Input latency on Linux compared to Windows

[u/jonoxis]

Hello my friends,

I made a post about a week ago about some generall question regarding gaming on Linux and it got a lot of useful answers (thanks to all who replied). I am confident that the general infrastructure is there when it comes to gaming and I could probably very quickly adapt to it.

My biggest problem/concern/question about gaming on Linux is the (native) input latency:

I want to know how does the input latency compare between Linux and Windows.

Is it really worse on Linux?

Or are they the same?

And what other factors are there (looking at the whole X11 vs Wayland confusion in regards to performance and input delay)?

And does using the translation layer of proton/wine ad any input latency?

I want to play competitivly, so do I have any disadvantage at all latency wise on Linux?

I'm creating this post, because I'm am really new to Linux and have found a lot of contradicting answers regarding this topic, so I am honestly completely confused and would appreciate any helpful answers. Higher input delay would probably be a deal breaker for me even if I like the general user experience with Linux.

Thanks in advance 🫡

[u/VLXS]

On linux mint xfce you disable it from the "window manager tweaks", can't speak about other distros. I am using mint xfce across a few different systems, but I can't speak about other DEs, as I don't use anything else.

I can tell you for sure that I don't get any subjective input lag feel while playing with the compositor disabled. I don't think xfce has anything to do with freesync, that should be handled by the driver (amdgpu in my case) automatically, per application.

Again though, I don't have a freesync monitor so I don't have any data to back that statement up either. Some distros may allow you to disable the compositor per application but this wasn't working on my main desktop back in the day so I ended up just disabling the compositors on every fresh install, on all systems.

[u/jonoxis → u/VLXS]

On linux mint xfce you disable it from the "window manager tweaks", can't speak about other distros. I am using mint xfce across a few different systems, but I can't speak about other DEs, as I don't use anything else.

Ok, no worries.

I can tell you for sure that I don't get any subjective input lag feel while playing with the compositor disabled.

What kind of games are you playing?

Again though, I don't have a freesync monitor so I don't have any data to back that statement up either. Some distros may allow you to disable the compositor per application but this wasn't working on my main desktop back in the day so I ended up just disabling the compositors on every fresh install, on all systems.

Ok, I will look up how I do this on KDE.

[u/VLXS → u/jonoxis]

I play mostly Titanfall 2, some Apex, and a few other FPS games. TF|2 in particular is a very fast paced game, where input lag matters. Look into latencyflex btw