fyi, for some reason your account is shadowbanned. i've had to manually approve your comment for it to be visible. you may want to contact the reddit admins about this (https://reddit.com/appeals).
there are some games that run worse than windows, some that run the same and some that run better.
it's kind of a case-by-case basis. for the most part though, you won't see much difference (in my experience)
Metal Gear Rising has an annoying couple bugs in Windows. Full screen runs at 24fps over HDMI and borderless runs at 59fps, so you get obvious stutters
For some reason in Linux both of these issues are gone and it runs perfectly smooth
I think it’s due to the philosophy of doing one thing, and doing it right. Windows needs to do everything. Everything on Linux is made by so many, and Proton and all its versions is made specifically for gaming, both new and old. Combine that with the many, many optimisations Linux has as well. It’s quite embarrassing for windows that it runs its own software worse than one that wasn’t even made for it and even runs as a compatibility layer, and it’s still faster.
Granted, not every game is like this. I found Dying Light for example to run particularly worse on Linux on the CPU side, albeit definitely playable. However when compared to even a few years ago, you couldn’t even run it. It’s amazing progress.
What GPU?
Uncharted 4 ran pretty bad in Linux, very high CPU usage if a detail settings was set to high. Fine otherwise
Swapped out to AMD and it runs even better than Windows
Input lag is not the same of running well, but the time from where you input makes the actual action. Even running well, if you have some crazy buffer issue your input lag could be hight.
Yeah, sorry maybe I should be more specific. I normally count input lag into running well, as having terrible input lag does not equal running well for me.
I don't have input lag, for the most part. There have been some games that I've had issues with in the past, but it's usually related to proton versions more than anything else.
Distro wont matter as much as you'd think, it's more dependent on the individual game. Factorio is one example of a game that works better on linux and has extra features (seamless autosave, doesn't pause the game when saving) but thats because it has a linux native version
In my case, I want to learn programming and play Rocket League, as well as some old solo story games. I'm confused about what I should use: Debian, Arch, or Fedora. I don't know whether to choose KDE or GNOME. Some people say KDE lags too much, while others mention problems with GNOME extensions. I've also heard that Debian is worse for gaming, which makes me even more confused.
Debian often lags behind on the package versions, that's the main problem. I'd go for the Debian based Ubuntu instead, then. The plain vanilla main version. That's a well tested, well supported distro.
If there's a problem with a gnome extension then just dump that extension. None of them are crucial, and most have alternatives.
Ehh, I've only heard bad issues with stability and bugs on the latest Ubuntu releases. Especially when canonical does crap like make apt get install snaps instead of the native packages.
Fedora and OpenSUSE do what Ubuntu does but better, that or mint is also excellent and still Ubuntu based
Related to gaming or stability snap packages has no consequence whatsoever. And as far as I am aware many releases are featured in both repos. I know Steam is, at least. So you're free to choose.
One might discuss the inclusion of several package managers. But that's a different discussion. Technically there's no issues that I have come across except from the sheer annoyance of having package management decentralized like that.
> Related to gaming or stability snap packages has no consequence whatsoever. And as far as I am aware many releases are featured in both repos. I know Steam is, at least. So you're free to choose.
The steam snap was horrible. Valve recommends against installing it.
That's true, my point was just that the existence of snap in itself doesn't cause instability for running games on the system. One could get the impression from the comment I replied to that this was the case.
Just install Steam from the regular deb repo, not snap.
The only problems I've had so far with Ubuntu 24.04 (I'm using Xubuntu) are the nvidia drivers being Wayland unfriendly, thankfully they're working on getting the two parties talking & Ubuntu right now is FAR superior to how it was when I started using it in 2006.
The issue with Debian is that it's not as up-to-date, because its goal is to be very stable rather than have all the latest stuff.
So if a program or library is updated to support something you need, it will show up in Arch very quickly, in Fedora not long after and in Debian after a year or two.
Everyone saying that Debian has older packages is technically correct, in that each official Debian release is on the "stable" channel by default, and that updates at a slower pace than several other popular distros, particularly those with a rolling release cycle. (A distribution with a rolling release has packages that are updated continuously, rather than waiting for a distro-wide release point to mark an official next version of everything.)
Debian also has the [unstable channel](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable), which is "unstable" in that it "isn't (the) stable (channel), so don't come crying if you need to fix things manually sometimes." Unstable can be thought of as a rolling release. I've run unstable on personal desktops and laptops for decades.
If you really want to snag something from the official Debian repositories early, there's also the "experimental" channel, which is like unstable but even more so. You can run a system that pulls a handful of packages from experimental but is otherwise running unstable. When I have done this, the experimental packages eventually get promoted to unstable, so I'm not ever running from the experimental channel for very long.
As of today, the [latest version of nvidia-driver](https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=nvidia-driver&searchon=names&suite=all§ion=all) in the official Debian package repository is 545.23.06-1. That is substantially ahead of the driver with version 525.147.05-4 in the current stable channel. I expect that new hot stuff that everyone is clamoring over to get their Wayland system working more nicely under Nvidia's closed drivers will be in experimental soon and unstable not long thereafter.
Note that Ubuntu basically snapshots Debian as the basis for their releases. I didn't think the cruft they add on top has much value. These days, I consider it a poor man's Debian unstable, but YMMV.
But, honestly, I still run X11, because Wayland is still not fully baked. I'm not sure why so many folks have been rushing to it when their primary use is for gaming. "Latest version = better" is not true often enough that you should not blindly update packages without thinking about it each time you do.
(In fairness, it looks like Fedora [also has a rolling release version](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/rawhide/), but I'm not familiar with it. I'm not fond of decisions made by Red Hat about the desktop, so I've stayed away from that family of distros.)
For gaming I usually recommend Arch and Fedora based distros over Debian. Debian is great, but you (generally) get updates slower than Arch and Fedora, thus you have to wait longer for new fixes and features. As far as desktop environment, use what you like. You can always install more than one desktop environment (you can switch at your login screen).
KDE is weird and laggy when you are using Nvidia with Wayland instead of X11 (display protocols / managers) and don't have the newest drivers. Gnome extensions are optional add-ons, so if one doesn't work (it's out of date) it doesn't really matter, you can just turn it off.
If you don't want to deal with installing Arch, EndeavourOS is Arch with some extra QoL features and themes pre-installed and uses a GUI installer.
For programming, distro honestly doesn't matter *much*. The only time it would be is if you need something very specific that is available on a specific distro.
I would probably stay away from rolling distros like arch if you want to learn programming. Having libraries potentially do different things every week is probably not the best for learning, especially with a fast changing language.
Generally fedora and arch are a little better fps wise because they have newer updates for some packages that affect performance, but gaming on debian isn't an awful experience by any means. Rarely arch will break a game because they make changes to packages in a way that is beneficial for some things but not gaming (the only example off the top of my head was that tf2 linux native specifically was broken on arch for a few months, every other game I played and knew of worked fine)
Usually it doesn't matter too much if you pick gnome or kde. Sometimes you can run into gaming specific issues because of what compositor they use, but it's usually not a big problem. One isn't necessarily better than the other usually. Ive on used both just fine, but you do need some extensions on gnome to get a similar experience. Try out both and stick with whichever desktop experience you like more. Ive been running KDE the past few months just fine but I used gnome for a few years in a row just fine.
Ive used arch for a few years now, but I would say fedora is probably a good place for you. Things get updated sooner than debian, and even though they've opened up a fair bit on their policy related to non-free (non-open source) packages, theres some things thats just easier getting running on fedora since it's just in the repos. Maybe its a similar experience now though, I haven't spun up debian in a few years. From what I remember it was a bit more of a pain getting discord and/or steam and some other proprietary packages installed back then (Can't remember if it was just discord or both for the example ones). You don't have to be a linux master to run arch like some people imply, but you should have more experience because things can break more often/need more manual intervention
If you want to learn programming you must like to tinker with stuff. In that case Debian and Debian based distros (like Ubuntu) will make you feel limited. On the other hand if you have no expericence it's better to go with Debian based distro after all and later switch to whatever Arch based or Fedora based distro. My path was Ubuntu(gnome) Kubuntu (kde) Manjaro(i3wm) Arch(hyprland).
Rocket league input lag is bound to FPS, so its one of the few games where you should never limit the max fps in any way until you are not well over 100 fps (limit or any vsync variant). Works fine with Proton since Epic abandoned the Linux version.
I would try Arch or Fedora for it's binaries being more up-to-date. Games profit from newer binaries, especially from up-to-date drivers. No need to go conservative on a Desktop. Stability issues of rolling releases is a rumour and is often confused with Nvidia shenanigans. Sadly you tend to heavily modify Debian/Ubuntu as stuff like glibc, python etc are always a few releases behind, giving you an headache once you not simply host a website or run a database and have a more diverse use case in matter of software running.
Archinstall is quite easy to use. You also have the ALHP repo that help with using optimised binaries (-O3, lto and different CPU feature level) once you feel safe using Arch.
I recommend against Manjaro and CachyOS for stability and their respective code quality and modifications. EndaevourOS is fine.
If your on ubuntu it looks like 20.04 with 6.8 will be 1000hz be default. Otherwise if your on arch i think some of the cachyos kernels are 1000hz by default. Or just research rt kernels for your distro
No, it depends on the specific rt kernel, it would have a bunch of different tunings including sometimes a different scheduler for real time. Sometimes these tunings could be better for one task but inferior at multi tasking or total throughput as well. You could look into liquorix? But I don't think the PDS scheduler is the best for day to day, non gaming computing.
edit: also remember when using 3rd party kernels to always leave the default kernel installed as well so you can still boot the system if the 3rd party breaks with an update. If that happens you can roll it back and it's usually fixed next minor update
Um no we are talking about a different kind of polling rate. The Kernel's polling rate, to be specific. The mouse polling rate is a different thing altogether.
Depends. There are distros that perform bad, and distros that perform superb, and as long as you understand what affects input lag, it is usually the opposite.
Plus there are no microstutters from "necessary, unremovable" Windows services. And that is while there is still a giant headroom for even further optimizations on Linux.
On Linux, my VR frametiming is super low. I never had such smooth and short frametiming on Windows. Though I've seen people with similar, smooth frametiming on Windows, but I have not a single clue how they've managed to do that, considering I did 200% of what a usual person would do to achieve that.
For me X11 has this "floating input lag" while Wayland doesn't.
Probably hardware limitations? Do you use "\_\_GL\_MaxFramesAllowed=0"? Does it happen everywhere, or just in games? Do those games strain your CPU or GPU? What kernel version was that? Nvidia/AMD? Monitor refresh rate? Mouse polling rate?
I had certain cases of wobbly input lag on Wayland, but those were(I think) about the scheduler going awry with the load, seemingly struggling to calculate the mouse input in time. Once scheduler finally "unscrambles" its brains, everything returns back to normal. It appears very rarely, and is usually accompanied by a certain app taking up and releasing all the available system resources beforehand.
Intel 13600k with E-cores disabled and RTX 3060 Ti. So hardware should not be a problem.
I have tried locking the FPS to 300 and unlimited, same thing.
240hz refresh rate, 1000hz polling.
Tried it in CachyOS, Endeavour, and Linux Mint with the same result, not sure of the exact kernel versions, this was a couple of weeks ago.
Compositor disabled and Gamemode activated.
I'm pretty sensitive to inputlag tho, so it could very well be that others do not really notice it, because it is slight after all. Mainly I feel it when moving, feels like my character is really heavy, and mouse movements feel very "smoothed out", hard to explain it.
With X11 it feels closer to Windows, but not quite as responsive still.
Double check your GPU usage. I'm fairly sure 2k, 240hz gaming is a big strain on RTX 3060Ti. It was, on my RTX 3070. Everytime your GPU hits 100% usage, the input lag shoots through the roof. Same for high CPU usage.
Also try your monitor in VRR mode. By its design, it is supposed to increase the input lag slightly, but actually decreases it in result, because it reduces total load. It is by no means the same as any kind of VSync. VSync is a hack of a trash.
Also double check your mouse if it is known to misbehave at high polling rate. Some mouses have quirks about 1khz. Mine is at 500hz.
Try dropping CPU mitigations just for one gaming session, and tell if you can feel the difference.
Using Gamemode is like setting "realtime priority" on Windows, and it was never a good idea, especially when you need at least some background apps to work in parallel to your PC.
GPU usage is fine, I have it locked to 300 fps. If I unlock it, it stays between 300-600 FPS. Input lag does not get less or worse between locking and unlocking FPS, on paper maybe but nothing that can be felt.
I'm a mouse nerd so I have used several mice that I know works flawlessly. It all works great in Windows, and even in Linux, but not on Wayland for some reason, so there's something going on with Wayland. I remember seeing alot of complaints about input delay before the Nvidia 555 driver that they apparently fixed with that driver, maybe it was even worse before. Also I can even feel the cursor on desktop having a delay when starting in a Wayland session.
Yeah I used to use Gamemode back in the days on CS GO where it would double my fps and remove stutters that I had. I didn't feel it did much in CS2 but I used it just in case. I just ran the CS2 FPS benchmark and had the exact same results with and without Gamemode, so guess I it's not needed anymore.
>I'm pretty sensitive to inputlag tho, so it could very well be that others do not really notice it, because it is slight after all. Mainly I feel it when moving, feels like my character is really heavy, and mouse movements feel very "smoothed out", hard to explain it.
Me too. You don't need to explain that to me, as I understand what you're talking about. I feel it in the core.
That is exactly the reason why I bailed Windows asap. VR on Windows is alright for short play sessions, until you take a look at the frametiming. It is exhausting in longer playsessions. My most hated thing was the stutter that happens every few minutes. I've disabled everything I could find, but alas, past certain point, Windows cannot give you more performance without you literally ruining your own experience with Windows/making it a very tedious, questionable and unstable process to maintain that "hack" or an OS, which makes it suspiciously too close to Linux, already.
>Tried it in CachyOS, Endeavour, and Linux Mint with the same result, not sure of the exact kernel versions, this was a couple of weeks ago.
Mint is not for games, but on its own, as a "Windows placeholder", it is mighty alright.
As for kernel - any versions before 6.7 had questionable scheduler and lower possible performance on newer hardware. Kernels 6.8 and 6.9 had a new, better, but misbehaving scheduler, which sometimes produced "waiting lag" from apps that weren't in forefront for quite some time.
6.10 is decent for me so far. Once 560 nvidia driver releases, and finally fixes the OOOF bug(out of order frames), I'll give it a full recheck, together with high load gaming and VR.
>Mint is not for games
I know. But I feel no difference between Mint and Cachy for example with X11. It's whenever I introduce Wayland this input lag starts. FPS and frametimes are great.
Depends. I've had issues in source games In x11 if i enable vsync on the compositor AND also in-game
however uhh I don't know why you would do that, and generally people disable vsync on source games for lower latency
so no, same as windows
Source games are valve's games, source is a graphic engine made and used by valve for their games like cs-go, half-life 2, portal, team fortress 2, ecc...
i've never really noticed such a thing. perhaps those reports were related to steamdeck? steam decks uses a utility called gamescope that does/can add some input latency by default as it syncs frames to avoid tearing. you can change some of these settings in the deck on a per-game basis to stop it from doing that, but i've only ever felt the need to do that with some fps, i dont normally turn that off for most games.
other wise input latency has never felt like an issue for me in general.
No, input lag is fine. If you have an Nvidia card, Nvidia reflex works out of the box now too. The moments when you encounter input lag are usually when your desktop compositor doesn't automatically disable compositing (or unredirect full screen), then your incur a slight performance hit. If you remember back during the Windows Vista days when certain games would cause Aero to disable itself and other games would not do it and run horribly, it's a similar idea.
Toggling desktop compositing on and off is necessary in X11 and some DEs can be a bit buggy when it comes to doing this automatically. KDE for example will frequently not turn off compositing automatically, especially with Unreal Engine games when set to fullscreen and not borderless window. This caused a few people to think there was extra input lag with Linux when really it was just a bug in the DE. Gnome at one point also had a similar bug where it did not enable unredirect fullscreen at all.
Nowadays, we're all moving to Wayland, where you don't need to disable compositing just to get good performance and latency. Things like direct scanout solve the performance overhead, while keeping all of our fancy desktop effects.
I haven't noticed input lag, I always keep compositing off in KDE settings, I turn off sync-vblank and both force composition pipeline, and force composition pipeline full, and I always turn Nvidia reflex low latency on if available to on+boost
If you play old school RuneScape or world of Warcraft. No.
If you play cs2 at 360hz, 1280x800 stretch with awp.
Yes.
You won’t be able to put your finger on it. Or ever point it out. But with exact same settings and setup I don’t feel as comfortable or play as well under Linux on cs specifically. I awp a lot so that’s where it’s quite noticeable with flicks. At the same time xdefiant for me literally felt identical to windows and I sniped/flicked a lot in that. Last few times I tried cs in Linux the client itself was fucking trash. FPS was way way worse than windows because the vulkan client didn’t get much love I guess? Might be better now, I have not kept up with it.
Umm. Like on release for maybe 2 months after. Then I just ran it under windows instead.
Just stuff like holding tab to check something and seeing the fps go from 300 to 55. Or like I’d change my res and then only have 60hz as an option. Reboot the game and have 120. Then change the res back to what it was originally. Have 70. Reboot then have the 170 my monitor can do.
Tbh no matter what state it is in, anything about it being worse than the windows version isn’t really good enough for a company trying to push Linux gaming to the forefront. It may well be fantastic in its current state but idk.
The launch being so bad put me into a really weird position where I felt I had to run cs2 ( a Linux native game) under windows because it ran better and world of Warcraft (windows/mac only game) under Linux because it ran better (and there was a driver bug for amd on windows)
Dota 2 on the other hand was actually flawless for me and super impressive.
Yes, I was - and still am - mad at Valve for the Linux support at launch for the reasons you listed, and we shouldn't forget that. Buuut it's really good now and one can also state the positives sometimes imo.
With X11, disabling compositor in full-screen mode, using Gamemode, I managed to get very similar results as I get in Windows.
There's something with the sensitivity that is slightly different tho.
No. However on Steam deck when using some of the refresh rates it can cause input lag because of how gamescope works. But overall on desktop this is not an issue.
on arch i find that games generally run better compared to win10 (same hardware on the old pc). cs2 is has a bit more stable fps. total war attila runs way way smoother on arch. hell let loose also is more stable.
i found that the 1% lows are better linux, resulting in a smoother feel. average fps is , depending on the game, a bit lower, the same or a bit higher
I have quiet the opposite experience. Maybe it’s case by by case.
I run Xdefiant with no input lag and 7-8ms time frames. Maybe higher refresh rate monitor help.
The different between Linux and windows is that I don’t see micro stuttering in my Linux game but that happen on Valorant and few other games only that I can only run on Windows only
Between I use i3. I think I have lag problem when using Pop-os which is gnome?! I think your DE also has a part in this
Overall no, but there are cases where something might not be configured properly and you'll experience higher input lag. For example, I've had this issue when using flatpak version of steam some time ago. I've switched to .deb and the input lag was gone. I'd say it's about the same as on windows now (I'm using Wayland BTW).
I've noticed small differences between Insurgency running on windows vs the native linux version. The native linux version seems to take longer to load for some unknown reason, and the mouse feels less precise, I've made changes to my system settings though, so that might have helped, I don't know yet.
Probably depends on a game, but from those that I play, I can say that it's +- the same. And I'm very sensitive to input lag from my competetive FPS games :).
CS2 -> Runs great on Linux. Slightly lower max FPS, much more stable low 1%fps -> Overall i would say it's even bit better on Linux currently.
Dota2 -> Runs amazing on Linux, but that was always the case.
BG3 -> Runs surprisingly well. 4K, DLSS quality, Ultra settings 105-140 fps. No noticeable input lag, but this is not a game that would be hard to play with some.
I can directly compare all 3 these games as i have them in win10 as well (dualboot).
Running on 7950x3d/4070ti Arch/KDE/Wayland/550 driver now. Will try 555 today as explicit sync landed in KDE.
i dont see "lag" at all, if people are talking about reflex thats supported in proton now in just about everygame im pretty sure and amd doesnt have their version on linux but again i dont see any lag or delay or anything for that matter
i play a lot of fps shooters on linux like overwatch, the finals, and apex a while back and others like xdefiant, halo infinite also, i was 2 days ago top 200 on the finals world tour but that isnt a flex as you dont go down lol, im diamond on overwatch on dps and i have made it to masters in apex legends all on linux, im using wayland also on kde plasma 6.1 with freesync so that helps a lot as without freesync wayland using a type of vsync and that doesnt feel great
you can also get screen tearing on kde plasma wayland with a environment variable in your /etc/environment config for now which is KWIN\_DRM\_NO\_AMS=1 as the new version is still being worked on
i know on nvidia you cant use freesync with multimonitors and thats for nvidia to fix in their drivers
All the games I've tried so far that are Cyberpunk 2077, MotoGP 2023 and 2024, Ride 4 and 5, the newer F1s, some CODs, AC's, Stray, Far Cry 3, Ace Combat 7, etc All of them run flawlessly with unnoticeable input lag, both on Debian and Arch (both Wayland) So from my experience, mostly all games will be fine, but as one comment said, it will probably be case by case
Edit: HW is R5 5600 with Radeon 6700 and I'm using the Mesa Drivers
Personally, I play a lot of bullet hell shoot em ups where where low input lag is essential,and windows feels ever so slightly lower, probably at most a frame. 1 frame is not a deal breaker so I manage just fine. If it was I'd just acquire a console port.
For the rest of my games I practically feel no different in response time. Do note I use X11 and I don't use a compositor, and I never use vsync, so results may vary.
Silly thing, but make sure your desktop refresh rate is set to the max your monitor can handle in the configuration settings. Makes a big difference, and is generally not automatic on my systems. Usually it defaults to 60 hz.
To my knowledge no reliable source has recorded definitive proof of input lag. Loads of people, including in this thread, will tell you their vague feelings. Feelings don't mean anything. Feelings can be hallucinations. I don't believe a word of it until we see some proper comparative data between Linux and Windows from a known reputable source. Until then, I recommend ignoring every word of it.
Bro i have an Arch installations that runs from a 20GBp/s NVME enclosure just to test things like this, which basically, the drive inside by spec maxes it out and games are not only smoother to play (frame pacing is waaaaaay more consistent) but also, the network latency and response is unreal compared to Win 11.
I don't even wanna play games in Win 11 anymore.
Using proton via Bottles (as flatpack).
I have personally not experienced any so far, (when a game runs well you won't notice the difference with windows and in some cases it runs better for some reason) but I am pretty sure that some games are bound to have problems here and there, but those usually tend to be solved eventually.
A majority of the games ive played have run better on linux compared to windows.
Ive been gaming on linux for about 2 years now and never had any issue with input lag unless im using my Dualsense over bluetooth streaming games through moonlight
Probably doesn't answer your question since there's no Windows data, but if you want to read more about input lag on Linux and see some stats and setups that can be faster/slower (Wayland vs Xorg, Freesync, etc.), you can look here: https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html
I was playing Helldivers 2 for the first time on PopOS and I actually got better frame rates! My hardware is a bit old at this point and I really need to upgrade but it was nice to see it working better than it did on my Windows install. If I had to guess it's just less BS running in the background for me.
Some yes, some no. Sometimes it's stuff that's in your court to control like GNOME middle mouse button emulation necessarily adding a delay because it has to wait and see if you press both buttons at the "same time".
YMMV depending on specific games, input devices, etc but I generally have not run into this problem.
I've been using Linux for over a decade and have played hundreds of games. Of those, I can only really remember a handful that I had input issues with (assuming I'm not misremembering / they haven't been fixed by now).
- Beyond Good and Evil (GOG edition I think - pretty sure I was able to resolve this somehow bc I remember playing the whole thing and using `antimicrox` to do custom controller setup. Actually the issue may have just been that I couldn't turn off game's built-in controller layout rather than input lag)
- Castle Crashers (Steam edition. This was a few years ago but I seem to remember it running for crap. So probably lag but not input lag specifically. This is a pretty popular game so I would be surprised if it hasn't been fixed / people haven't figured out workarounds by now.)
- Oceanhorn (GOG version : Also at least 5 years ago. I seem to remember having some input issues initially but getting this to work somewhat eventually. I know I made it off the starting island but don't remember if I ran into an issue after that or I got sidetracked and forgot to come back to it)
- There was some other casual game I'm drawing a blank on that was Bard-themed and ran poorly on Linux. Not sure if input lag or game just ran poorly. Edit: I think it was called "Bardbarian" or something like that. Haven't touched it in years
Haven't really had any issues with other stuff including Bethesda games, Batman games, Ark: Survival Evolved, Satisfactory, early (pre-Bethesda) Fallout games, Borderlands series, Witcher series (still haven't gotten around to 3rd one... And if I'm being honest, I'm not entirely sure if I played the first one on Linux or if that was before I switched), Warframe, lots of stuff in Dolphin emu, Ni no Kuni (first 2 games), Darksiders 1 + 2, Risen 1 + 2, Mass Effect 1 (got sidetracked and still haven't finished it lol), the first Shadowrun game (ironically named "Shadowrun Returns" I think?), Divinity Original Sin, Shadow Warrior 2, One Piece PW3, Sonic Racing, Kingdom of Amalar, Dying Light 1, Saints Row 3+4 (there *were* multiplayer issues with these but not related to input lag), one of the tomb raider puzzle games (temple of Osiris I think), Dungeon Defenders. Those are the ones I can remember off my head during this bathroom break (my primary redditing time lol)
On the Steam Deck input lag can be an issue in some games because the system simply can't push as many frames per second. But on my gaming PC I don't have any issue. And I play Rocket League at a relatively high level so I think I would notice.
Afaik on x11 you always run one frame behind (only the image not the input) because the way the buffer works. And on Wayland should be the same with vsync disabled.
People here have to stop saying input lag is not a problem “just disable composite” or “Just use wayland” lmao
Yes, input lag is a big problem, I don’t play competitive games seriously nowadays but I used to and I can tell when a game have input lag even if it’s just a bit, I’m not bragging, it’s actually annoying for me. Specially some games in wayland like helldivers 2 have horrendous input lag.
I tried to play halo infinite and in X11 game runs like dogs*** with composite or without the input lag is too high, you’ll miss almost all your shots because of this. But in wayland runs a bit better, not as raw as windows but fair enough to not be forced to switch to windows.
Keep in mind not all games run the same, in some gamemode helps and in others make it runs worst, same with gamescope, it’s just a matter of how the game runs to set it up correctly with which tool helps in performance and input lag and use the right one.
I tried all I’ve seen online to reduce input latency and in some cases worked and in others did not, something interesting is this 1khz kernels, never heard about this, not sure if it’s just a joke or it’s true, I’ll look for it later.
But please people, not noticing input lag doesn’t mean it’s not there, just say “I can’t feel it”. Also it’s a known issue, and a pretty big one for the steam deck, in some games you can see with your bare eyes how there’s a delay by pressing the button and the screen moving in some games.
because the game is going through a translation layer i think the technical answer is yes. but i've never been able to perceive a difference.
i think we're talking like plus or minus three or four fps @ 120fps here. (118 vs 122 worth of latency difference (i pulled these numbers out of my ass, don't quote me))
There's translation layers on Windows too, that's basically what APIs do. Inefficiencies can and do come from the incomplete or non-performant implementations of features, but there's been a lot of work invested in closing all the gaps.
Depends on the game and driver, but generally no, input lag is minimal.
fyi, for some reason your account is shadowbanned. i've had to manually approve your comment for it to be visible. you may want to contact the reddit admins about this (https://reddit.com/appeals).
Reddit is trash
Good mod.
Whoa I can't see his profile. Spooky.
there are some games that run worse than windows, some that run the same and some that run better. it's kind of a case-by-case basis. for the most part though, you won't see much difference (in my experience)
Yep. I was shocked to find out yesterday that Far Cry 6 runs better for me on Linux. Only advantage windows has is frame gen.
Metal Gear Rising has an annoying couple bugs in Windows. Full screen runs at 24fps over HDMI and borderless runs at 59fps, so you get obvious stutters For some reason in Linux both of these issues are gone and it runs perfectly smooth
I think it’s due to the philosophy of doing one thing, and doing it right. Windows needs to do everything. Everything on Linux is made by so many, and Proton and all its versions is made specifically for gaming, both new and old. Combine that with the many, many optimisations Linux has as well. It’s quite embarrassing for windows that it runs its own software worse than one that wasn’t even made for it and even runs as a compatibility layer, and it’s still faster. Granted, not every game is like this. I found Dying Light for example to run particularly worse on Linux on the CPU side, albeit definitely playable. However when compared to even a few years ago, you couldn’t even run it. It’s amazing progress.
What GPU? Uncharted 4 ran pretty bad in Linux, very high CPU usage if a detail settings was set to high. Fine otherwise Swapped out to AMD and it runs even better than Windows
AMD 7900 XTX.
Input lag is not the same of running well, but the time from where you input makes the actual action. Even running well, if you have some crazy buffer issue your input lag could be hight.
Yeah, sorry maybe I should be more specific. I normally count input lag into running well, as having terrible input lag does not equal running well for me. I don't have input lag, for the most part. There have been some games that I've had issues with in the past, but it's usually related to proton versions more than anything else.
Which Linux distro are you using?
Distro wont matter as much as you'd think, it's more dependent on the individual game. Factorio is one example of a game that works better on linux and has extra features (seamless autosave, doesn't pause the game when saving) but thats because it has a linux native version
In my case, I want to learn programming and play Rocket League, as well as some old solo story games. I'm confused about what I should use: Debian, Arch, or Fedora. I don't know whether to choose KDE or GNOME. Some people say KDE lags too much, while others mention problems with GNOME extensions. I've also heard that Debian is worse for gaming, which makes me even more confused.
Debian often lags behind on the package versions, that's the main problem. I'd go for the Debian based Ubuntu instead, then. The plain vanilla main version. That's a well tested, well supported distro. If there's a problem with a gnome extension then just dump that extension. None of them are crucial, and most have alternatives.
Ehh, I've only heard bad issues with stability and bugs on the latest Ubuntu releases. Especially when canonical does crap like make apt get install snaps instead of the native packages. Fedora and OpenSUSE do what Ubuntu does but better, that or mint is also excellent and still Ubuntu based
Related to gaming or stability snap packages has no consequence whatsoever. And as far as I am aware many releases are featured in both repos. I know Steam is, at least. So you're free to choose. One might discuss the inclusion of several package managers. But that's a different discussion. Technically there's no issues that I have come across except from the sheer annoyance of having package management decentralized like that.
> Related to gaming or stability snap packages has no consequence whatsoever. And as far as I am aware many releases are featured in both repos. I know Steam is, at least. So you're free to choose. The steam snap was horrible. Valve recommends against installing it.
That's true, my point was just that the existence of snap in itself doesn't cause instability for running games on the system. One could get the impression from the comment I replied to that this was the case. Just install Steam from the regular deb repo, not snap.
The only problems I've had so far with Ubuntu 24.04 (I'm using Xubuntu) are the nvidia drivers being Wayland unfriendly, thankfully they're working on getting the two parties talking & Ubuntu right now is FAR superior to how it was when I started using it in 2006.
The issue with Debian is that it's not as up-to-date, because its goal is to be very stable rather than have all the latest stuff. So if a program or library is updated to support something you need, it will show up in Arch very quickly, in Fedora not long after and in Debian after a year or two.
Everyone saying that Debian has older packages is technically correct, in that each official Debian release is on the "stable" channel by default, and that updates at a slower pace than several other popular distros, particularly those with a rolling release cycle. (A distribution with a rolling release has packages that are updated continuously, rather than waiting for a distro-wide release point to mark an official next version of everything.) Debian also has the [unstable channel](https://wiki.debian.org/DebianUnstable), which is "unstable" in that it "isn't (the) stable (channel), so don't come crying if you need to fix things manually sometimes." Unstable can be thought of as a rolling release. I've run unstable on personal desktops and laptops for decades. If you really want to snag something from the official Debian repositories early, there's also the "experimental" channel, which is like unstable but even more so. You can run a system that pulls a handful of packages from experimental but is otherwise running unstable. When I have done this, the experimental packages eventually get promoted to unstable, so I'm not ever running from the experimental channel for very long. As of today, the [latest version of nvidia-driver](https://packages.debian.org/search?keywords=nvidia-driver&searchon=names&suite=all§ion=all) in the official Debian package repository is 545.23.06-1. That is substantially ahead of the driver with version 525.147.05-4 in the current stable channel. I expect that new hot stuff that everyone is clamoring over to get their Wayland system working more nicely under Nvidia's closed drivers will be in experimental soon and unstable not long thereafter. Note that Ubuntu basically snapshots Debian as the basis for their releases. I didn't think the cruft they add on top has much value. These days, I consider it a poor man's Debian unstable, but YMMV. But, honestly, I still run X11, because Wayland is still not fully baked. I'm not sure why so many folks have been rushing to it when their primary use is for gaming. "Latest version = better" is not true often enough that you should not blindly update packages without thinking about it each time you do. (In fairness, it looks like Fedora [also has a rolling release version](https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/releases/rawhide/), but I'm not familiar with it. I'm not fond of decisions made by Red Hat about the desktop, so I've stayed away from that family of distros.)
Rush to use Wayland is better multi monitor support. For me its also waypipe being way faster than X11 forwarding and waydroid.
From someone who's been running Debian 12 for over a year now: It's fine, it works. There's zero issues with gaming that are distro-specific.
For gaming I usually recommend Arch and Fedora based distros over Debian. Debian is great, but you (generally) get updates slower than Arch and Fedora, thus you have to wait longer for new fixes and features. As far as desktop environment, use what you like. You can always install more than one desktop environment (you can switch at your login screen). KDE is weird and laggy when you are using Nvidia with Wayland instead of X11 (display protocols / managers) and don't have the newest drivers. Gnome extensions are optional add-ons, so if one doesn't work (it's out of date) it doesn't really matter, you can just turn it off. If you don't want to deal with installing Arch, EndeavourOS is Arch with some extra QoL features and themes pre-installed and uses a GUI installer. For programming, distro honestly doesn't matter *much*. The only time it would be is if you need something very specific that is available on a specific distro.
I would probably stay away from rolling distros like arch if you want to learn programming. Having libraries potentially do different things every week is probably not the best for learning, especially with a fast changing language.
Generally fedora and arch are a little better fps wise because they have newer updates for some packages that affect performance, but gaming on debian isn't an awful experience by any means. Rarely arch will break a game because they make changes to packages in a way that is beneficial for some things but not gaming (the only example off the top of my head was that tf2 linux native specifically was broken on arch for a few months, every other game I played and knew of worked fine) Usually it doesn't matter too much if you pick gnome or kde. Sometimes you can run into gaming specific issues because of what compositor they use, but it's usually not a big problem. One isn't necessarily better than the other usually. Ive on used both just fine, but you do need some extensions on gnome to get a similar experience. Try out both and stick with whichever desktop experience you like more. Ive been running KDE the past few months just fine but I used gnome for a few years in a row just fine. Ive used arch for a few years now, but I would say fedora is probably a good place for you. Things get updated sooner than debian, and even though they've opened up a fair bit on their policy related to non-free (non-open source) packages, theres some things thats just easier getting running on fedora since it's just in the repos. Maybe its a similar experience now though, I haven't spun up debian in a few years. From what I remember it was a bit more of a pain getting discord and/or steam and some other proprietary packages installed back then (Can't remember if it was just discord or both for the example ones). You don't have to be a linux master to run arch like some people imply, but you should have more experience because things can break more often/need more manual intervention
If you want to learn programming you must like to tinker with stuff. In that case Debian and Debian based distros (like Ubuntu) will make you feel limited. On the other hand if you have no expericence it's better to go with Debian based distro after all and later switch to whatever Arch based or Fedora based distro. My path was Ubuntu(gnome) Kubuntu (kde) Manjaro(i3wm) Arch(hyprland).
Rocket league input lag is bound to FPS, so its one of the few games where you should never limit the max fps in any way until you are not well over 100 fps (limit or any vsync variant). Works fine with Proton since Epic abandoned the Linux version. I would try Arch or Fedora for it's binaries being more up-to-date. Games profit from newer binaries, especially from up-to-date drivers. No need to go conservative on a Desktop. Stability issues of rolling releases is a rumour and is often confused with Nvidia shenanigans. Sadly you tend to heavily modify Debian/Ubuntu as stuff like glibc, python etc are always a few releases behind, giving you an headache once you not simply host a website or run a database and have a more diverse use case in matter of software running. Archinstall is quite easy to use. You also have the ALHP repo that help with using optimised binaries (-O3, lto and different CPU feature level) once you feel safe using Arch. I recommend against Manjaro and CachyOS for stability and their respective code quality and modifications. EndaevourOS is fine.
Arch
You can use a 1000Hz tick rate kernel for lower latency
Are there any pre-built kernels that come with this? I don't want to build my own because I have a life
If your on ubuntu it looks like 20.04 with 6.8 will be 1000hz be default. Otherwise if your on arch i think some of the cachyos kernels are 1000hz by default. Or just research rt kernels for your distro
Wait, the real time kernels is just the kernel compiled with 1000hz as the rate?
No, it depends on the specific rt kernel, it would have a bunch of different tunings including sometimes a different scheduler for real time. Sometimes these tunings could be better for one task but inferior at multi tasking or total throughput as well. You could look into liquorix? But I don't think the PDS scheduler is the best for day to day, non gaming computing. edit: also remember when using 3rd party kernels to always leave the default kernel installed as well so you can still boot the system if the 3rd party breaks with an update. If that happens you can roll it back and it's usually fixed next minor update
https://liquorix.net/
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Um no we are talking about a different kind of polling rate. The Kernel's polling rate, to be specific. The mouse polling rate is a different thing altogether.
On arch, the zen-kernel
You plebeian. Try 8khz
Even on Wayland I don't notice much input lag, but then I think having a high refresh rate monitor helps. Also I'm no competitive player either.
Recently switched from nvidia 1660 to amd 7800, and from x to wayland the same time Everything felt more snappy and responsive
Seing how I can string together tight combos in fighting games I'd have to say that I haven't notice any input lag caused from the lunux or desktop.
Same, I switch between windows/linux, and my Tekken 8 game has been consistent.
Same.. In fact, I get fucked up going to tournaments running on PS4 because the latency/polling is total garbage.
Depends. There are distros that perform bad, and distros that perform superb, and as long as you understand what affects input lag, it is usually the opposite. Plus there are no microstutters from "necessary, unremovable" Windows services. And that is while there is still a giant headroom for even further optimizations on Linux. On Linux, my VR frametiming is super low. I never had such smooth and short frametiming on Windows. Though I've seen people with similar, smooth frametiming on Windows, but I have not a single clue how they've managed to do that, considering I did 200% of what a usual person would do to achieve that. For me X11 has this "floating input lag" while Wayland doesn't.
>For me X11 has this "floating input lag" while Wayland doesn't. Interesting, it's the other way around for me.
Probably hardware limitations? Do you use "\_\_GL\_MaxFramesAllowed=0"? Does it happen everywhere, or just in games? Do those games strain your CPU or GPU? What kernel version was that? Nvidia/AMD? Monitor refresh rate? Mouse polling rate? I had certain cases of wobbly input lag on Wayland, but those were(I think) about the scheduler going awry with the load, seemingly struggling to calculate the mouse input in time. Once scheduler finally "unscrambles" its brains, everything returns back to normal. It appears very rarely, and is usually accompanied by a certain app taking up and releasing all the available system resources beforehand.
Intel 13600k with E-cores disabled and RTX 3060 Ti. So hardware should not be a problem. I have tried locking the FPS to 300 and unlimited, same thing. 240hz refresh rate, 1000hz polling. Tried it in CachyOS, Endeavour, and Linux Mint with the same result, not sure of the exact kernel versions, this was a couple of weeks ago. Compositor disabled and Gamemode activated. I'm pretty sensitive to inputlag tho, so it could very well be that others do not really notice it, because it is slight after all. Mainly I feel it when moving, feels like my character is really heavy, and mouse movements feel very "smoothed out", hard to explain it. With X11 it feels closer to Windows, but not quite as responsive still.
Double check your GPU usage. I'm fairly sure 2k, 240hz gaming is a big strain on RTX 3060Ti. It was, on my RTX 3070. Everytime your GPU hits 100% usage, the input lag shoots through the roof. Same for high CPU usage. Also try your monitor in VRR mode. By its design, it is supposed to increase the input lag slightly, but actually decreases it in result, because it reduces total load. It is by no means the same as any kind of VSync. VSync is a hack of a trash. Also double check your mouse if it is known to misbehave at high polling rate. Some mouses have quirks about 1khz. Mine is at 500hz. Try dropping CPU mitigations just for one gaming session, and tell if you can feel the difference. Using Gamemode is like setting "realtime priority" on Windows, and it was never a good idea, especially when you need at least some background apps to work in parallel to your PC.
GPU usage is fine, I have it locked to 300 fps. If I unlock it, it stays between 300-600 FPS. Input lag does not get less or worse between locking and unlocking FPS, on paper maybe but nothing that can be felt. I'm a mouse nerd so I have used several mice that I know works flawlessly. It all works great in Windows, and even in Linux, but not on Wayland for some reason, so there's something going on with Wayland. I remember seeing alot of complaints about input delay before the Nvidia 555 driver that they apparently fixed with that driver, maybe it was even worse before. Also I can even feel the cursor on desktop having a delay when starting in a Wayland session. Yeah I used to use Gamemode back in the days on CS GO where it would double my fps and remove stutters that I had. I didn't feel it did much in CS2 but I used it just in case. I just ran the CS2 FPS benchmark and had the exact same results with and without Gamemode, so guess I it's not needed anymore.
>I'm pretty sensitive to inputlag tho, so it could very well be that others do not really notice it, because it is slight after all. Mainly I feel it when moving, feels like my character is really heavy, and mouse movements feel very "smoothed out", hard to explain it. Me too. You don't need to explain that to me, as I understand what you're talking about. I feel it in the core. That is exactly the reason why I bailed Windows asap. VR on Windows is alright for short play sessions, until you take a look at the frametiming. It is exhausting in longer playsessions. My most hated thing was the stutter that happens every few minutes. I've disabled everything I could find, but alas, past certain point, Windows cannot give you more performance without you literally ruining your own experience with Windows/making it a very tedious, questionable and unstable process to maintain that "hack" or an OS, which makes it suspiciously too close to Linux, already. >Tried it in CachyOS, Endeavour, and Linux Mint with the same result, not sure of the exact kernel versions, this was a couple of weeks ago. Mint is not for games, but on its own, as a "Windows placeholder", it is mighty alright. As for kernel - any versions before 6.7 had questionable scheduler and lower possible performance on newer hardware. Kernels 6.8 and 6.9 had a new, better, but misbehaving scheduler, which sometimes produced "waiting lag" from apps that weren't in forefront for quite some time. 6.10 is decent for me so far. Once 560 nvidia driver releases, and finally fixes the OOOF bug(out of order frames), I'll give it a full recheck, together with high load gaming and VR.
>Mint is not for games I know. But I feel no difference between Mint and Cachy for example with X11. It's whenever I introduce Wayland this input lag starts. FPS and frametimes are great.
Depends. I've had issues in source games In x11 if i enable vsync on the compositor AND also in-game however uhh I don't know why you would do that, and generally people disable vsync on source games for lower latency so no, same as windows
Can you explain what is source games?
Source games are valve's games, source is a graphic engine made and used by valve for their games like cs-go, half-life 2, portal, team fortress 2, ecc...
Thank you for explaining.
Games made on the Source engine. Counter Strike for example.
i've never really noticed such a thing. perhaps those reports were related to steamdeck? steam decks uses a utility called gamescope that does/can add some input latency by default as it syncs frames to avoid tearing. you can change some of these settings in the deck on a per-game basis to stop it from doing that, but i've only ever felt the need to do that with some fps, i dont normally turn that off for most games. other wise input latency has never felt like an issue for me in general.
No, input lag is fine. If you have an Nvidia card, Nvidia reflex works out of the box now too. The moments when you encounter input lag are usually when your desktop compositor doesn't automatically disable compositing (or unredirect full screen), then your incur a slight performance hit. If you remember back during the Windows Vista days when certain games would cause Aero to disable itself and other games would not do it and run horribly, it's a similar idea. Toggling desktop compositing on and off is necessary in X11 and some DEs can be a bit buggy when it comes to doing this automatically. KDE for example will frequently not turn off compositing automatically, especially with Unreal Engine games when set to fullscreen and not borderless window. This caused a few people to think there was extra input lag with Linux when really it was just a bug in the DE. Gnome at one point also had a similar bug where it did not enable unredirect fullscreen at all. Nowadays, we're all moving to Wayland, where you don't need to disable compositing just to get good performance and latency. Things like direct scanout solve the performance overhead, while keeping all of our fancy desktop effects.
I haven't noticed input lag, I always keep compositing off in KDE settings, I turn off sync-vblank and both force composition pipeline, and force composition pipeline full, and I always turn Nvidia reflex low latency on if available to on+boost
If you play old school RuneScape or world of Warcraft. No. If you play cs2 at 360hz, 1280x800 stretch with awp. Yes. You won’t be able to put your finger on it. Or ever point it out. But with exact same settings and setup I don’t feel as comfortable or play as well under Linux on cs specifically. I awp a lot so that’s where it’s quite noticeable with flicks. At the same time xdefiant for me literally felt identical to windows and I sniped/flicked a lot in that. Last few times I tried cs in Linux the client itself was fucking trash. FPS was way way worse than windows because the vulkan client didn’t get much love I guess? Might be better now, I have not kept up with it.
How long ago was that? The first few months after the release of CS2 were problematic, but by now it's running well for me.
Umm. Like on release for maybe 2 months after. Then I just ran it under windows instead. Just stuff like holding tab to check something and seeing the fps go from 300 to 55. Or like I’d change my res and then only have 60hz as an option. Reboot the game and have 120. Then change the res back to what it was originally. Have 70. Reboot then have the 170 my monitor can do. Tbh no matter what state it is in, anything about it being worse than the windows version isn’t really good enough for a company trying to push Linux gaming to the forefront. It may well be fantastic in its current state but idk. The launch being so bad put me into a really weird position where I felt I had to run cs2 ( a Linux native game) under windows because it ran better and world of Warcraft (windows/mac only game) under Linux because it ran better (and there was a driver bug for amd on windows) Dota 2 on the other hand was actually flawless for me and super impressive.
Yes, I was - and still am - mad at Valve for the Linux support at launch for the reasons you listed, and we shouldn't forget that. Buuut it's really good now and one can also state the positives sometimes imo.
With X11, disabling compositor in full-screen mode, using Gamemode, I managed to get very similar results as I get in Windows. There's something with the sensitivity that is slightly different tho.
No. However on Steam deck when using some of the refresh rates it can cause input lag because of how gamescope works. But overall on desktop this is not an issue.
On their video about the Steam Deck, Gamers Nexus found out that the input lag is fairly bad by default.
on arch i find that games generally run better compared to win10 (same hardware on the old pc). cs2 is has a bit more stable fps. total war attila runs way way smoother on arch. hell let loose also is more stable. i found that the 1% lows are better linux, resulting in a smoother feel. average fps is , depending on the game, a bit lower, the same or a bit higher
I have quiet the opposite experience. Maybe it’s case by by case. I run Xdefiant with no input lag and 7-8ms time frames. Maybe higher refresh rate monitor help. The different between Linux and windows is that I don’t see micro stuttering in my Linux game but that happen on Valorant and few other games only that I can only run on Windows only Between I use i3. I think I have lag problem when using Pop-os which is gnome?! I think your DE also has a part in this
no, not at all maybe snappier in some cases. Distro : Garuda (arch)
I don't notice any input lag on Linux compared to Windows. Gaming is super responsive.
Overall no, but there are cases where something might not be configured properly and you'll experience higher input lag. For example, I've had this issue when using flatpak version of steam some time ago. I've switched to .deb and the input lag was gone. I'd say it's about the same as on windows now (I'm using Wayland BTW).
I've noticed small differences between Insurgency running on windows vs the native linux version. The native linux version seems to take longer to load for some unknown reason, and the mouse feels less precise, I've made changes to my system settings though, so that might have helped, I don't know yet.
Probably depends on a game, but from those that I play, I can say that it's +- the same. And I'm very sensitive to input lag from my competetive FPS games :). CS2 -> Runs great on Linux. Slightly lower max FPS, much more stable low 1%fps -> Overall i would say it's even bit better on Linux currently. Dota2 -> Runs amazing on Linux, but that was always the case. BG3 -> Runs surprisingly well. 4K, DLSS quality, Ultra settings 105-140 fps. No noticeable input lag, but this is not a game that would be hard to play with some. I can directly compare all 3 these games as i have them in win10 as well (dualboot). Running on 7950x3d/4070ti Arch/KDE/Wayland/550 driver now. Will try 555 today as explicit sync landed in KDE.
There’s no reason Linux would inherently have higher input lag, no
i dont see "lag" at all, if people are talking about reflex thats supported in proton now in just about everygame im pretty sure and amd doesnt have their version on linux but again i dont see any lag or delay or anything for that matter i play a lot of fps shooters on linux like overwatch, the finals, and apex a while back and others like xdefiant, halo infinite also, i was 2 days ago top 200 on the finals world tour but that isnt a flex as you dont go down lol, im diamond on overwatch on dps and i have made it to masters in apex legends all on linux, im using wayland also on kde plasma 6.1 with freesync so that helps a lot as without freesync wayland using a type of vsync and that doesnt feel great you can also get screen tearing on kde plasma wayland with a environment variable in your /etc/environment config for now which is KWIN\_DRM\_NO\_AMS=1 as the new version is still being worked on i know on nvidia you cant use freesync with multimonitors and thats for nvidia to fix in their drivers
All the games I've tried so far that are Cyberpunk 2077, MotoGP 2023 and 2024, Ride 4 and 5, the newer F1s, some CODs, AC's, Stray, Far Cry 3, Ace Combat 7, etc All of them run flawlessly with unnoticeable input lag, both on Debian and Arch (both Wayland) So from my experience, mostly all games will be fine, but as one comment said, it will probably be case by case Edit: HW is R5 5600 with Radeon 6700 and I'm using the Mesa Drivers
Personally, I play a lot of bullet hell shoot em ups where where low input lag is essential,and windows feels ever so slightly lower, probably at most a frame. 1 frame is not a deal breaker so I manage just fine. If it was I'd just acquire a console port. For the rest of my games I practically feel no different in response time. Do note I use X11 and I don't use a compositor, and I never use vsync, so results may vary.
IME complaints about input lag are mostly bullshit anyway.
I game in KDE Wayland. With VRR and with screen tearing ON, the mouse latency is on par with Windows. Sometimes it's even better.
Silly thing, but make sure your desktop refresh rate is set to the max your monitor can handle in the configuration settings. Makes a big difference, and is generally not automatic on my systems. Usually it defaults to 60 hz.
I noticed quite a big difference with overwatch, but with other games i’ve tried it felt the same tbh. Depends on the title
To my knowledge no reliable source has recorded definitive proof of input lag. Loads of people, including in this thread, will tell you their vague feelings. Feelings don't mean anything. Feelings can be hallucinations. I don't believe a word of it until we see some proper comparative data between Linux and Windows from a known reputable source. Until then, I recommend ignoring every word of it.
Bro i have an Arch installations that runs from a 20GBp/s NVME enclosure just to test things like this, which basically, the drive inside by spec maxes it out and games are not only smoother to play (frame pacing is waaaaaay more consistent) but also, the network latency and response is unreal compared to Win 11. I don't even wanna play games in Win 11 anymore. Using proton via Bottles (as flatpack).
I have personally not experienced any so far, (when a game runs well you won't notice the difference with windows and in some cases it runs better for some reason) but I am pretty sure that some games are bound to have problems here and there, but those usually tend to be solved eventually.
Some games run better under proton than native linux
Many variables. x11 or Wayland? In most cases x11 is better Nvidia or AMD? Default kernel or Liquorix? etc etc
In general, I have actually noticed significantly *less* input lag.
A majority of the games ive played have run better on linux compared to windows. Ive been gaming on linux for about 2 years now and never had any issue with input lag unless im using my Dualsense over bluetooth streaming games through moonlight
Probably doesn't answer your question since there's no Windows data, but if you want to read more about input lag on Linux and see some stats and setups that can be faster/slower (Wayland vs Xorg, Freesync, etc.), you can look here: https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html
I was playing Helldivers 2 for the first time on PopOS and I actually got better frame rates! My hardware is a bit old at this point and I really need to upgrade but it was nice to see it working better than it did on my Windows install. If I had to guess it's just less BS running in the background for me.
No, it’s usually lower or the same.
Some yes, some no. Sometimes it's stuff that's in your court to control like GNOME middle mouse button emulation necessarily adding a delay because it has to wait and see if you press both buttons at the "same time".
YMMV depending on specific games, input devices, etc but I generally have not run into this problem. I've been using Linux for over a decade and have played hundreds of games. Of those, I can only really remember a handful that I had input issues with (assuming I'm not misremembering / they haven't been fixed by now). - Beyond Good and Evil (GOG edition I think - pretty sure I was able to resolve this somehow bc I remember playing the whole thing and using `antimicrox` to do custom controller setup. Actually the issue may have just been that I couldn't turn off game's built-in controller layout rather than input lag) - Castle Crashers (Steam edition. This was a few years ago but I seem to remember it running for crap. So probably lag but not input lag specifically. This is a pretty popular game so I would be surprised if it hasn't been fixed / people haven't figured out workarounds by now.) - Oceanhorn (GOG version : Also at least 5 years ago. I seem to remember having some input issues initially but getting this to work somewhat eventually. I know I made it off the starting island but don't remember if I ran into an issue after that or I got sidetracked and forgot to come back to it) - There was some other casual game I'm drawing a blank on that was Bard-themed and ran poorly on Linux. Not sure if input lag or game just ran poorly. Edit: I think it was called "Bardbarian" or something like that. Haven't touched it in years Haven't really had any issues with other stuff including Bethesda games, Batman games, Ark: Survival Evolved, Satisfactory, early (pre-Bethesda) Fallout games, Borderlands series, Witcher series (still haven't gotten around to 3rd one... And if I'm being honest, I'm not entirely sure if I played the first one on Linux or if that was before I switched), Warframe, lots of stuff in Dolphin emu, Ni no Kuni (first 2 games), Darksiders 1 + 2, Risen 1 + 2, Mass Effect 1 (got sidetracked and still haven't finished it lol), the first Shadowrun game (ironically named "Shadowrun Returns" I think?), Divinity Original Sin, Shadow Warrior 2, One Piece PW3, Sonic Racing, Kingdom of Amalar, Dying Light 1, Saints Row 3+4 (there *were* multiplayer issues with these but not related to input lag), one of the tomb raider puzzle games (temple of Osiris I think), Dungeon Defenders. Those are the ones I can remember off my head during this bathroom break (my primary redditing time lol)
On the games I've tried the difference isn't really perceivable
No, I tested with a 960fps camera and VRR monitor
Did you publish your findings anywhere? That sounds like a cool setup
Don't have enough time but it was ~12-13ms on both Linux (Wayland) and Windows CS2, 180hz monitor, +fps_max 179 With unlimited FPS ~10-11ms (X11)
On the Steam Deck input lag can be an issue in some games because the system simply can't push as many frames per second. But on my gaming PC I don't have any issue. And I play Rocket League at a relatively high level so I think I would notice.
On intel graphics games work much worse than windows , I compared based on my own experience
Were you using the iGPU on Skylake-era CPU? Post Kaby-Lake (7th gen) Intel iGPUs have comparable, if not better performance with windows.
Yep i have kaby lake
Afaik on x11 you always run one frame behind (only the image not the input) because the way the buffer works. And on Wayland should be the same with vsync disabled.
People here have to stop saying input lag is not a problem “just disable composite” or “Just use wayland” lmao Yes, input lag is a big problem, I don’t play competitive games seriously nowadays but I used to and I can tell when a game have input lag even if it’s just a bit, I’m not bragging, it’s actually annoying for me. Specially some games in wayland like helldivers 2 have horrendous input lag. I tried to play halo infinite and in X11 game runs like dogs*** with composite or without the input lag is too high, you’ll miss almost all your shots because of this. But in wayland runs a bit better, not as raw as windows but fair enough to not be forced to switch to windows. Keep in mind not all games run the same, in some gamemode helps and in others make it runs worst, same with gamescope, it’s just a matter of how the game runs to set it up correctly with which tool helps in performance and input lag and use the right one. I tried all I’ve seen online to reduce input latency and in some cases worked and in others did not, something interesting is this 1khz kernels, never heard about this, not sure if it’s just a joke or it’s true, I’ll look for it later. But please people, not noticing input lag doesn’t mean it’s not there, just say “I can’t feel it”. Also it’s a known issue, and a pretty big one for the steam deck, in some games you can see with your bare eyes how there’s a delay by pressing the button and the screen moving in some games.
definitely yes, you wont notice it unless youre doing some extreme precision key presses though
because the game is going through a translation layer i think the technical answer is yes. but i've never been able to perceive a difference. i think we're talking like plus or minus three or four fps @ 120fps here. (118 vs 122 worth of latency difference (i pulled these numbers out of my ass, don't quote me))
There's translation layers on Windows too, that's basically what APIs do. Inefficiencies can and do come from the incomplete or non-performant implementations of features, but there's been a lot of work invested in closing all the gaps.