KDE KWin Patches Aiming To Optimize Gaming Latency To Better Compete With Windows

Open-source developer Jakub Okoński has been working on comparing the gaming latency between Linux and Windows and in turn working to drive some improvements into KDE's KWin Wayland compositor so the latency is more competitive with the gaming experience under Microsoft Windows 11.

Jakub has been investigating the gaming latency between Windows 11 and Linux with KDE Plasma 6 using a Teensy micro-controller to measure the click-to-photon latency in acting as a USB HID mouse and a light sensor against the monitor.

After confirming lower display latency while gaming on Windows, Jakub explored what was going on with KDE Plasma 6.6 KWin and has worked out some patches to help improve the situation. The patches have yet to be submitted for upstream KWin, but Jakub noted:

"The gains in windowed games & apps should be substantial. V-Sync fullscreen games (with direct scanout) should see a benefit of a millisecond or so. Games using VRR, or fullscreen games where tearing is allowed, will generally not see reduced latency from these changes as long as they stay at or below the refresh rate.

These improvements go some of the way to closing the gap between Linux and Windows. There’s about 1.1-1.2 ms gained in the minimums, while the gap between platforms in their best measurements with VRR was somewhere around 4 ms."

He's planning to submit these patches for upstream KWin in the coming weeks while he also has a few other areas he is exploring for making for a more low-latency KDE Plasma Wayland gaming experience too moving forward. Too bad though this work will be too late for the imminent Plasma 6.7 release.

Those wanting to learn more about Jakub's low-latency Linux gaming crusade can do so via this interesting blog post.