Linux operates more slowly when entering or exiting fullscreen in any application.
Linux operates more slowly when entering or exiting fullscreen in any application.
You're experiencing performance problems when switching between normal and fullscreen on your laptop. The system freezes briefly after entering fullscreen, even though it works normally otherwise. This issue started after a recent reboot and seems to worsen over time. You're using Arch Linux with GNOME on X11, running the latest NVIDIA drivers, and it's affecting applications like YouTube, browsers, and remote desktop. The machine has a high-end GPU (Clevo X170SM-G) and is running at 10.9 GHz with an RTX 2080S. It's challenging to locate specific solutions since most reports focus on stutters in fullscreen, but your case is different.
X11 is mostly in maintenance, except for Xwayland which RedHat handles. The X11 Session file will be removed in March and X11 will be fully retired by year-end. Chromium doesn’t support hardware video acceleration on Wayland and it doesn’t work well with X11. Firefox does support it, especially in Wayland mode, and you need to set MOZ_ENABLE_WAYLAND=1 in /etc/environment. Ensure you follow the tips for preserving video memory after suspending your system.
Thanks for the update. I switched back to Wayland to check if I can resolve the problems I've encountered. I don't use Chromium, but I do use Freetube which is built on Chromium. Applying the specified flags seems to help (though hardware acceleration still shows as unavailable: OBS doesn't launch, and I'm unsure what's wrong). gSnap appears to be unstable with Wayland—functioning briefly for a short time before crashing randomly, requiring manual snap profile assignments. But it might fix the fullscreen issues. / Edited January 9, 2024 by Mnky313
I did completely forget something when mentioning hardware video acceleration. It depends on vaapi support, something nvidia doesn't actually support. There is a community maintained translation layer called nvidia-vaapi-driver , however there is a note on the Arch Wiki https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Hardwar...ion_layers
Addressing this now that I've fixed it. Even on Wayland with Arch on my Arch system, the same problems persisted (less consistent than before). I switched back to Debian for my main setup since the goal was to enhance my Z13 experience. Although Arch recommended it for better performance, it didn’t significantly improve things except for the trackpad (which kept misbehaving) and the keyboard backlight (switched from off to always on). Under Debian with Kernel 6.1, I faced unpredictable behavior—sometimes working, sometimes hanging for seconds. On the other hand, my Z13 and Zenbook Duo still work without these issues. I tried various workarounds on Debian, like adjusting configuration files and enabling specific driver settings, but they only worked sporadically. Attempting to switch to Wayland with Nvidia drivers didn’t resolve the problem consistently, sometimes causing black screens before being forced back to the login screen. Oddly enough, these issues disappeared completely on my Z13 and Zenbook Duo.