A new release of Raspberry Pi OS

[Posted October 30, 2024 by jzb]

The Raspberry Pi project has announced a new version of Raspberry Pi OS. It includes a number of significant changes, the most notable of which is that the Raspberry Pi Desktop now uses Wayland by default for all Pi models using the labwc compositor:

For most of this year, we have been working on porting labwc to the Raspberry Pi Desktop. This has very much been a collaborative process with the developers of both labwc and wlroots: both have helped us immensely with their support as we contribute features and optimisations needed for our desktop.

This release also features Linux 6.6.51, improved touchscreen support, a new screen configuration tool called raindrop, and more. See the release notes for a full list of changes.

More work needed to support legacy X11 apps

Posted Oct 30, 2024 17:15 UTC (Wed) by Thomas_H (guest, #110055) [Link] (1 responses)

I tested the new release on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and found that some legacy X11 apps that run smoothly and efficiently under Xorg did not do so under labwc.

So I ran x11perf to get some numbers to compare the performance:

1: x11perf-xorg.txt
2: x11perf-labwc.txt

     1          2    Operation
---------  --------  ---------
1270000.0   13100.0  Char in 80-char line (6x13)
1170000.0    8690.0  Char in 80-char image line (TR 10)
 235000.0     771.0  Copy 10x10 from pixmap to window
  31700.0     116.0  Move window (4 kids)
  27400.0      97.4  Move window (16 kids)
  24700.0      89.0  Move window (25 kids)
  20800.0      84.7  Move window (50 kids)
  17800.0      87.6  Move window (75 kids)
  15900.0      88.6  Move window (100 kids)
  10700.0      92.2  Move window (200 kids)

So labwc seems to be 100 times slower or more.

If anyone wants to repeat this, the command I ran was x11perf -ftext -tr10itext -copypixwin10 -move, then I used x11perfcomp to obtain the above table.

Since I am very fond of these X11 apps, I will be sticking with Xorg for now...

More work needed to support legacy X11 apps

Posted Nov 19, 2024 9:26 UTC (Tue) by daenzer (subscriber, #7050) [Link]

Those numbers with labwc are surprisingly low.

Just tried these tests on an x86 machine here, and the results are mostly the same[0] with Xwayland on labwc as with xfwm4 on Xorg, as expected — there's no fundamental reason for a significant performance delta.

[0] Exceptions: -copypixwin10 is ~15-20% faster with Xorg, will check for any low-hanging fruit in Xwayland there. OTOH the -move tests are faster with Xwayland than with Xorg, increasingly so for larger numbers of kids.

It's worth checking labwc's stderr output for any messages from Xwayland which might give clues. And feel free to file an issue at https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/ so we can dig into why Xwayland is so slow on the Pi.

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 30, 2024 18:17 UTC (Wed) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (7 responses)

One of my favorite programs to relax is Flightgear. It doesn't run very well on Raspberry Pi 5 under Wayland.

I just got the message box that I could keep X or switch to labwc, and I chose to keep X.

Sadly, anyone who tries to run Flightgear on a "stock" copy of the new OS will be sorely disappointed. Some of the improvements the RP developers gave us have made FG run better and better under X. I could try Wayland again and see, but after the first comment here, it seems pointless.

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 30, 2024 19:12 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link] (1 responses)

> I could try Wayland again and see, but after the first comment here, it seems pointless.

I'd expect that any performance issues that may or may not exist with pre-DRI server-side-rendered X11 programs would be entirely irrelevant to performance of 3D applications such as FlightGear.

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 30, 2024 19:16 UTC (Wed) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

(And likely just as irrelevant to 99% of non-3D graphical programs people actually use nowadays, as none of them use X11 graphics primitives anyway.)

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 31, 2024 1:39 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

Well, I switched to Wayland again, and this time FG ran better than it did when I originally installed the OS. Maybe there have been some improvements? it's the same flightgear package I tried earlier.

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 31, 2024 7:32 UTC (Thu) by alspnost (guest, #2763) [Link] (3 responses)

Flightgear on a Pi? That's surely not for real? If the Pi 5 graphics have improved that much, I'll be amazed! And I can save myself buying an expensive gaming PC for my son!

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 31, 2024 15:29 UTC (Thu) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link]

Well, it ran on early-2000s-era PCs, so unless its graphic requirements have skyrocketed since then. (I haven't touched FlightGear since circa 2002, though....)

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 31, 2024 18:13 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link] (1 responses)

If you're looking for full-screen displays, AI traffic, and other bells and whistles in Flightgear, the RP5 is not a good choice. I use it just for relaxation once in awhile. I take the default window size, disable AI traffic, and accept the remaining defaults.

FG appears to run a little faster on X than on Labwc. I went back to X because all the keyboard shortcuts to which I have become accustomed don't work on Labwc. A few of them don't even work on Openbox, but at my age, I don't feel inclined to learn a whole new set of keyboard operations just to control the windows. If I can find a template for Labwc (or if someone happens to know of any,) that would cause it to use keyboard shortcuts with which I am familiar, I will try it again sometime.

Not interested in Wayland at this time.

Posted Oct 31, 2024 18:38 UTC (Thu) by ccchips (subscriber, #3222) [Link]

I forgot to mention---Around 2010, I had a machine with an Intel I5 processor that I used with Flightgear for awhile, running full-screen and with AI traffic enabled. At some point, around the time of an FG update, it started stuttering so I installed a fairly cheap (around $50) Nvidia card and enabled their drivers. After that, FG ran very well on my setup, as far as I was concerned. But that was with full-screen, and all features enabled.

I don't know if these SBCs will ever perform that well, but I can hope....