Xaver Hugl, a KDE KWin developer, writes about Wayland, explicit sync, HDR, color management, and compositor performance.
HN links it for explanations of Wayland graphics work, such as explicit sync fixing Nvidia issues and KWin performance on old hardware.
I'm not an expert on the wayland/xorg/xinput/gnome-shell stack, but unless someone smarter takes good measurements of various things (visual and input delays), I'd suggest
1). Xorg + gnome-flashback or Xorg + other non-compositing WM
or
2). Non-gnome compositor under wayland
As for 1).
Xorg b/c it can provide pointer movements at ~native speed via xnput vs Gnome/Wayland 60-240Hz. And gnome-flashback b/c it's a non-compositing WM, so there's no frame buffering (unless you enable it in nvidia's panel, or via TearFree in amdgpu).
As for 2).
Sway, I suppose, doesn't aggregate mouse movements, but
looking at https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html the author used some hack to enable "immediate" "drawing" under KWin. I'm not sure what's the default behavior of e.g. Sway - does it buffer frames?
IMHO having a good desktop linux distro (or a proper desktop linux experience) doesn't have to correlate to a gold mine, and I'm not sure why the author conflates the two.
If the linux desktop space is advancing so slowly is precisely and because of the opposite: because desktop linux is made and maintained by a bunch of people who do it for free.
Alas, valve has done a pretty good job with proton and steamdeck which is helping the ecosystem. here's to hoping wayland and nvidia drivers 555 with explicit sync[1] we might get something decent next few months.
https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync.html
It flies on my new AMD 7800X3D custom build!
Fedora 40/Wayland worked beautifully out-of-the-box with buttery smooth DE animations which unfortunately started flickering after installing NVidia's proprietary drivers which should be fixed with explicit sync [1] in NVidia's latest 560 drivers which is now available in KDE Plasma 6.1 update, hopefully it'll be available for Gnome in a system update soon - looking forward to running Wayland again.
[1] https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2024/04/05/explicit-sync.html
Wayland doesn't actually add an additional frame of latency like you'd expect by just saying "vsync" in a normal context. https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html
In cases where your game occasionally dips below 240hz enabling VRR will prevent additional latency without requiring you introduce tearing in the display pipeline.
You are basing your conclusions on a single blogpost. Measurements from other people show that X11 wins in some cases, Wayland wins in other cases, there isn't a clear winner.
https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html
It seems your subjective feeling is not reflected in measurements. At least for kwin wayland is as fast as uncomposited x11
https://zamundaaa.github.io/wayland/2021/12/14/about-gaming-on-wayland.html