Compositor (X11)

If you use a DE with X11, then you probably have a compositor. The compositor does nice things like window shadow and effects. But it also reduces fps, adds input lag, and introduces stuttering. That's why you should disable it when running a game.

Disabling composition for your games

Disabling composition will dramatically improve input lag and "smoothness". Here is how to do it:

Gnome

This is the default DE on Pop!_OS.

You don't have to do anything. Gnome uses unredirection (the same thing Windows does), which is almost as good as disabling compositon. Disabling composition in Gnome is not possible.

KDE

• For Lutris:
  • To disable it for a single game: Right click the game -> Configure -> System options -> Disable desktop effects.
  • To disable it for all games: Click ... in the top right corner -> Preferences -> Global options -> Disable desktop effects
• For Steam, Heroic or others: Manually disable composition with shift + alt + f12 before launching the game. The same combination re-enables it. (TODO: It may be that Steam and Heroic automatically disable composition. But I don't know.)
• You can use Autocomposer. This should make it unnecessary to do anything of the above.
• If you want to use a terminal command (for example for automation, launch options for Steam, etc):
  • disable: qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor suspend
  • enable: qdbus org.kde.KWin /Compositor resume

Cinnamon

This page needs work, for the following reason(s): I don't know whether the procedure for disabling composition in Cinnamon actually works. In case this does not work, you should not be using Cinnamon. If you want a DE that looks a bit like Windows, you should choose KDE Plasma instead. Please edit if you know more.

Go to settings -> general -> disable compositing for full-screen window

Xfce:

• Disable composition with $ xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false
• Enable it again with $ xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s true
• For Steam: You can automate disabling/enabling with the launch option: xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s false; %command%; xfconf-query -c xfwm4 -p /general/use_compositing -s true