Canonical has been working on developing dynamic triple buffering for the GNOME desktop using the Mutter compositor for over two years. Using triple buffering where necessary can dramatically improve desktop performance, especially with things like Intel integrated graphics and Raspberry Pi boards.

Work on dynamic triple buffering has not yet been upstreamed in GNOME, but Ubuntu has been providing its own dynamic triple buffering support patch in the Mutter package of 22.04 LTS and 22.10, and Debian has also been carrying Patch for Ubuntu’s dynamic triple buffering to force a boost in GPU performance and rendering speed when necessary.

According to foreign media Phoronix Introduction, this week GNOME’s dynamic triple buffering feature upstream work has made new progress, Canonical’s Daniel Van Vugt shared in the Ubuntu desktop status update, after working hard to solve some problems and further discussions with other developers , who updated the latest V4 patch set for dynamic triple buffering, which is now “close to landing in Mutter 44”.

The latest Mutter dynamic triple buffering patch is available via This MR Found, still need to do a lot of optimization work, such as KMS unified buffer management and Only the scanned buffer is kept. Visually the feature might miss the GNOME 44 merge cycle, but Daniel seems optimistic that this work can finally be upstreamed in GNOME 44.

GNOME 44 will undergo a UI, feature, and API/ABI freeze in mid-February, with a stable release on March 22nd, and we’ll see if dynamic triple buffering catches up to that cycle.