KDE.
It wasn't stable enough at the time of development in their view.
@@merthyr1831 Gamescope is Wayland compositor, it does not have X11 mode, but indeed KWin is running under X11.
So probably it's KWIn under X11, SteamUI under X11, actual gameplay under Wayland
Would Wayland and xwayland suffice to do both of these?
@@LowTechLinux I believe that's how it works at the moment, running terminal emulator of choice as a game on steamdeck, and listing environment variables shows, that there is wayland compositor running: "GAMESCOPE_WAYLAND_DISPLAY=gamescope-0", so I'm pretty sure games on steamdeck run under wayland via xwayland.
EDITI: Running wayland-info also list information about supported wayland protocols, so yeah, there is proper wayland support available by default.
EDITI2: Acording to gamescope's README: "It's getting game frames through Wayland by way of Xwayland, so there's no copy within X itself before it gets the frame."
it also depends what hardware you use.. i have nvidia 1650 with current nvidia drivers (520) and wayland has a noticeably frustrating input lag.. switch to xorg and it is noticeably more responsive.. of course this now low end hardware but on newer systems the difference would be far less obvious
What distro are you on out of curiosity?
I tried wayland (sway/gnome/kde)on an amd apu and as a gameer I always couldnt stand the mouse lag
I don't think AMD GPU is at fault here. I have AMD GPU and have forever and I have zero mouse lag on Wayland.
Thank you for the video! Im trying to switch from Windows 10 to Kubuntu (because my system does not meet the minimum requirements for Win11 for some reason?) and was wondering which one to choose. Ive been using Linux on and off for around 6 years now and finally decided to make the switch. Do you know if both of them are any different regarding the perfomance with the Steam Proton compatibility layer?
You are not going to have any problem running games with proton on wayland
Wayland makes my games run smoother and with less input lag than X11
For the best experience just make sure you are using a recent kernel version, and install wayland + pipewire
KDE has some problems with multiscreen setups in wayland, nothing too bad, but has VRR variable refresh rate (like Freesync)
Gnome does not have VRR
true i will recommend you to use:
Linux Distribution = Fedora.
Desktop Environment = KDE Plasma (for Responsiveness) or GNOME (for Smoothness).
Windows Manager = Kwin (KDE) or Mutter (GNOME).
Windowing System Composer = Wayland.
Multimedia Framework = PipeWire.
Kernel = Xanmod.
I agree with all this except the fedora part.
@@LowTechLinux I would recommend Ubuntu but their snaps tend to break and arch tends to be very buggy, but fedora with kde is a blast.
I think fedora is great, but I don't necessarily think it's right for an absolute beginner either.
I also don't care for snaps. And honestly I don't care for flatpaks equally.
For a very first distro I think kubuntu is fabulous to get the feet wet.
Great video,
I would test to the latency between input and display output. The time between a mouse click and display change, then measure the difference. Given Wayland would add to another translation layer...it would be nice to know if the added latency is worth all the hoopla
Actually I tested that very thing between windows vs Xorg, and the latency is so miniscule, no human can detect it until it's multiplied like a hundred times. Lol
From the PoE part I think to see that Xorg is more balanced. The minimum FPS on Wayland are mostly much worse (i.e. 3:05+) and while Wayland has overall the slightly higher average and more FPS when you are standing still, doing nothing, it seems that Xorg would be the better experience, especially in high intensity situations, where Wayland often dips down really low. Not too convingin show by Wayland, yet ..
Do you by chance have an Nvidia card? My AMD Wayland Poe is near flawless. Occasional jitters fixed by re-entering area.
when nvidia caughts up with wayland and every app accounts for its existence i will surely use it, looks amazing
I think it has to be both ways not just from NVIDIA's side
@@jasonfanclub4267 i saw the reasons they gave for not having it, but a multimillion dollar company should be able to think about something, works just fine on AMD, so yeah
Very smart! Classic consumer tactic! If people don't push it, Nvidia will NEVER fully support it!
Nvidia has always wanted to support Wayland, but only their way, not the Linux way. Nvidia is starting to come around and is finally working to make it work. X is no longer being maintained and many of the x devs are now developing for Wayland. Wayland is already better than x in many ways and it will only get better. QT6 will only support Wayland and I expect the next gnome will also and most distros don't have the manpower to support a dying system. Wayland is the future
@@LowTechLinux you know maybe i am making some drama, but everytime someone says "X will only support wayland" and i see in the back of my mind is me getting fucked in the a$$ because said X wont work in xorg that im using because its the only thing that work with my card and i being stuck with old software, basically in the hands of NVIDIA, and i dont like that a bit
Is it still a choice between one which is fast and the other which actually works?
For me on AMD graphics Wayland is rock solid and better than x ever was or could be. I game everyday and haven't been in an x session in about 8 months. It is still the case though if you're on Nvidia graphics your mileage may vary.
Wayland handles multiple displays much better than xorg. Especially with mixed refresh rates.
Do mixed resolutions work now?
@@jasonfanclub4267 KDE has had an update to make xwayland apps work better. Native wayland apps have worked pretty decently for a while.
@@roccociccone597 cool so of I have multiple screens with different resolutions this should work now? I remember where only the same resolution was shown for all screens
On my kde plasma w/AMD graphics on wayland and Arched Manjaro mixed resolutions works fine.
@@LowTechLinux awesome!
Great test! Thank you
Thank you!
My problem with Wayland is that i can't use a resolution above my default resolution (1366x768). However, Xorg allows me to use 1920x1080
Interesting. I'll look into that.
use wr-randr
Thank you for the video!
You can change 1) DE KDE Plasma to Gnome = for example after installing portproton, ue5?
Is it possible to change 2) graphics server = Wayland to X11 Xorg after installing portproton, ue5?
now I want to try wayland. is there a guide how to install it?
What distro and DE are you running?
If Gnome and KDE can develop their Wayland stuff on wlroots, Wayland may have future. It is a mess on Wayland now, it lacks lots of features which have been existed on Xorg long time ago. Where the hell is the color management? When can I use the Remote Play in Steam on Wayland? Where the hell is the HDR support? Isn't Wayland the new technology?
💯
Xorg doesn't really have much in the way of a colored managed pipeline or HDR. Xorg doesn't do anything to SDR or HDR content for tone mapping assuming you can even display it and the extent of color management is pretty much just applying ICC profiles but not ensuring colors are properly color/tone mapped. Xorg can be put into for example 10bit color mode but I dare you to try and run steam or anything using vulkan with 10bit color enabled and I think MPV is the only player even equipped to run in that mode ATM. Bringing up color management and HDR in regards to Xorg just means you literally know nothing about it because Xorg literally handles neither it just barely functions with them enabled. The only Desktop OS that actually handles color management and HDR properly is MacOS. Wayland HDR and Color management is being worked on to actually do it properly but its a lot more complex than people think it is. You dont just apply ICC profiles, you need to properly map the content to the displays color space/capabilities.
@@DuckMan77 100% right
HDR hasn't been supported on X11 and never will (XOrg is basically on maintenance mode now), but it's coming to Wayland in the future. They already have the 10bit color in the protocol IIRC. What kept Linux from getting HDR support all this time was X11 tbh, it is software originally made with 40 year old hardware in mind, and it's full of technical debt
Which compositor do you use?
I only use Wayland. For me (on AMD video card) it works a lot better than X.
I also have a touchscreen laptop where the touchscreen is borked and Wayland has its own settings to disable touchscreens. X on its own doesn't have this.
i have moved over to wayland for zorinos.
Nice video, but I see real problem in this test.
Thing is that author is using GL in desktop as well.
And god know how it that configured for wayland vs for gl.
Which should be greatly impacting GL performance.
I think that makes it a better realish world test. Most people using Linux are not optimizing for maximum optimizations and should feel this at least to some degree.
you seem like a nice person you earn a sub
Thank you 😊
what about sharing your screen on Zoom for instance? I couldn't do it with Wayland...
You are correct. In fact it's been so long since I zoomed I had forgotten about that little hiccup. I just tried again just for the sake of good journalism (from a truck driver LOL), and it still doesn't work.
You have to switch X11 unfortunately, I attempted to use pipewire but it refuses to show
I know i'm very late to the "party" but Zoom screensharing on Wayland works by now. :)
Wow wayland is faaarr ahead than xorg
I think Wayland is better than Xorg
What is the state of Wayland for Nvidia? Are we ever going to see any daylight there?
It's my understanding that the newest Nvidia drivers work with Wayland. This may depend on the distro you are using. And I'm not sure it's fully publicly released yet as I don't have Nvidia.
@@LowTechLinux I have Arch. Maybe it works now, as I upgrade often. I'll check.
Please let me know
The most important thing is it is more secure than Xorg (not 100% but nothing is), Xorg is mostly abandoned and just waiting for big security attack as it has less 👀 , also Samsung , Google, Microsoft, Redhat, many automobile companies and many more are investing in Wayland. I get 1.5x performance boost on Wayland. Some apps requires little bit tinkering but it works in comparison to Xorg which was horrible even before Wayland was thing.
id much rather this wasnt a decision I had to care about and make
Team xorg (before watching the video)
Wayland is 2x faster than Xorg for modern GTK and Qt applications on my i7-2600K
But Electron applications doesn't work on Wayland..... WHYYYYYYY
Which distro you running?
Modern electron works fine, the issue is with garbage like discord that uses uber outdated electron versions in their client, if you instead use it in the browser or through a webapp, it'll work just fine
@@DMSBrian24 Does Guilded use newer libraries than Discord?
how about wayland use nvidia gpu?
As far as my limited research can find Nvidia has been working on Wayland and xwayland support for a while. Starting with (I think) Nvidia driver 5.15 Nvidia will have a driver helper in the Linux kernel. I know they are working on it but afaict it's not quite there yet.
@@LowTechLinux i try to use wayland on nobara project and 5600x+1650 super much stuttering haha,xorg running fine but maybe ill go for radeon gpu since i choose to single boot on linux,thanks for reply sir
XORG LIVE FOREVER .