Desktop stutter if some fullscreen apps are out of focus.
Affected version
- Fedora Linux 38.20231023.0 (Silverblue)
- 44.5
- Wayland
Bug summary
While playing some video games, Alt-Tabbing out of the instance will cause the whole desktop to stutter. This issue persists in screencasting apps such as OBS, where if the preview of any window within the desktop is open, whether it be the game or not, will cause the whole desktop to stutter. The issue doesn't seem to affect audio, but it affects user input and app responsiveness throughout the desktop.
Note that this issue doesn't seem to be affecting all games. In my experience it's only affected Halo: MCC, Final Fantasy XIV and Borderlands 3. Making these games windowed will also cause the desktop to stutter, as well as the game itself. Having the game set to Borderless Fullscreen or Fullscreen will let the game run okay, but the Alt-Tabbing and screencasting issue persist.
In FFXIV specifically, if any app draws an element on top of the game window, the desktop will stutter until the pop-up is gone. For example, Steam friends notifications or GNOME desktop "nag" pop-ups. I imagine this is due to FFXIV being run outside of Steam with XIVLauncher.
Steps to reproduce
- Open FFXIV, Halo: MCC or Borderlands 3.
- Alt-Tab out of the game while it's running, alternatively if playing FFXIV through XIVLauncher, wait until a Steam friend notification pops up.
- The whole desktop will stutter and become unresponsive until the pop-up goes away, or the game has focus again.
What did you expect to happen
Other games haven't shown this issue, Alt-Tabbing in and out as well as screencasting works perfectly. Whether the games were DXVK, VKD3D, native Vulkan or OpenGL. It only seems to affect a few games.
Relevant logs, screenshots, screencasts etc.
The following video shows the stutter. I have zoomed in the system usage to display the erratic behavior. Note that MangoHud refuses to give an FPS number, and the GPU and CPU usage are very low.
This video of Borderlands 2 shows the expected Alt-Tab/Screencast behavior. Notice the smooth recording despite high CPU and GPU utilization. This indicates to me that it's not a driver issue, however, I can obviously be wrong on that assumption.