Wayland 1.19 comes with improvements for Nvidia, the ability to add and remove extensions and more

After several months of development the liberation of the new stable version of the protocol wayland 1.19. This new version 1.19 is backward compatible at the API and ABI level with versions 1.x, and mainly contains bug fixes and minor protocol updates.

Among the most prominent changes we can find a improved compilation system which now requires Meson tools at least version 0.52.1, weston composite server, providing code and working samples for using Wayland in desktop and embedded environments, it is evolving in an independent development cycle.

Main changes and news in Wayland 1.19

In this new version of wayland patches have been prepared for the XWayland DDX serverthat if the system has proprietary drivers for NVIDIA, will allow the use of hardware acceleration in OpenGL and Vulkan when launching X applications in Wayland environments.

Also NVIDIA proprietary drivers continue to implement extensions necessary for the full operation of the environments that use the Wayland protocol.

Another novelty that stands out is that Mir's development continues as a composite server for Wayland. The tools to ensure the launch of the Wayland applications in the Mir environment have implemented the correct scaling in the HiDPI screens.

Added the ability to scale Wayland customer exitIn addition, independent scale settings are allowed for each output device, including fractional scale values.

We can also find that added the ability to add and remove extensions of the Wayland protocol and added support for experimental protocols: zwp_linux_dmabuf_unstable_v1 to create wl_buffers using the mechanism DMABUF and wlr-Foreign-toplevel-management for connecting custom panels and window switches.

Have been launched new versions of the Sway custom environment and the Wayfire composite server that Wayland uses.

As for the changes related to applications and desktop environments, it is mentioned that work continues on the launch of the user environment LXQt 1.0.0, which will be implemented with full support for work on Wayland.

Wayland is enabled by default on Plasma Mobile, Sailfish 2, webOS Open Source Edition, Tizen and AsteroidOS.

While on the other hand work continues in the portability of MATE applications for Wayland, the Eye of MATE image viewer has been adapted to work without being linked to X11 in the Wayland environment, as well as improved Wayland support in MATE panel and that the panel-multimonitor and panel-background applets have been adapted for use with Wayland.

Fedora 34 plans to migrate the KDE desktop build to use Wayland by defaultor. The X11 session is intended to be an option. The kwin-wayland-nvidia package is used to run KDE using proprietary NVIDIA drivers.

KDE is working to make a session based on Wayland is ready for everyday use and to achieve parity in functionality over X11. Fixed issues with screen casting and center click insertion. Fixed issues with XWayland stability.

GNOME for Wayland has removed the entire screen from rendering when dma-buf or EGLImage buffers are used in favor of partial window updates, which reduce the amount of data transferred between the GPU and the CPU. Combined with a separate update of the interface elements, this optimization has significantly reduced power consumption when running on battery power. Added the ability to assign different refresh rates for each monitor.

In GTK 4, the GDK APIs have been redesigned to use the Wayland protocol and related concepts. X11 and Wayland related functions have been moved to separate backends.

Firefox for Wayland provides WebGL and accelerated video by hardware, in addition to added a new backend using the DMABUF mechanism to render textures and organize buffer swapping by different processes. This backend allowed to implement a unified GL environment in Firefox builds based on Wayland, not tied to specific composite servers, such as GNOME Mutter or KDE Kwin.

Finally, for those interested in being able to test this new version, they can download the source code for compilation from following link


Be the first to comment

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked with *

*

*

  1. Responsible for the data: Miguel Ángel Gatón
  2. Purpose of the data: Control SPAM, comment management.
  3. Legitimation: Your consent
  4. Communication of the data: The data will not be communicated to third parties except by legal obligation.
  5. Data storage: Database hosted by Occentus Networks (EU)
  6. Rights: At any time you can limit, recover and delete your information.