xdg-desktop-portal VS gamescope

Compare xdg-desktop-portal vs gamescope and see what are their differences.

gamescope

SteamOS session compositing window manager [Moved to: https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope] (by Plagman)
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xdg-desktop-portal gamescope
154 422
524 1,792
3.8% -
9.4 7.9
5 days ago about 1 year ago
C C++
GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 only BSD 2-clause "Simplified" License
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

xdg-desktop-portal

Posts with mentions or reviews of xdg-desktop-portal. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-01-29.
  • Flathub: One million active users and growing
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 29 Jan 2024
  • Changes to xdg.portals?
    2 projects | /r/NixOS | 28 Nov 2023
  • PCSX2 Disables Wayland Support
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Nov 2023
    >Not losing all the work every time your windows manager crashes

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37509703

    >remapping keys

    >Use xinput to change parameters of their input devices (libinput dropped most configuration options present with evdev)

    Up to the compositor.

    >Global shortcuts

    Also up to the compositor. Was added to xdp in https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/blob/main/data... so it's up to the compositor's xdp impl to provide it. It was created by a KDE dev so I assume KDE implements it at least.

    >tunnelling over ssh

    https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mstoeckl/waypipe

  • Gnome developer proposes removing the X11 session
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 14 Oct 2023
    > - O proper screen recording support

    Works just fine. I use OBS.

    > - broken screen sharing

    Never had any trouble with it.

    > - No proper global keyboard shortcut

    > - No push to talk support

    On its way: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/pull/711 / https://flatpak.github.io/xdg-desktop-portal/#gdbus-org.free...

    > - Several problems with multiple screens

    Haven't had any more than on X11, but then again I do use Nvidia hardware on Linux.

  • The Guy Preserving the New History of PC Games, One Linux Port at a Time
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 10 Sep 2023
    It might help, but at this point Linux containers can't really stabilize the whole environment, especially for games. Particular pain points include accelerated graphics (which theoretically can have a stable kernel interface, but in practice is so complex and performance-sensitive that it's not stable enough to be a "reference platform", so to speak) and modern game controllers (which present a whole mess of concerns typically "addressed" in Flatpak by granting the device=all permission and hoping for the best [1]).

    I also know a guy who ran into issues with a kernel update breaking a custom allocator, although I don't know the fine details. That wasn't for a game, but games also use custom allocators for various reasons.

    [1] https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/536

  • Unpacking Elixir: Syntax
    4 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 8 Sep 2023
    I don't use Wayland, but it seems xdg-desktop-portal since 1.16.0 has a 'Global Shortcuts portal'. Perhaps check it out.

    https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal

  • UX Hurdles in Open Source #1: Flatpak Permissions
    1 project | /r/linux | 27 Jun 2023
    It's being discussed: https://github.com/flatpak/xdg-desktop-portal/issues/611
  • Advice: TW or Aeon
    2 projects | /r/openSUSE | 26 Jun 2023
    The first bug report was filed in early 2022 but unfortunately no progress yet on the matter, even after numerous similar reports ever since.
  • Native messaging for Firefox
    1 project | /r/flatpak | 23 Jun 2023
  • Xdg portal hyprland and launching gui apps
    2 projects | /r/NixOS | 21 Jun 2023
    Yeah been having the same issue since I changed to using the unstable branch, supposedly noticed and fixed upstream for a few variants of the problem (different people with different configurations of DE and xdg-* deps installed report the same issue due to timeouts of the other portals)

gamescope

Posts with mentions or reviews of gamescope. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2023-03-26.
  • Multiple monitors genshin impact?
    1 project | /r/linux_gaming | 26 Mar 2023
    Maybe gamesope can help? Games are nested into it to allow for better control.
  • X11 or Wayland?
    2 projects | /r/linuxquestions | 26 Mar 2023
    Well I suppose you should start taking Wayland seriously then, because gamescope, the compositor on the Steam Deck, uses Wayland. https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/blob/master/src/wlserver.cpp
  • Tearing updates protocol (!65) · Merged
    1 project | /r/swaywm | 23 Mar 2023
    Mini-update: I spoke with Josh (and Strudel, who referenced me to the PR), and this has been already merged into gamescope.
  • A year later, what's your take? Happy? Disappointed?
    1 project | /r/SteamDeck | 22 Mar 2023
    Valve staff is also aware they cannot force developers to retrofit 16:10 support into existing games (some do, many don't), so they even go the extra mile to provide extra functionality in gamescope to improve the 16:10 gaming experience for games that only support 16:9 natively.
  • INPUT LATENCY ISSUE BEGGING FOR ACKNOWLEDGMENT
    3 projects | /r/SteamDeck | 22 Mar 2023
    Source: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope/issues/474
  • Change refresh rate in gamescope via command line?
    1 project | /r/SteamDeck | 20 Mar 2023
    The ganescope github has all the commands and how to use them: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope
  • What is the difference between gamescope and ChimeraOS's gamescope-session?
    2 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 13 Mar 2023
    I'm trying out gamescope on my laptop, and I came across ChimeraOS's fork of it. I'm not sure why I would choose one over the other. ChimeraOS mentions something about "session switch", but I'm not sure what that's about.
  • Something like gamescope but for the desktop
    2 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 7 Mar 2023
    You can use gamescope on the desktop, I use it for a ton of games like No Man's Sky, Bethesda games, and any others that have alt tab instability.
  • Van Gogh, AMD’s Steam Deck APU
    2 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Mar 2023
    For those that don't know (like me, three minutes ago) gamescope [1] is a Wayland compositor custom-written for games (and, I believe, what the Steam Deck uses). it's open source, and under the "BSD 2-clause" license.

    [1]: https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope

  • Modern BPM Steam with Ubuntu 20.04?
    2 projects | /r/linux_gaming | 4 Mar 2023
    I assume that this is because I'm still using ye olde steamos-compositor (https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steamos-compositor/.) I'm interested in switching to gamescope (https://github.com/Plagman/gamescope) but I'm getting the feeling it won't work on my 20.04 vintage Ubuntu; the required version of meson isn't available and I can't find a PPA that contains gamescope. My instinct act this point is to just live with the pain, as fully dealing with this will likely involve just switching all the way to Arch to more closely match the newest SteamOS and I just don't want to do that right now. Anyone know if there is a middleground that will support a modern steam big picture mode without having to totally redo everything?

What are some alternatives?

When comparing xdg-desktop-portal and gamescope you can also consider the following projects:

wayfire - A modular and extensible wayland compositor

Proton - Compatibility tool for Steam Play based on Wine and additional components

gtk-layer-shell - A library to create panels and other desktop components for Wayland using the Layer Shell protocol

sway - i3-compatible Wayland compositor

pipewire - Mirror of the PipeWire repository (see https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pipewire/pipewire/)

dxvk - Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10 and D3D11 for Linux / Wine

flatpaks

wine - Wine with a bit of extra spice

us.zoom.Zoom

MangoHud - A Vulkan and OpenGL overlay for monitoring FPS, temperatures, CPU/GPU load and more. Discord: https://discordapp.com/invite/Gj5YmBb

WebKit - Home of the WebKit project, the browser engine used by Safari, Mail, App Store and many other applications on macOS, iOS and Linux.

Magpie - An all-purpose window upscaler for Windows 10/11.