[rayiner]

The Right Way (TM) to do it is to always have V-SYNC but use a screen with high enough refresh where you can't notice the latency. 60 Hz is probably good enough for 95% of people, and Apple is moving to 120 Hz in devices like the iPad Pro.

[badsectoracula]

I have my reservations about 120Hz being the right way since if you can see tearing at 120Hz without vsync it means that you can still perform actions that the refresh rate cannot keep up with and the vsync will introduce a delay. But without experiencing it myself i cannot be 100% sure. I am nitpicky about lag and reaction though so i have a feeling i wont like it unless it really is perfect :-P.

However regardless of vsync or not, i also dislike composition because it introduces yet another source for lag and at best you are at least a frame behind - unless your window updates are synced with the composition (which wont be because if that was possible then programs would be able to affect the compositor's own performance - imagine a game running at a 30fps in windowed mode, it would cause all window updates, etc to run at 30fps too if the updates were synchronized).

So, yeah, i'd rather stick with my compositionless, vsyncless, direct to front frame buffer X11 :-P.

EDIT: there is actually a way to have composition that works without lag and that is for the GPU to do the composition itself during the monitor refresh.