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by hulitu 1117 days ago
Which are the merits of desktop composition besides drawing the whole screen just to redraw the cursor ?
3 comments

Every window looks perfect all the time, and it doesn't matter if a program is busy.

Without composition, each program repaints itself. Which means there's an appreciable lag, and if the program is stuck you can get a blank box if a previously covered program is uncovered. This can be an annoyance if you need to read something from there.

Eg, an actual example is a program being blocked by a modal dialog stops being repainted. If the dialog asks you "Enter a password" and the what for is written on the no longer repainting parent you may have a problem.

That's totally orthogonal to desktop composition, or rather almost in contrast with it...
Cursor ain't in the frame buffer, moving it around only triggers a render if an application rendered a change in response to the mouse move event.