I understand that nvidia support for wayland is lacking, but I know it's possible.
For context, I was using sway 1.8 for a while (no official support for nvidia). It was working almost perfectly, only minor issues. After the update to 1.9, I get constant flickering.
I can downgrade to 1.8, but the fact that 1.8 was working tells me that it is possible for a window manager to work well for nvidia. The problem is the sway team does not want that headache (understandably so).
Are there any alternatives that work well with nvidia?
the fact that 1.8 was working tells me that it is possible for a window manager to work well for nvidia
Nope, it's a race condition for which the visible effects can appear or disappear for plenty of reasons. The only fix is explicit sync, which is being worked on for wlroots
Until its drivers are completely open source, Nvidia will continue to cause trouble every once in a while.
Therefore, if you liked Sway, then don't leave it expecting to be a lot better elsewhere.
However, Hyprland's community is pretty big and I can only be positive regarding the pace of its development. Therefore, if anything, Hyprland might be able to offer a solution. But, don't forget what I said earlier*.
labwc is working pretty well these days. Screen tearing for games and all.
There are a bunch of environment variables that I set this time though, which may have contributed to a better experience this time.