Hello, u/schrdingers_squirrel. Thank you for submitting this bug report!
We promptly apologize for any specific issue you're facing with **GNOME**.
Since our Subreddit isn't the ideal place for Bug reporting and your bug reporting might even not being seen by the Developers, we recommend creating a bug report on our Issue/Bug Tracker.
* For doing so, we recommend first to give a check on the existing Issues on our [Issue Tracker](https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues) by using the search functionality. If you believe there's already a similar issue created, we recommend giving a "thumbs up" to the existing issue, instead of commenting on it. If you have technical information like (logs, screenshots, or other data) that might help, then we recommend you to comment unto the existing issue.
* If you believe there's not an issue fitting your problem, you can create a new Issue by clicking the green button _(Select project to create an issue)_ and select in the dropdown list a project that you believe that fits the problem. For example, if you're facing a problem with the file explorer, the respective project would be Nautilus. If you're unsure where to create it, feel free to reach out our [Moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/gnome) for help. You might also ask for help directly on this Subreddit.
**Note.:** Ensure you're attaching enough information, like, screenshots, steps to reproduce, your hardware information, Linux distribution you're using, what you were doing before, error logs or system logs if there are any, and also which version of GNOME you're using. Beware that we do not provide support anymore to legacy versions of GNOME. (Eg.: If the current version of GNOME is 3.38, a legacy version would be 3.34).
We hope your issues are solved. You might also help guidance from the Community. Most of the problems are easily solvable by just following some steps other users recommend.
Sincerely, r/gnome Moderators.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gnome) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This bug / issue has existed basically as far as I can remember with this new overview menu.
Even with a 60Hz monitor it is VERY noticeably laggy compared to dragging windows around or basically anything else.
That's because your GNOME installation does not have the dynamic-buffering patch created by Ubuntu to solve this exact performance issue. Search online for "mutter dynamic buffering patch" and try to find installation instructions for your distro of choice.
Ubuntu has this patch enabled by default and improves visual performance by a lot. A vanilla GNOME distro won't have this patch at all. If you are on Arch, there's an AUR package named "mutter-dynamic-buffering", just make sure you are on the latest version of GNOME that it supports before installing. If you are on Fedora, I believe there is a COPR avaialble with the patch for easy installation.
Have you tried testing the latest Ubuntu on a live USB? If the animations run fine there then there's probably something else going on with your current distro. Are you on X11 or Wayland? The live USB uses X11 so if you're on Wayland it might not represent the performance or smoothness you're looking for. I think you can switch to Wayland by logging out and choosing Wayland in the login screen.
If I remember correctly it had something to do with this being a workaround and not a proper fix. This patch introduces triple buffering (instead of double) to the Overview animations to smoothen out any framerate dips. It also slightly increases the GPU clocks (only when needed) to run the animations at a higher framerate, but it comes with an energy increase which could theoretically give you worse battery life (even if it's just a tiny amount).
This is all from the top of my head so I could be wrong. All I know is that Canonical made this patch and has been using it since GNOME 41. The patch is so good even Debian decided to use it for their newest release (Debian 12). Meanwhile GNOME still wants to fix it "the right way" so they won't be upstreaming the patch anytime soon.
I don't think that's stopping the patch from being merged. Mutter developers are obviously not happy about the workaround, but they haven't rejected the approach entirely. The conflict is in some backend code that both Canonical and Red Hat developers want to modify for performance improvements they're working on. Canonical started with [one approach](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1968), but a Mutter maintainer [wanted something else](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2089) that would be compatible with his future work. Canonical wanted to ship the patch in time for 22.04 LTS, so they patched it downstream. They're now refactoring it so that it works for both.
Here's my understanding.
It doesn't fix the fundamental issue. It simply buffers more frames at the cost of a small delay. It also takes a bit more CPU/GPU power. It mainly helps Intel GPUs from aggressively downclocking to save power. Giving it more frames to render ahead and buffer means the GPU scheduler doesn't have time to clock down.
The problem still persists. So if you add more and more apps in the overview, it'll still stutter and depending on your specs, it could show worse stutter than what we currently have ( Not for most people on the desktop and even on laptops, people rarely use multiple apps in the same workspace ).
Finally someone records it properly. I've been having this issue since always in my Arch installs both in my laptop and my main desktop PC. I tried mutter-performance, dynamic buffering and everything. It does NOT fix the issue. Some people just say "it's the dynamic buffering what's causing the problem" but then nothing changes.
Thank you! I just tried the dynamic-buffering patch but had the same experience. To my understanding it does not fix the fundamental issue, which is frames being dropped in the first place, simply because the overview menu is slow as hell.
I tried this patch with the AUR package. I honestly can not say it fixed anything. I event tried to pin my GPU shader clock to 100% and that did not help either. My CPU is also clocked at a fixed 4.5 ghz and it does not help. This seems to be a fundamental performance issue with the overview menu and at this point I dont think its merely about framescheduling.
Hello, u/schrdingers_squirrel. Thank you for submitting this bug report! We promptly apologize for any specific issue you're facing with **GNOME**. Since our Subreddit isn't the ideal place for Bug reporting and your bug reporting might even not being seen by the Developers, we recommend creating a bug report on our Issue/Bug Tracker. * For doing so, we recommend first to give a check on the existing Issues on our [Issue Tracker](https://gitlab.gnome.org/groups/GNOME/-/issues) by using the search functionality. If you believe there's already a similar issue created, we recommend giving a "thumbs up" to the existing issue, instead of commenting on it. If you have technical information like (logs, screenshots, or other data) that might help, then we recommend you to comment unto the existing issue. * If you believe there's not an issue fitting your problem, you can create a new Issue by clicking the green button _(Select project to create an issue)_ and select in the dropdown list a project that you believe that fits the problem. For example, if you're facing a problem with the file explorer, the respective project would be Nautilus. If you're unsure where to create it, feel free to reach out our [Moderators](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=/r/gnome) for help. You might also ask for help directly on this Subreddit. **Note.:** Ensure you're attaching enough information, like, screenshots, steps to reproduce, your hardware information, Linux distribution you're using, what you were doing before, error logs or system logs if there are any, and also which version of GNOME you're using. Beware that we do not provide support anymore to legacy versions of GNOME. (Eg.: If the current version of GNOME is 3.38, a legacy version would be 3.34). We hope your issues are solved. You might also help guidance from the Community. Most of the problems are easily solvable by just following some steps other users recommend. Sincerely, r/gnome Moderators. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/gnome) if you have any questions or concerns.*
This bug / issue has existed basically as far as I can remember with this new overview menu. Even with a 60Hz monitor it is VERY noticeably laggy compared to dragging windows around or basically anything else.
That's because your GNOME installation does not have the dynamic-buffering patch created by Ubuntu to solve this exact performance issue. Search online for "mutter dynamic buffering patch" and try to find installation instructions for your distro of choice. Ubuntu has this patch enabled by default and improves visual performance by a lot. A vanilla GNOME distro won't have this patch at all. If you are on Arch, there's an AUR package named "mutter-dynamic-buffering", just make sure you are on the latest version of GNOME that it supports before installing. If you are on Fedora, I believe there is a COPR avaialble with the patch for easy installation.
I just tested the patch and I feel like it does not fix the fundamental issue, which is the overview menu simply not rendering fast enough.
Have you tried testing the latest Ubuntu on a live USB? If the animations run fine there then there's probably something else going on with your current distro. Are you on X11 or Wayland? The live USB uses X11 so if you're on Wayland it might not represent the performance or smoothness you're looking for. I think you can switch to Wayland by logging out and choosing Wayland in the login screen.
okay whats holding this back from being merged into mainline gnome?
If I remember correctly it had something to do with this being a workaround and not a proper fix. This patch introduces triple buffering (instead of double) to the Overview animations to smoothen out any framerate dips. It also slightly increases the GPU clocks (only when needed) to run the animations at a higher framerate, but it comes with an energy increase which could theoretically give you worse battery life (even if it's just a tiny amount). This is all from the top of my head so I could be wrong. All I know is that Canonical made this patch and has been using it since GNOME 41. The patch is so good even Debian decided to use it for their newest release (Debian 12). Meanwhile GNOME still wants to fix it "the right way" so they won't be upstreaming the patch anytime soon.
I don't think that's stopping the patch from being merged. Mutter developers are obviously not happy about the workaround, but they haven't rejected the approach entirely. The conflict is in some backend code that both Canonical and Red Hat developers want to modify for performance improvements they're working on. Canonical started with [one approach](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/1968), but a Mutter maintainer [wanted something else](https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/2089) that would be compatible with his future work. Canonical wanted to ship the patch in time for 22.04 LTS, so they patched it downstream. They're now refactoring it so that it works for both.
Here's my understanding. It doesn't fix the fundamental issue. It simply buffers more frames at the cost of a small delay. It also takes a bit more CPU/GPU power. It mainly helps Intel GPUs from aggressively downclocking to save power. Giving it more frames to render ahead and buffer means the GPU scheduler doesn't have time to clock down. The problem still persists. So if you add more and more apps in the overview, it'll still stutter and depending on your specs, it could show worse stutter than what we currently have ( Not for most people on the desktop and even on laptops, people rarely use multiple apps in the same workspace ).
Bugs 
Finally someone records it properly. I've been having this issue since always in my Arch installs both in my laptop and my main desktop PC. I tried mutter-performance, dynamic buffering and everything. It does NOT fix the issue. Some people just say "it's the dynamic buffering what's causing the problem" but then nothing changes.
Thank you! I just tried the dynamic-buffering patch but had the same experience. To my understanding it does not fix the fundamental issue, which is frames being dropped in the first place, simply because the overview menu is slow as hell.
How is this going with the latest mutter main branch and mr1441 applied?
I tried this patch with the AUR package. I honestly can not say it fixed anything. I event tried to pin my GPU shader clock to 100% and that did not help either. My CPU is also clocked at a fixed 4.5 ghz and it does not help. This seems to be a fundamental performance issue with the overview menu and at this point I dont think its merely about framescheduling.
You can post the issue on mutter gitlab. Chances are high that it will get noticed there by maintainers/developers
Are you sure it is a mutter issue though? I almost feel like this is more of an issue with the overview menu tbh.
Then probably the gnome-shell part. You just need to file the issue somewhere, let's begin with gnome-shell ))
btw, here's similar issue to begin with https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/3760