Question to help me increase my understanding on what’s going on in the Linux desktop stack. I’ve heard Gnome doesn’t support VRR while KDE does.
Why does this matter, isn’t Wayland or X11 the one that would ultimately need to support VRR? Basically when running a game that I want to use VRR with, why does it matter what my desktop environment is doing?
So it’s less the Gnome doesn’t support VRR and more that “the wayland compatible desktop compositor that the Gnome project prefers doesn’t support VRR”?
Which is basically the same thing. Gnome uses Mutter, which is a part of the Gnome project as a whole.
Wayland changes things a fair bit compared to Xorg. There’s no standard Wayland server, each DE implements their own to suit their needs. Some libraries have emerged to help with that, it’s relatively easy to get going with wlroots which Sway/Hyprland/Gamescope uses. But Gnome makes their own and so does KDE so it can integrate more deeply with the DE.
There’s non-desktop compositors too, like for VR for example where you can manage your windows in 3D space all around you. That’s where Wayland shines, that gets super complicated to do in Xorg but a breeze with Wayland.