No Desktop is really ready for Ultrawide
2024.08.27 - UPDATE: Wayfire in version 0.9.0 has a new feature called "remove_output_limits = true" in "workarounds". It makes (with a lot of windowrules and a script/tool that uses Wayfire's IPC-API for sizing and moving and gamescope) ultrawide gaming possible !BUT! it is very buggy and will probably stay that way. The desktop is not designed for unified displays and that will not change! Very large windows are no issue but over multiple displays with that feature turned on not are! I wasted about 5 hours on it (at least I have a good, usable and uptodate dot.file config for that desktop now :D). Love the desktop, hate the non unified displays. If you are wondering about performance and more; The workaround costs about 30fps compared to hyprland and crashes very often.
2024.03.26 - UPDATE: The last version of gamescope that works well with this is 3.14.0-1.2 and older. There was a change in newer versions that breaks high resolutions. This has already been fixed in a newer commit, but until it is upstreamed you will need to downgrade your gamescope version. For a while after the fix was upstream, there was a very bad stutter issue with DirectX with some resolutions, but that is also fixed at least since version 3.15.0-1.1.
I have tried several desktops. From KDE to Tilling WM's like Sway and even other OS's like MacOS. None of them can really handle ultrawide all that well. What I mainly mean is the window-performance.
As soon as you run a very large multi-screen window, a 4K resolution game, or even just a game set to an ultra-wide resolution, the whole desktop becomes very slow or laggy. Obviously, a very high performance task would slow down the system even more if you put the hardware under even more strain with ultra-wide and/or multiple screens. This is not a rant or anything, just a way of documenting my experience of how different desktops and operating systems handle this kind of workload. And yes, I tried MacOS and even Windows and no, they were not much better. All resources used are listed in the Sources section.
I used a system with an high end AMD-CPU and AMD-GPU.
My results with gaming in ultrawide/very high resolution on different desktops (Sorted by best results, Unless otherwise stated, using Wayland on Linux):
Structure: DEKTOP/OS - RESULT [HOW IT WAS DONE]
- Hyprland/LINUX - Does a great job, but some games slow down the desktop (even in "performance mode" (disabling all effects), which slows down the desktop's fps output, making the game look laggy). Another issue is that since version 29.1, multi-display windows have problems with click detection on the left screen when using gamescope [gamescope and window moving/sizing commands with hyprctl can at least fix that most of the time: gamemoderun gamescope -h 1440 -w 4720 -H 1440 -W 4720 -b -r 165 %command%].
- Sway/LINUX - Works pretty well, but sometimes has the same slowdown problems as Hyprland, but only 1/3 as often. Not bad at all! [Gamescope and Keybinds (floating enable, resize set XXXX XXXX, move absolute position X XXX)]
- Enlightenment/LINUX - Suprisingly good! Unfortunately, the desktop tends to get unstable on Wayland when forcing resolutions and window sizes with keybinds. [Forcing resolution and window size with keybinds]
- KDE/LINUX - Bad, BUT the game runs smoothly no matter how much KDE lags, but in some cases the desktop becomes unusable if you want to do more than just play at the same time. [My plugin to move and resize windows]
- Wayfire/LINUX - Only works with "remove_output_limits = true" in "workarounds". Unstable and slow. BUT!!! if you have only one ultra-wide display you play on it is one of the best if no the best desktop for you (YOU DON'T NEED "remove_output_limits = true" IN "workarounds")!
- Windows/Windows - Sometimes the desktop can get really laggy, but it is still usable. Very VERY unreliable compared to any Linux desktop, and game performance is often bad for no good reason when forced into a multi-display-window [A mixture between bordelss window and SRWE]
- MacOS/MacOS - Fullscreen works fine. Multi-display windows are hard to force games into and work as unreliable as in Windows
- GNOME/LINUX - Unusable unless you play in full screen and do NOT tab out of it. [Kinda Fullscreen]
- XFCE/LINUX - Bad [Fullscreen (Multi-display is not easily possible, and if you force it, the desktop gets really slow/unstable. More an Xorg issue then a XFCE)]
Sources: