KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11
-
kwin_x11 - triple buffer detection
For the last year, I have been scouring the web, searching for a resolution to stuttering, juttery scrolling in KDE under certain applications. I finally stumbled upon this solution a few days ago. For me, it has been a revelation. I had this issue with both NVIDIA and AMD video cards. You may have seen that common wisdom for addressing NVIDIA issues in KDE is to set KWIN for triple buffering (export KWIN_TRIPLE_BUFFER=3) and also enabling triple buffering in xorg.conf (Option "TripleBuffer" "3"). Instead, you want to make both values 0. I haven't tried this for AMD, but purportedly disabling triple buffer detection in KWIN also works in that instance. I did this for a proprietary home theater application, but it has also greatly enhanced Vivaldi usability and performance, as well as made Plasma seem orders of magnitude faster.
For Vivaldi, I've enabled the Vulkan flag, have set the flag to override the GPU blacklist, disabled smooth scrolling within Vivaldi itself, but enabled the smooth scroll flag. Combined with the above workaround, this has made scrolling very quick and smooth in Vivaldi, as well as increased rendering speed, making the browser feel very snappy.
Hope this helps someone!
-
@guigirl Likewise, I have used innumerable KDE distros, cpu/motherboard combinations, and any number of AMD and Nvidia cards, and the issue remains. I've used Vivaldi since day one as well, though only on Linux for the last two years.
This is KDE Bug 397850, "win_x11 - triple buffer detection of compositing apparently broken with every driver; causing stuttering, lag or tearing."
KDE developers chose to not address the issue, so it remains to this very day.
Vivaldi is among the applications that was giving me scrolling fits.
If you have no issue, superb!
-
"I don't have a problem; therefore you don't have a problem." Fair enough?
-
@guigirl Apologies!
One need only do a cursory search to see the deluge of performance issues where KDE and Nvidia are concerned, and to a lesser extent, AMD. Almost all seem to involve the compositor. In addition, much has to do with Nvidia's half-baked support for Linux. That said, I am a huge fan of KDE.
Best,
Cary
-
Another KDE fan. The bugs I've encountered I'm beginning to believe were to a large degree somehow due to the home-baked MX-KDE combo I was using.
On that combo I had terrible scrolling difficulties in several progs. Vivaldi was most prominent among them, since I'm in it so much, but LO and others suffered as much. Scrolling would hesitate, then lurch.
Now I've switched to the official MX-KDE edition, and the scrolling problems are gone. One prog, quiteRSS, scrolls way too fast, but that's the only one, and even there the scrolling is linear.
I don't know if a different version of KDE is at play, or the fact that I haven't installed the nvidia driver as yet - and probably will not, because the font rendering, even in Wine!, is Very Good as-is.
-
@guigirl
We are blessed with freedom of choice, and, I believe, a less intrusive computing experience. The KDE topology you gave was interesting. I still see some bugs here, but critically, I am reusing my old /home directory, so there's a good chance I've brought them with me. For instance, after a while the Meta key stops invoking the system Menu, so I've had to assign it to Meta-z, which I can mash with one finger - almost as good. I'll live with that for now, but at some point I may reinstall with a fresh /home. -
@guigirl said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
IMO KDE & Plasma simply rocks & rulz! I acknowledge some other DEs do have certain attractions [except Pantheon, which deserves an elephant to sit on it ; & Deepin, which is simply ], & i even nowadays hate GNOME & Cinnamon a lot less than i used to many years ago [indeed, atm my 2nd-boot on both my Arch KDE pooters is Debian [via Sparky] Cinnamon]. Every now & then i run for a week or two in C, & find it mostly pleasant enough... but it's always just so lovely each time when i end up booting back into Plasma. Ah, home again...
I feel the same! As a thirty-year Windows user, I simply cannot do Gnome. It's as though 5 extra steps are necessary where only one or two movements will do in KDE. I know some people find the workflow to be very efficient, but it's just now for me. but yes, KDE does feel like home.
The media software I spoke of earlier is J.River Media Center. I used it in Windows for years. Then, Windows went all, "I'm watching you, Dave...", and I made a break for Linux. Wouldn't you know it, J.River is designed around Gnome, and it works exceedingly well in the Wayland environment. But KDE Wayland is in it's infancy, and while I mostly use it, it's still pretty erratic. Great strides were made with the release of Plasma 5.22. Works reasonably well with AMD card, but I'm still waiting for Nvidia to catch up.
Cheers...
-
@guigirl said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
@paul1149 said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
home-baked MX-KDE combo I was using
My own personal experience is that KDE Neon is dreadful [a really unreliable breakable buggy sad time; such a PITA], Mint KDE up to Mint18 had numerous papercuts for me that simply went away once i moved onto better KDE distros, the short-lived then Dev-abandoned Maui was a much better KDE experience, KFedora is fairly solid but somehow never feels quite right to me, Manjaro KDE was a superb Plasma experience for me but eventually i wanted to get closer to natal Arch, openSUSE Tumbleweed was a magnificent Plasma experience for me but eventually i tired of dependency-hell for the base, Arch KDE is simply the best thing since sliced bread IMO [but with big kudos also to EndeavourOS KDE & ArchLabs KDE; both really also excellent Plasma experiences].
I'm just so pleased we are spoiled for choice here.
I'm on Fedora 34 now - I took out my Nvidia card and put the AMD back in, and am now in a Wayland session. I chose it for the bleeding edge KDE support, but like you, it does feel a bit "off" to me. I always end up coming back to Arch. I love the one-stop shopping of AUR, if truth be told
I've rolled Manjaro; love it, EndeavourOS - I'm probably going to ditch Fedora later this afternoon for it. Also tried Vanilla Arch using the Anarchy installer, which is nice because you can start with a KDE skeleton and build it the way you like. Neon (yep, buggy) , Debian, etc. As well as a number of XFCE distros. XFCE is alright, but it's not KDE.Coincidentally came across these during my normal daily tech sites perusals:
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KDE-KWin-DRM-Overhaul
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KWinFT-Lands-WLROOTS->UsageThat is great news!
Thanks, girl!
-
@guigirl Big thanks for that. A refresh of the base settings, without messing with my application settings, was exactly what I thought I needed on the previous install. That's a very informative page; will keep it in mind.
Thanks again!
-
My problem here is that scrolling is heavy, I want the wheel to roll more lines per roll, but I can't find any options to change this on KDE Settings or on Vivaldi. It's my only annoyance.
-
@panino said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
I want the wheel to roll more lines per roll
imwheelis your friend. -
@guigirl said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
@panino I realise this thread explicitly says "...under x11", AND i realise that absolutely
nobodygracing this forum with their presence would ever ever post OT
, but i still wanna check: are you using X11 or Wayland sessions?I ask coz t'other day i discovered that whereas in my Arch KDE X11 sessions the Plasma Settings Input Mouse controls allow me to adjust scroll for up to 12 lines, that whole area simply does not exist when i'm logged into a Wayland session. Bummer!
Spoiler
I don't have this on Neon.
I'll look into that "inwheel". -
@panino You don't have this because you use
libinputas your driver which doesn't support it, you would only see it if you would useevdevinstead (assigning it using a droplet in your/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/), but afair none of those would help you anyway as none do work with Chromium -consequently Vivaldi- because Chromium, its baseGTKor both never cared/managed/could address scrolling (and other things like middle-mouse-scroll) properly. I don't remember how wellimwheelworks, if not you could also try some extensions from Google's webstore if you don't mind G. -
@npro said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
@panino You don't have this because you use
libinputas your driver which doesn't support it, you would only see it if you would useevdevinstead (assigning it using a droplet in your/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/), but afair none of those would help you anyway as none do work with Chromium -consequently Vivaldi- because Chromium, its baseGTKor both never cared/managed/could address scrolling (and other things like middle-mouse-scroll) properly. I don't remember how wellimwheelworks, if not you could also try some extensions from Google's webstore if you don't mind G.But then, why is scroll much better on Firefox? Isn't also "GTK"? On Firefox it's much more fluid and light, rolls more pages, that's why I came here to ask. If it works so much better there, surely there's a way to improve on Vivaldi someway.
-
Just and update.
I FOUND THE SOLUTION TO MY "PROBLEM". I just need to use Wayland. On Wayland there are more mouse options in the System Settings, now Vivaldi scrolls much better. Still not the way I think it's ideal, Firefox is just so much better (and I had to change some programs to Flatpak to make them work with Wayland), but it's an improvement.
Still could be better, if you install this extension "Chromium Wheel Smooth Scroller" you can make it scroll almost like Firefox.@gigzama said in KDE: Improve Vivaldi performance dramatically under x11:
kwin_x11 - triple buffer detection
For the last year, I have been scouring the web, searching for a resolution to stuttering, juttery scrolling in KDE under certain applications. I finally stumbled upon this solution a few days ago. For me, it has been a revelation. I had this issue with both NVIDIA and AMD video cards. You may have seen that common wisdom for addressing NVIDIA issues in KDE is to set KWIN for triple buffering (export KWIN_TRIPLE_BUFFER=3) and also enabling triple buffering in xorg.conf (Option "TripleBuffer" "3"). Instead, you want to make both values 0. I haven't tried this for AMD, but purportedly disabling triple buffer detection in KWIN also works in that instance. I did this for a proprietary home theater application, but it has also greatly enhanced Vivaldi usability and performance, as well as made Plasma seem orders of magnitude faster.
Hope this helps someone!Sorry for asking this now, but could you explain to me "how to settled this variable"?
I'm read this but I'm not sure: https://community.kde.org/KWin/Environment_Variables#KWIN_TRIPLE_BUFFER
I'm using Neon and I thought that I could test this to see what happens if it'll not brake my system. -
Resurrecting this to say: Scrolling is silky smooth out of the box in all Chromium-based browsers when using a Plasma Wayland session.
The UFO test for example doesn't even manage 45 fps for me on kwin_x11, compositing on or off doesn't matter.
Kwin on Wayland on the other hand: 165 fps on a 165 Hz screen, like it should be.
Like some in this thread, I can't switch to Gnome without losing some productivity, but Wayland support is almost good enough in Plasma now to switch.
-
I tried Wayland on my MX / Plasma yesterday. I had to add a boot command to get it to work with my Nvidia driver, but then I was in. I immediate sensed things working much smoother. But it was very frustrating trying to get panels to be configured correctly, and it had selected the wrong monitor to place the system panel on. I eventually went back to X.org and will have to live with that.
-
Unfortunately Wayland has bad performance for me on Ubuntu 22. That's why i use Vivaldi on Debian 11.4 KDE Plasma + Xorg.
-
It is unfortunate. Perhaps a distro which includes Wayland as stock, where the Devs would work out the bugs beforehand, would be workable for me. But I'm not going to give up either Plasma or MX at this juncture.
* 
