On AMD hardware, VRR works fine on xorg and has for quite a long while now... so long as you have either a single active monitor (or maybe the restriction is just "don't have any active non-VRR monitors"). [0] I don't have Intel or Nvidia hardware so I can't test, but the Arch wiki says that they both work fine with VRR. [1]
The only Wayland feature that I've heard be commonly touted that xorg lacks is HDR support.
[0] I don't know which is it because I haven't bothered to go out and buy a second VRR-capable monitor.
Are you doing that with xorg or Wayland? If with xorg, have you verified that VRR is working? [0] If you've verified it, how'd you make it work? It'd be quite nice to have both multi-monitor and VRR... unless I have to make some terrible tradeoff to make it happen.
[0] My go-to is using the "scrolling bars" mode of this LÖVE program [1] to make judder at update rates that aren't an -er- even fraction of the screen's refresh rate pretty easy to spot... but if you have something that works for you, that's good.
I would never, ever, ever, use X in 2026 for general use. There would have to be some kind of niche and important business reason.
X, for all the teeth gnashing, is effectively a virtually dead, and virtually unsupported technology at this point. There are some small pockets here and there of people that really want or need it, and a few of those people are also working on tweaks and patches, but it's a tiny handful compared to the people and money and companies working on or with Wayland at this point. I know some people here are very upset about that.
Years and years ago Wayland sucked ass. Now? Performance and stability have been great on modern distros with modern kernels and GPUs. If performance was substantially worse or more clumsy to use with Wayland vs X, then I'd certainly be using X, but that's just not the case for me in 2026.
Comments
You're way behind.
Wayland is fine. Wayland + VRR is even better.
XWayland otoh is quite bad.
https://marco-nett.de/blog/measuring-input-latency-on-linux-...
On AMD hardware, VRR works fine on xorg and has for quite a long while now... so long as you have either a single active monitor (or maybe the restriction is just "don't have any active non-VRR monitors"). [0] I don't have Intel or Nvidia hardware so I can't test, but the Arch wiki says that they both work fine with VRR. [1]
The only Wayland feature that I've heard be commonly touted that xorg lacks is HDR support.
[0] I don't know which is it because I haven't bothered to go out and buy a second VRR-capable monitor.
[1] <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php?title=Variable_refresh_...>
I am running Fedora 44 with a mix of monitors using vrr and and no vrr on AMD 9060 XT with mixed refresh rates. No issues.
Ooh!
Are you doing that with xorg or Wayland? If with xorg, have you verified that VRR is working? [0] If you've verified it, how'd you make it work? It'd be quite nice to have both multi-monitor and VRR... unless I have to make some terrible tradeoff to make it happen.
[0] My go-to is using the "scrolling bars" mode of this LÖVE program [1] to make judder at update rates that aren't an -er- even fraction of the screen's refresh rate pretty easy to spot... but if you have something that works for you, that's good.
[1] <https://github.com/Nixola/VRRTest/releases/tag/v2.0.0>
Wayland, X was removed long ago.
I game on this rig with proton.
I would never, ever, ever, use X in 2026 for general use. There would have to be some kind of niche and important business reason.
X, for all the teeth gnashing, is effectively a virtually dead, and virtually unsupported technology at this point. There are some small pockets here and there of people that really want or need it, and a few of those people are also working on tweaks and patches, but it's a tiny handful compared to the people and money and companies working on or with Wayland at this point. I know some people here are very upset about that.
Years and years ago Wayland sucked ass. Now? Performance and stability have been great on modern distros with modern kernels and GPUs. If performance was substantially worse or more clumsy to use with Wayland vs X, then I'd certainly be using X, but that's just not the case for me in 2026.