Unresponsive windows and tearing on gnome-shell 3.38
Distro: Pop!_OS 20.04
Linux Kernel: 5.11.0-7614-generic
Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 (with a single 144hz monitor)
Gnome-shell: 3.38.3 (X11)
The windows on Gnome 3 are extremely unresponsive on high refresh rate monitors.
I've seen this issue online several times-including gitlab.gnome.org on issue #818 and people have been trying tweaks including:
- Disabling gnome extensions
- Setting the graphics driver to performance mode
- Adding
CLUTTER_DEFAULT_FPS=144
and__GL_SYNC_DISPLAY_DEVICE=DP-2
to file /etc/environment - Disabling
Allow Flipping
on Nvidia X Server settings
none of which has worked for me.
I have switched from Windows 10 a while ago and even though I use the same exact hardware, window movement on Windows is significantly smoother. The problems I experienced with Gnome windows are:
- More imprecise movement compared to Windows.
- The windows stutter/lag (@thephpdev on askubuntu with the same problem explains this as follows: "the mouse cursor often overtakes the window and window follows behind."
- Even though I have configured my system to work on 144hz, the windows certainly don't move as smooth as 144hz on Windows. For comparison, 144hz on Gnome felt similar to 60hz on Windows.
- Tearing Other than window movement, the cursor movement is more choppy compared to Windows but I think this is also related to the issue so if there is a fix to the window movement, it will (probably) fix the cursor issue too.
Also, an issue worth mentioning is tearing. I experience an unacceptable amount of tearing on Gnome - and by that I mean a significant amount of tearing. This is most noticeable when moving windows and watching videos. Again, as compared to Windows, considering the same hardware is used, I didn't expect there to be this much of a difference. I've been trying to fix this for a long time and I ended up on GitLab issues, I still love using Gnome even though this is a major drawback.
One last thing to mention is that even though I'm not sure if any changes have been made to Gnome 40 addressing these issues, I haven't tried it yet. However, I am planning to try it out once Pop!_OS 21.04 is released and I might completely switch to Gnome 40 if this issue is fixed.