Xpra: Ticket #2219: compare performance of gtk2 and gtk3 builds

In light of ticket:2211#comment:4 : Is GTK3 that much slower?

We need some hard numbers. Let's run the full automated tests and compare.



Thu, 01 Aug 2019 14:53:35 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner, status changed


Mon, 19 Aug 2019 21:04:25 GMT - Smo: attachment set

comparison of gtk2 and gtk3


Mon, 19 Aug 2019 21:06:34 GMT - Smo: owner changed

I've attached some logs, data, and charts. I did this test by changing the top of

/usr/bin/xpra to be python3 instead of python2 to force make it try python3 first

I still have an issue with gtkperf the data looks all wrong and when I watch it running it appears to be going through the tests super fast so i'm not sure what is going on there.

Will just omit that one for now and try and see what the issue with it is.

Still some nice data here.


Tue, 20 Aug 2019 05:38:28 GMT - Antoine Martin: status changed; resolution set

... /usr/bin/xpra to be python3 instead of python2 to force make it try python3 first

FYI: that should already be the case when installing from RPM.

Very nice! I have uploaded the charts here: https://xpra.org/stats/gtk2-vs-gtk3/charts.html.

Overall, this is an unexpected decisive win for GTK3 in most key metrics:

The only metrics which are showing regressions are:

It looks to me like gtk3 is using video encodings more aggressively: more threads, more cpu, etc. Not sure why that is.


Sat, 23 Jan 2021 05:45:22 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/2219