Yes, it is an inherent limitation of Wayland because Wayland assumes a compositor and compositors run asynchronously to the applications that produce graphics (

Yes, it is an inherent limitation of Wayland because Wayland assumes a compositor and compositors run asynchronously to the applications that produce graphics (it could be possible to run them synchronously but then a single application could freeze the entire desktop - and even when it worked, you'd force all applications to sync with each other), meaning that what the compositor composes is based on the last complete frame it got (and while the compositor is composing its composition the application might as well be waiting, virtual thumbs twirling, with a new frame ready). In comparison X11 doesn't assume a compositor - it can support composition, but doesn't require it. If there isn't a compositor, applications draw directly to the framebuffer and content appears as long as it is sent to the GPU (you may even send stuff faster than the monitor can keep up with - this is how you get tearing for example). You can work around Wayland's limitation the same way you can work around it in Windows: get a monitor with faster refresh rates. As usual, better hardware is what fills the holes created by shoddy software (i got an expensive 165Hz monitor expecting to have a never-seen-before butter smooth experience on Windows - in reality what i got was more or less the experience i had back when i could disable the compositor in Windows 7).