Desktop performances (was: Re: GTK+ scene graph)

[Colomban Wendling <lists ban herbesfolles org>]

Hi,

Le 18/08/2014 19:55, Emmanuele Bassi a écrit :
> [...]
>
> when we introduced GL in the pipeline through the compositor 5 years
> ago, stuff that was 5 years old *at the time* already could run
> decently.

Not completely, no.  I had (and still have) a really decent '07 card
(non-integrated 6600GT on a desktop) that always was largely sufficient
for everything I wanted -- desktop, development, multimedia, even most
3D Linux games would run smoothly.  It worked like a charm for
everything when I ran non-compositing WM (I used GNOME2/Metacity at that
time), and it was able to perform accelerated video decoding through
VDPAU, which was very nice as my CPU of that time couldn't really cope
with full-HD decoding -- and my current one is just barely able to keep up.

But when using GNOME3/Mutter, my graphic card quickly runs out of its
256M of VRAM and could not perform hardware decoding anymore whenever I
have like a dozen windows open (which is basically always, mail,
browser, IM, IDE, a few terminal windows, audio player, ... it grows
quickly), rendering it impossible for me to e.g. watch HD videos without
closing other apps.

This sounds a little crazy, but it's a decent '07 card, not even some
integrated chip of that time.  And I believe my setup to still be
completely relevant today, even if more modern similar cards probably
ships with 2-6 times as much VRAM.  I don't plan to invest in a new
graphic card for my *desktop* to run.

So even though compositing WMs looked like a nice idea originally, I'm
really not convinced anymore (or at least the X11/mutter impl is wrong,
I didn't try anything else seriously).  The only real benefit is visual
effects, for which I don't care.  They are nice and all, but they don't
help me using my computer any more efficiently or more comfortably.  I
wouldn't care if it didn't get in my way, but as explained above, it
does as a side effect.


Sorry if this somewhat strikes as a rant, but please, don't assume
everyone updates their hardware every 3 years.


Regards,
Colomban