Bug 463365

Summary: [feature request] Vulkan compositing backend
Product: [Plasma] kwin Reporter: kde-yyds
Component: compositingAssignee: KWin default assignee <kwin-bugs-null>
Status: RESOLVED NOT A BUG    
Severity: wishlist CC: adpocalyptic, nicolas.fella
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: unspecified   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian testing   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed/Implemented In: 6
Sentry Crash Report:

Description kde-yyds 2022-12-22 23:58:05 UTC
Vulkan can offer higher performance than opengl and is supported by most gpus.  Can you please add a vulkan compositing backend to make kwin faster and smoother?
Comment 1 Nicolas Fella 2022-12-23 12:00:19 UTC
Using Vulkan is not magically going to make everything faster and smoother
Comment 2 Nicolas Fella 2022-12-23 12:12:53 UTC
See also https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2015/08/thoughts-on-vulkan-in-kwin/

It's a few years old by now, most most of the points still stand
Comment 3 Dasein 2023-06-16 16:14:25 UTC
Shame :/ could’ve been more efficient for low end hardware that use batteries like Linux Mobiles for e.g.
Comment 4 Dasein 2023-06-16 16:16:44 UTC
And surely the driver point isn’t the same now?
Comment 5 Dasein 2023-06-16 16:24:21 UTC
Vulkan could be better if you have hdr10 and or 10 bit+ display panels. On the use cases part, Vulkan does have a very wide range of use cases as an API. This could be another one for the list. It’s a good idea if GPUs were to ever perform better with Vulkan than OGL or even to drop OGL entirely, it’s not like we’re asking for SPIR-V, WGSL, WebGPU to be used there are potential benefits here for the future. 
 
and even android uses vulkan for it’s windowing system if the devices hardware supports vulkan, surely Google wouldn’t have pushed it if OpenGL was the only option that made sense.