The four month old KWin merge request by Xaver Hugl to allow for triple buffering has been merged and just in time for the Plasma 6.1 code branching!

Back in December a merge request was opened against Kwin for [1]allowing dynamic triple buffering akin to the long in-development but used on Ubuntu [2]GNOME dynamic triple buffering . Xaver explained in that merge request:

"When it takes more than one refresh cycle to render a frame, which isn't unheard of with weak integrated GPUs, KWin starts compositing immediately and we may or may not hit the vblank deadline. If it's missed, then the buffer takes a whole refresh cycle of the display to be used, which means the refresh rate drops to half of what it should be - resulting in a less smooth appearance and increased latency.

With this MR, KWin schedules frames so that they can always hit the vblank deadline, and allows a maximum of two frames to be pending at the same time. This means that if the GPU can't keep up, latency will be increased just as much as is needed instead of almost one entire additional frame of latency and the halved refresh rate."

Immediately prior to the Plasma 6.1 branching, it was [3]merged .

Plasma 6.1 is expected to be out in June with this dynamic triple buffering and many other refinements to the Plasma 6 desktop.



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/KDE-KWin-Triple-Buffering-MR

[2] https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-Triple-Buffering-Ready

[3] https://invent.kde.org/plasma/kwin/-/merge_requests/4833