Made a new install for gaming with Devuan excalibur (based on trixie)
built a custom kernel for gaming with 6.19 libre-linux from fsfla
I’ve never in my experience had any issues like this before, I used the custom kernel for awhile with nouveau while configuring the system initially, and everything was working perfectly, so that leads me to recognize there is a serious problem with the nvidia 590/580 driver in particular.
I first tried installing the 590.48.01 driver which seemed to work without issues, but after using the system for a few minutes, windows started flickering repeatedly, and there were such significant latency issues, that the system basically was unusable.
and it again installed without issues, and started presenting the same issues, with windows flickering repeatedly, blacking out, and reappearing, with latency issues, that were slightly less dramatic than they were with the 590 driver.
I tried turning the driver into “performance mode” and that helped the latency issues a little bit.
I think based on my experience it has to be an issue with the driver itself. I’m going to try reinstalling the 575 driver later today and see if that changes the situation, or it may be the case that there is some conflicting configuration besides that.
(i just noticed 575 isn’t offered any more on the current graphics driver release page, but luckily I keep a copy of it on external storage, I imagine that will fix the issues)
so now i’ve tested things a bit, and narrowed down the problem to the compositor.
in the past i’ve had these exact same issues with the wayland display server, now in debian/ubuntu as well as different desktop environments more wayland stuff is creeping in
for devuan excalibur, based on trixie, wayland is installed, but disabled by default, so the issues were present with xorg and the latest xfce 4.20 which I think has wayland support being built into it.
I tried downgrading to the 575 driver, but it wont install with the latest 6.19 kernel either, so now my options are to either
A) use the 6.19 kernel with the 580/590 nvidia driver with compositing disabled (on xorg)
or
B) downgrade the kernel to < 6.16 to enable compositing with the 575 driver, the combination I was just using previously (idk the exact kernel version numbers the 575 driver will work with)
actually I want to go back to the 6.12 kernel, which was the first release that included the RT support, and in that version I actually was playing around with real time scheduling on FPS games, and having a ton of fun. After 6.12 it didn’t work the same way, and I couldn’t reproduce it.
But now, we have Ntsync, included in the 6.19 kernel, which was just recently added. It has to be configured to build it, from device drivers→misc drivers→Ntsync (in make menuconfig)
so I’m torn between these two things now personally, having used ntsync in the past, from patching the kernel, I absolutely want to use that again, and having gotten RT scheduling to work on FPS games with the 6.12 kernel, I absolutely want to use that as well.
basically, for linux gamers, these are some of the key issues for us, we absolutely don’t want wayland which is like a huge performance regression, so using xorg is the obvious first choice.
and now apparently, with more wayland support being built into different areas, there are some serious issues, even though we still choose to use xorg
basically the problem has nothing to do with the kernel, but with the nvidia driver, the display server, and the desktop environment. I imagine I can actually downgrade to debian bookworm (daedalus) which comes with a lower version of the xfce desktop environment without all the wayland stuff built in by default yet, then use whatever kernel and nvidia driver (that will work with it) I want, but then I wouldn’t have all the latest packages. So this is a serious issue still, and it’s really sad to me, that all this wayland stuff is being forced onto people, for those of us with nvidia cards that has been a gamebreaking issue for many years.
It would be helpful if the drivers were independent of the kernel version number, and if we could actually know in advance which driver versions will work with which kernel versions.
The XFCE desktop blinking issue is being tracked on an internal bug - 5758240. We can reproduce the issue and it is under investigation.
[EDIT - Unfortunately, the only work around to avoid this issue on 580.119.02 is to disable compositing under Settings → Window Manager Tweaks → Compositor → Enable display compositing. We are actively working on fixing this issue.]
Thank you”
So to fix the problem for users, presumeably, of the latest XFCE 4.20, which comes with the latest debian/ubuntu versions + derivatives (trixie, noble, ect) combined with the latest Nvidia drivers, 580+
we can turn off the vblank mode in xfwm to fix the issue like this
That fixes the problems completely, but then we get an ugly blue title bar in all applications, so now, I’m looking at downgrading the distribution completely, (going back to daedalus/bookworm)
This is, frankly, a totally ridiculous situation, that we shouldn’t have to deal with, but these new changes from upstream, that are pushed out onto countless users, clearly undergo little to no meaningful testing, and this is what we are forced to do as a result on Gnu/Linux
aka down grading devuan excalibur to devuan daedalus(bookworm)) and just pulling in the newer packages I want to use, like the kernel/nvidia driver manually, because upstream is yet again pushing completely broken, untested components on the rest of us
so again to recap, the issue is between nvidia driver 580+ and xfce 4.20+ which has wayland stuff being built into it, and is a severe issue that makes using the OS impossible.
the only solutions are either
A) Downgrade the OS, to a version with an older xfce desktop environment, such as bookworm/daedaulus and presumeably jammy (which I’m about to try now)
or
B) install a kernel equal to or lesser than version 6.16 which I know from experience will work with the 575 driver, and likely present no issues (im not sure, again, which exact kernel versions will work with which nvidia driver)
So as a gamer, on linux, and from the perspective of a gamer on linux, who also wants to get the most in terms of performance from the OS, and Nvidia, I am opting to first attempt to downgrade the desktop environment, and then manually pulling in the latest packages like the kernel/nvidia driver, wine, ect
So now I’ve reinstalled devuan deadalus (based on bookworm) which comes with XFCE 4.18(that was released in dec 2022)
and reinstalled the 6.19 kernel, and the latest 590 nvidia driver, and the exact same issues are present. (window flickering, blacking out, reappearing, input latency, screen flashing)
this means, that this problem in particular is really based on the nvidia driver, and reportedly
“from what i observed:
The regression seems to occur for all GPUs supported by the drivers.
The regression started in driver version: 580.119.02
Driver version: 580.105.08 is a safe option to use.
The regression is present and unchanged in the 590 beta drivers.”
So luckily I had an older version of the 580 driver, and tried installing that with the 6.19 kernel, but apparently it’s too old and incompatible, so it wouldn’t install. It’s hard to believe there haven’t been more complaints about this, but I guess it’s because of the fact, that the problem is actually rooted in the nvidia driver itself since reportedly version 580.119.02
So the solutions appear to be, to use a different desktop environment, and really they all suck, or to use an older kernel, that will work with an older nvidia driver, which is probably actually the best option
For me personally, having done gaming with nvidia/linux for many years now, every time there is an upgrade in the system, 95% of the time, it is a serious performance regression, that makes the system less enjoyable to use. Rarely we get new additions 5% of the time, that improve gaming performance, and make the system more enjoyable to use. So for me, the solution to achieving greater performance with nvidia/linux for years, has been to simply downgrade, and attempt to use older versions of software, which perform extremely well on modern hardware.
Now it looks like xfce has even been infected with the wayland/rust virus, and has become totally broken with nvidia, and I am super pissed about it. There is literally nothing better than xorg/xfce for linux, and gaming on linux. These are simply the best, and combined with nvidia. xfce is both modern and rock solid stable, unlike gnome/kde, and can literally run 24/7 without issues, (for years) apparently, until nvidia reached driver version 580.119.02
so now, I don’t know what I will do, but I am super pissed at all of these projects for breaking our systems, with literally every single major update, over the last 5 years since I’ve been using my RTX card combined with linux, whether it’s the desktop environment, the service manager, the kernel, or the driver, every single major update introduces major breakages, and huge performance regressions, huge performance regressions for computers btw, need only take place in the milliseconds, with gaming equipment, and high refresh rate monitors, it’s hugely noticeable, and annoying.