bug#51027: Icecat: gfx.webrender.all unset by default - gpu performance issues

[Maxim Cournoyer]

Hello,

Ekaitz Zarraga <ekaitz@elenq.tech> writes:

> Hi,
> I recently found my GPU struggling to render simple websites on icecat while
> ungoogled-chromium is able to do it correctly.
>
> The most recent one was element, Matrix's web client.
> I opened an issue there[^1] and they told me to set the `gfx.webrender.all` to
>  `true`.
>
> I did it and everything worked like a charm, and the rendering effort for any
> other website went down significantly.
>
> Why do we ship icecat with this variable unset? Can we set it so more people
> benefit from the new rendering engine?
>
> Thanks,
> Ekaitz
>
> [^1]: https://github.com/vector-im/element-web/issues/19217

Seems this feature is rather new, and has been (is being?) deployed to
selected systems by Mozilla.  Given that Icecat is based on the ESR (the
slower paced Firefox releases), it'll probably take a little while to
land.

You should dig more to get a definitive answer though!  Perhaps the
Mozilla folks would know best.

Thanks,

Maxim

[0]: 
https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/05/21/graphics-team-ships-webrender-mvp/