[arch-general] [OT?] Which is most future-proof desktop environment?

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 30 Dec 2015 15:01:56 +0100, Maarten de Vries wrote:
>​Lack of compositing has nothing to do with rendering on CPU or GPU.
>Applications can still get an opengl context and render things.
>Compositing simply means that the applications wont be rendering to a
>directly visible buffer but to a buffer that is used by the
>compositor. That way it can add effects and eye candy.​ If anything,
>lack of compositing will increase performance by cutting out the
>middleman and having applications render directly to a visible buffer.

This explains why without compositing performance doesn't slow down and
that it could have a positive effect and not a negative one.

Compositing might cause xruns for audio signals or at least might
increase MIDI jitter. At best it doesn't affect audio and/or MIDI, but
if it affects audio and/or MIDI, then it would make it work worse. Each
additional interrupt could cause issues. If audio or MIDI signals are
delayed by a fixed time, that isn't too long, it's possible to adjust
this without causing an issue. If timing too much fluctuates randomly,
this could cause serious trouble. I suspect that CNC machines are more
prone to jitter, than MIDI is.