In short, LXDE was the measured as the fastest desktop environment for gaming, while XFCE with compositor disabled came in second fastest out of the ones tested. If you need the maximum performance XFCE may be a good compromise between looks vs performance. You can use the “Disable desktop effects” option in Lutris which may reduce the overhead of the desktop environment further.
any idea how this would compare to starting steam directly from a display manager using gamescope as the compositor?
Futex2, often referred to interchangeably with fsync, did make it to Linux kernel 5.16 as futex_waitv, but the original implementation of fsync isn’t that. Fsync used futex_wait_multiple, and Futex2 used futex_waitv. Applications such as Lutris still refer to it as Fsync, though. It’s still kind of fsync, but it’s not the original fsync.
So since Jan 2022, it’s been in the stable Linux kernel. For Debian and its derivatives, it would be included beginning with Bookworm.
From what I found online, Steam enables esync by default, and fsync if your kernel supports it.
Lutris has both options nowadays in the runner settings. Idk if they’re both enabled by default, but in my case they’re enabled. ymmv there.
source
any idea how this would compare to starting steam directly from a display manager using gamescope as the compositor?
I’m imagine gamescope is the best-case, since there’s no other apps or visual effects.
What are the kernel requirements? Is it something any random Debian user is likely to have, or do you need to be compiling it yourself?
From the article:
So since Jan 2022, it’s been in the stable Linux kernel. For Debian and its derivatives, it would be included beginning with Bookworm.
So basically, both esync and fsync are enabled by default for almost everybody.
Assuming that most non-technical users (who wouldn’t research and enable it) are probably using Wine/Proton through Steam: yeah.