On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 5:49 PM, Alkis Georgopoulos <
[email protected]> wrote:

> @Alberts, I'll do some more tests and come up with hard numbers concerning
> the performance of metacity with or without compositing. I do believe that
> in some cases it will be possible to optimize the performance through
> appropriate bug reports and patches; but I also strongly believe that there
> will be other cases where the different design choices (compositing) will
> come with an unavoidable performance hit.
>

If you have problems with compositing manager - turn it off, where is
problem?

And while e.g. "3 times slower" may be acceptable in new e.g. core i5
> systems, it's not acceptable in new e.g. atom systems. It doesn't affect
> only old PCs or networked X, it's just that it's more visible there.
>

What is atom systems? Anyway

@Dmitry and Alberts, what if LTSP users find it necessary to have
> compositing off by default? (as a local setting in their installations)
>

If one day we will get per-session gsettings overrides then we could
provide for example GNOME-Flashback (LTSP) and for this session install
override file to disable compositing-manager. Currently good idea might be
to provide script that configures user account for LTSP.


> What issues should they expect from gnome-flashback then?
>  - Harder window resizing due to 1 px border.
>

This of course depends on theme...


>  - Notify-osd notifications ==> I did a quick test and they seem to work;
> albeit without transparency. Did I miss something?
>  - Decorations ==> Example? I couldn't reproduce it.
>  - Various docks ==> Example?
>
> And more significant, how much support should they expect from
> gnome-flashback developers for the non-compositing case? For example, your
> support in all the bug reports that I've filed so far was excellent!
>

I mostly only test non-compositing only to make sure that I did not break
something. From upstream point I am not interested... For example: upstream
nautilus does not draw background anymore, it has transparent window. No
compositor means - no desktop window or it will be black - you will never
see background.

As upstream developer I am interested that GNOME-Flashback is as close as
possible to what I have upstream. And currently it is far from it
(GNOME-Flashback:Unity).

Does that mean that you won't be willing to do any non-compositing related
> work at all?
>

No, if I get bug reports and I will know how to fix them than I will do it,
but it will not be my priority.

Would you be willing to guide persons that are interested in working on
> such issues? Or to accept patches from them?
>

Why not?

I understand that gnome-flashback isn't specifically targeting old or
> networked clients, but does that also mean that it doesn't care at all
> about that use case?
>

If I would not care then I would probably remove option to disable
compositing-manager.

If that's the verdict, then maybe LTSP should evaluate other desktop
> environments like Mate as the default (I think "marco" defaults to
> non-compositing in 16.04).
>

You are free to choose whatever that works for you best.

No matter the answer(s), I again want to thank you very much guys for
> all your work! :)
>

P.S. Do you have numbers about usage?

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop
Packages, which is subscribed to metacity in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1565640

Title:
  Set compositing-manager=false by default

Status in metacity package in Ubuntu:
  Won't Fix

Bug description:
  In Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04, metacity's compositing-manager was false by 
default.
  In 16.04, it's been set to true.

  I tried to pinpoint the advantages vs the disadvantages of that, and 
currently I've only seen disadvantages.
  I was testing with: gsettings set org.gnome.metacity compositing-manager 
false (or metacity --no-composite)
  versus: gsettings set org.gnome.metacity compositing-manager true (or 
metacity --composite)

  Speed: the speed for window drawing and moving around is 3-5 times
  slower when compositing is enabled. This is rather visible locally on
  old computers, but it becomes a real problem when Xorg is used over
  the network, like for example in LTSP thin clients. There, dragging
  around a window draws it in slow motion a whole lot behind the mouse,
  like a trail, while with compositing disabled, everything is lightning
  fast.

  RAM: xrestop shows that with a couple of windows open, metacity now
  needs 10 MB more RAM. This value increases with the number of open
  windows.

  Vsync: in most cases vsync was broken with or without compositing
  (while with compiz it's working much better). I tried with youtube
  videos, with VLC etc. The only difference I saw is that with some SDL
  games like teeworlds, vsync was working with compositing disabled, and
  was broken with compositing enabled.

  So my personal results is that metacity's compositing-manager=true
  doesn't have any advantage currently, and that it makes old client and
  LTSP client performance a whole lot worse. And unfortunately those are
  exactly the cases where we prefer gnome-session-flashback instead of
  e.g. Unity.

  Therefore I'd like to ask you to consider disabling it by default like
  it was in the past.

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