The choices in choosing a compositing engine in KDE Plasma 5 is: OpenGL 2.0, OpenGL 3.1 and XRender
I have been having it set on OpenGL 2.0, but I am unsure which is best. I think my graphic card can certainly work with OpenGL 3.1.
I have read that XRender “might” be faster.
Also there is another option, OpenGL interface, where the choices are GLX or EGL. Mine has been set on GLX.
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo
Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti
Drivers: Nvidia G04 361.48
I suggest openGL 3.1 and I doubt the Xrendr is faster.
I am using XRender on a box with Nvidia graphics.
I suggest that you treat XRender as a fall back option, when OpenGL doesn’t work correctly (that’s why I’m using it).
It is fast enough. I doubt that it is faster.
I have changed to OpenGL 3.1, but what about OpenGL interface GLX or EGL? From what I read the latest Nvidia drivers with support for Wayland uses EGL.
afaik plasma 5 does not like wayland, and egl does not work properly on X so it’s glx for X and maybe EGL for wayland (which is buggy for kde)
ps afaik XRender is software only and does not use the graphic card for hardware acceleration so it should be slower not faster but is backward compatible for older cards that do not have hardware acceleration or for use with drivers that don’t have proper hardware acceleration like nouveau (but nouveau does not work right on plasma 5)
edit found this
https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2015/08/should-we-target-egl-as-the-default/
it’s an interesting read but as far as I understood it GLX is better for X, EGL for wayland but some nvidia drivers don’t support EGL
Plasma 5 should now support Wayland session instead of X. https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/kategorien/kde/
The recently released Nvidia 364.19 drivers have added support for Wayland.