What hardware will allow (without proprietary drivers) 144hz and/or 240hz on the desktop (in applications in general) on Linux? Many of the 144hz+ displays reviewed require drivers, it seems.
Thanks!
Displays donāt require drivers. I am running my Asus overclocked at 165 and even that just works.
I may have been mislead by some of the reviewsā¦ Have you done any testing to see if youāre getting 165fps in various apps?
Like what, like filebrowser and stuff? Applications, for the most part, have no say in at what refreshrate they are being rendered.
What exactly are you referring to?
Can you describe the issue that you have?
Also can you give hardware and software specs of whatās being in use on your side?
So long as you arenāt running mixed refresh rates on multiple monitors it seems to work ok on KDE from my testing. Gnome and other gtk based things have problems with higher refresh in my experience. I havenāt done much testing beyond those options to know what else might or might not work.
If you run other monitors at lower refresh then itās a bear to get that working and I would basically say donāt bother trying.
Iām running Kubuntu 19.04 with one 165Hz 1440p and one 60Hz 1080p monitor. Thing is when you disable compositing you get tearing on ānot the game screenā. Other than that, itās fine.
Screen tearing kinda defeats the purpose. Itās not a workable solution to me.
Have either of you tried frame rate tests like:
I donāt yet have the high refresh hardwareā¦ Iām doing research before purchasing 
What for?
Also, what distro and desktop environment are you running?
To verify, of course.
I donāt think distro should matter, but I run Arch w/ lightweight DEsā¦ One reason Iām asking is when looking at 144hz & 240hz display reviews on YouTube - many of them show you how to enable the higher refresh rate using some Windows software coupled with the display or GPUā¦
Verify? Like that itās actually running faster than 60? You donāt need a website for that, just drag a window around.
Well, ok. ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
You donāt need to on the stuff I have used so far.
Yes, thatās how I was verifying I was getting the full rate. In my case the browser had a hard time getting to the same rates as windows.
Interestingā¦ So there are some Windows drivers allowing for higher refresh rates - but are they GPU-specific drivers doing that?
Not quite. The difference is mainly in the browser. Across the board browsers in Linux are slower except for Firefox.
What makes you think that? With link if possible.
Do you mean adding a custom resolution with AMD/Nvidia drivers? You can do that with xrandr on Linux.
I run mixed refresh rates on my Linux Mint box and it kinda just worksā¢. CRT running at 100 Hz coexists with my 144 Hz LCD monitor; no tearing or other glitches that Iāve noticed. I used to have a 60 Hz LCD instead, that worked fine too.
The UFO tests donāt really work on Linux since Vsync isnāt supported in web browsers, apparently. I think thatās a Firefox/browser issue, not the drivers. So itās microstutter galore, but still no tearing I can see.
I have an AMD card on the older drivers (not AMDGPU), Cinnamon DE, Mutter/Muffin WM. Itās a normal multihead setup (I can drag windows from one monitor to the other, they arenāt independent). Lmk if you want me to test anything specific.
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Sad that in apps like browsers we get a smoother experience in KVM + Windows than on the Linux host!
Who gives a shit? Itās a browser.
It is not a specific one is better than the other because they are missing something. In General various Linux distros just wanted things to work acceptably first and work on the fancy stuff later so that may be why it is not always as fast as long as it works.
Like they would all do 60hz, and likely they all do whatever refresh rate you want just that it was not the primary focus to make sure they work at those high refresh rates because for a desktop it is largely irrelevant.
High refresh rates monitors are almost exclusively driven by games and up until recently that has not been a focus for Linux developers. Or to put it another way you donāt need 144/240hz for a command line.
All that said it should work fine today. There may be exceptions but where it matters it will work or there will be an alternative option that will support it.
I do, which is why I use chrome on Linux because 240hz works.
Buttery smooth.
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