Jesus, we’re still arguing about the merit of desktop composition after all these years?
Do yourself a favor and try comparing the responsiveness and resource usage of, e.g., KDE Plasma with desktop composition off vs on. You’ll probably be really shocked when you see how much more CPU you need to do something as simple as scrolling a browser window.
Really, try it. Any browser, scroll around on something and look at your CPU usage and the framerate of your screen.
Or image editing — try panning around an image. Doesn’t matter what editor/viewer either, since they all have to draw on your X server.
Even just moving windows around on top of one another — everything is just so much more efficient when you offload it to a hardware accelerator.
Does it use more RAM? Yeah, a little, because the way it works is by keeping the entire contents of the windows in memory rather than culling anything that’s not exposed in front. It’s definitely not 500 MB more, though, and it definitely can (and does) take advantage of any dedicated VRAM available.
And the trade off of being able to just dump a framebuffer to the viewport instead of repeatedly computing what’s been culled 60+ times a second is definitely worth it to me, but if you still prefer not using acceleration, there’s always the option to just not use it.
I didn't really see the previous poster mention desktop composition at all?
What I have seen is many computers that seem to spend more time calculating various animations than actually animating stuff. When I worked in a computer shop years ago I often turned off animations and transparencies for people who came in with slow computers (XP, Vista, 7) and they were generally happy with the speed-up and didn't mind the lesser visuals at all.
Every window looks perfect all the time, and it doesn't matter if a program is busy.
Without composition, each program repaints itself. Which means there's an appreciable lag, and if the program is stuck you can get a blank box if a previously covered program is uncovered. This can be an annoyance if you need to read something from there.
Eg, an actual example is a program being blocked by a modal dialog stops being repainted. If the dialog asks you "Enter a password" and the what for is written on the no longer repainting parent you may have a problem.
Do yourself a favor and try comparing the responsiveness and resource usage of, e.g., KDE Plasma with desktop composition off vs on. You’ll probably be really shocked when you see how much more CPU you need to do something as simple as scrolling a browser window.
Really, try it. Any browser, scroll around on something and look at your CPU usage and the framerate of your screen.
Or image editing — try panning around an image. Doesn’t matter what editor/viewer either, since they all have to draw on your X server.
Even just moving windows around on top of one another — everything is just so much more efficient when you offload it to a hardware accelerator.
Does it use more RAM? Yeah, a little, because the way it works is by keeping the entire contents of the windows in memory rather than culling anything that’s not exposed in front. It’s definitely not 500 MB more, though, and it definitely can (and does) take advantage of any dedicated VRAM available.
And the trade off of being able to just dump a framebuffer to the viewport instead of repeatedly computing what’s been culled 60+ times a second is definitely worth it to me, but if you still prefer not using acceleration, there’s always the option to just not use it.