I moved to KDE for better gaming support, but I really dislike the condensed look of everything in the settings app, discover, and most of all in Dolphin.

Are there any discrete, simple, clean themes that have more padding ? I like how GNOME looks but I really dislike their slow development for gaming related stuff.

  • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
    31·
    8 months ago

    better gaming support

    Just curious what you mean by that?

      • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
        33·
        8 months ago

        What does VRR have to do with KDE? Or HDR?

        • warmaster@lemmy.worldOP
          121·
          8 months ago

          DEs ship their own Wayland compositors. Kwin for KDE and Mutter for GNOME. Both have different capabilities. Kwin has support for VRR & HDR, and better color management. KDE Plasma has GUIs to visually configure them. GNOME has almost no support for this, either on the compositor and/or the GUI.

          X11 had it’s own compositor, the X.Org server. Things changed.

          • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
            2·
            8 months ago

            Wayland compositors

            As I understand it, functionality like VRR is provided by the DRM driver in the kernel, not the compositor. Hence my question.

              • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
                11·
                8 months ago

                It’s not like games talk to the kernel and GPU driver directly to get graphical output

                LOL that’s exactly what they do.

                there’s a desktop environment they need to take into account

                They do not need to take the desktop environment into account. They ask for a window and they render into it. They’ll ask for a window using either the OpenGL or Vulcan API. Both those APIs abstract the windowing system away, the desktop is entirely irrelevant. Under Wayland, the compositor requests a buffer from the kernel, provides it to the game and then manages where on the desktop that buffer is rendered. The game’s rendering is done directly (talking to the kernel and GPU driver) without going anywhere near either the compositor or the desktop environment.

                The desktop environment means nothing when it comes to gaming. Except in so far as it may provide a GUI to configure aspects of the system that would otherwise be configured on the comand line or, for example by interacting with /sys.

                This is why I asked what OP meant when they said KDE “supports” gaming better. Seems ridiculous. The desktop environment is not involved in game rendering. It has no impact. I’m mystified as to why people think it does.

                  • rah@feddit.ukEnglish
                    11·
                    8 months ago

                    The render surface [is] handed out by the compositor

                    That’s what I said. You’re repeating what I said back to me.

                • leopold@lemmy.kde.socialEnglish
                  1·
                  8 months ago

                  There is no HDR protocol for Wayland, so Wayland compositors cannot display HDR content. X11 also does not have HDR support, so window managers can’t do it either. Games don’t draw their own windows. If the compositor doesn’t support HDR, the game isn’t gonna be displayed in HDR. If the compositor doesn’t support VRR, then VRR is also not going to work. Plasma 6 implements a custom Wayland HDR protocol which is also implemented by the Steam Deck. This allows it to display HDR content. It has also had VRR support for a few years. GNOME is waiting for the official HDR protocol for Wayland to be complete before implementing support, so it doesn’t have it. It also didn’t have VRR until relatively recently.

                  If you don’t believe this, then can you explain why Plasma devs have been advertising HDR support as one of Plasma 6’s killer features? Can you explain the purpose of this recently merged VRR merge request for Mutter? What is the purpose of this merge request for a color management/HDR Wayland protocol which has been in the works for years? If compositors have no involvement in HDR or VRR, then why are their developers working their asses off to make it work? And most importantly, can you show me HDR on Linux working in GNOME? Or Cinnamon? Or anything that’s not Plasma or Gamescope?

                • zwekihoyy@lemmy.ml
                  21·
                  8 months ago

                  you’re explanation makes sense and yet, gaming still works better on kde. it’s a known reality.

            • Codilingus@sh.itjust.works
              51·
              8 months ago

              Lmao, I don’t know how else to word this? Here we go…

              It is the case that OP wants to use features such as VRR, and HDR. It is also the case that gnome supports neither. And also the case that KDE now has official support for both VRR, and HDR. Thus, OP has made the choice to use KDE, because it suits his gaming needs.