GTK4's GPU-accelerated GL renderer(s) got a major performance boost in the last few days! Previously it struggled to render simple UIs with single digit FPS on the Librem 5; now it can get pretty fancy :) #librem5 #gnome #gnomeonmobile #gtk
@dos and that commit looks so innocent :)
@dos does better graphics performance help gnome web be more usable?
@dubstar_04 @dos I used dconf-editor to change the /org/gnome/epiphany/web/hardware-acceleration-policy from on-demand to always, and that makes GNOME Web usable for me on all the different sites.
(You can just search for accel and it should be at the top.)
Before this tweak, it would be painfully slow, especially to scroll around in complex web apps.
I also adjusted the value in the various "installed" webapps (menu → "Install Site as Web Application..." in Web) to make those faster too.
@dos @dubstar_04 Oh, cool to see!
I just found out about the setting.
Before this, I kept trying to use GNOME Web on my laptops, but it was just simply too slow. But now, it's finally acceptable (even if it's not as smooth as Firefox).
I filed a (now closed) bug about it (thinking it was related to Epiphany, perhaps on Intel GPUs or something), but it's an upstream WebKit issue, apparently: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/epiphany/-/issues/1460
Glad it's enabled in Librem 5!
@dubstar_04 @garrett I never seen it working on the PinePhone, and even if it did it likely wouldn't help much there.
@dos This looks great!
@dos what Fps is now to be expected in the common gtk4-demo benchmarks?
Fun fact - the biggest difference comes from this single commit: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/commit/57e354c297e1703079c2bc6fb51211b24d884ac3
Then the new "ngl" renderer and fixes in the Wayland backend boost the performance even further.