... and when you give people direct access to the front buffer, they write code that tears or generally scans out incomplete renders and users end up blaming the operating system.
Compositing is a good thing, and in the vast majority of cases its latency isn't actually intrinsically higher than writing directly to the front buffer. Certainly its intrinsic latency is never higher than writing directly to the front buffer if you build a system without visual artifacts. (Because at the end of the day, all compositing does is shift around who does the job of putting things on the front buffer; the jobs themselves stay the same for all practical purposes.)
But i want the tearing, or at least i prefer it to the latency that compositors impose! This is why compositors must not be forced and instead be a user option. I do not see why i have to suffer a subpar computing experience because of some clueless users.
I even force vsync off system-wide where possible (that is in Windows, in Linux i haven't seen such an option and even in Windows DWM ignores the setting).
Compositing is a good thing, and in the vast majority of cases its latency isn't actually intrinsically higher than writing directly to the front buffer. Certainly its intrinsic latency is never higher than writing directly to the front buffer if you build a system without visual artifacts. (Because at the end of the day, all compositing does is shift around who does the job of putting things on the front buffer; the jobs themselves stay the same for all practical purposes.)