Turns Out Wayland Isn't the Input Lag Disaster Everyone Says it is

A developer built a DIY click-to-photon latency measurement device (Click2photon) using a photodiode and simulated USB mouse clicks to test real end-to-end input latency on Linux. Testing Diabotical via Proton on CachyOS with an RTX 4070 SUPER and 500 Hz OLED monitor, results show X11 beats Wayland by only 0.14–0.22 ms — far too small to explain Wayland's reputation for feeling laggy. The real latency culprit is XWayland, which adds 3.13 ms on top of native Wayland. Enabling VRR saves 0.26–0.45 ms, and the dxvk-low-latency fork saves up to 0.84 ms in uncapped scenarios. The practical takeaway for Linux gamers: enable VRR, use the dxvk-low-latency fork, and ensure games run through native Wayland rather than XWayland.