Recently the launch of the new stable version of the protocol, the communication mechanism between processes and libraries Wayland 1.20.
Branch 1.20 is backward compatible at the API and ABI level with versions 1.x and mainly contains bug fixes and minor protocol updates.
Weston's composite server, which provides code and working samples for using Wayland in desktop and embedded environments, is evolving in a separate development cycle.
Main news of Wayland 1.20
In this new version of the protocol it is highlighted that official support for the FreeBSD platform has been implemented, for which tests have been added to the continuous integration system.
Another important change in Wayland 1.20 is that support for autotools build system removed and now use Meson instead.
In addition to this, it is highlighted that the function "Wl_surface.offset" has been added to the protocol to allow clients to update the surface buffer offset independently of the buffer itself.
It is also noted that the "wl_output.name" and "wl_output.description" capabilities were added to the protocol to allow the client to identify the output without being bound to the xdg-output-unstable-v1 protocol extension.
A new attribute of "type" has been introduced in the protocol definitions for events, and the events themselves can now be marked as destructors.
And we can also find that bug fixes have been made, including race conditions when removing proxies on multithreaded clients.
On the part of the Wayland-related changes in applications, desktop environments and distributions, the following is highlighted:
- In XWayland and the proprietary driver NVIDIA implemented changes, allowing full OpenGL and Vulkan hardware acceleration support to be provided in X11 applications made using the DDX component.
- The protocol was implemented in Ubuntu 21.04, while in Fedora 35, Ubuntu 21.10, and RHEL 8.5 the ability to use the desktop-based Wayland protocol with proprietary NVIDIA driver systems is added.
- Canonical released a full screen Ubuntu framework for Internet kiosks using the Wayland protocol.
- The OBS Studio video streaming system implemented the Wayland compliant protocol.
- GNOME 40 and 41 continue to refine support for the Wayland protocol and the XWayland component. Wayland sessions are allowed for systems with NVIDIA GPUs.
- Continued portability of the MATE desktop for Wayland. To work without being linked to X11 in the Wayland environment, the Atril document viewer, the system monitor, the Pen text editor, the terminal emulator and other desktop components are adapted.
- In KDE a session was stabilized using the Wayland protocol. The KWin composition manager and the KDE Plasma 5.21, 5.22 and 5.23 desktop provide significant enhancements to the Wayland session.
- Firefox 93-96 includes changes to solve problems affecting Wayland environments with handling of pop-up windows, clipboard and scaling on different DPI screens.
- A compact custom interface based on Weston's composite server has been released.
- The first version of labwc, a composite server for Wayland with features reminiscent of the Openbox window manager, is available.
- System76 is working on a new COSMIC user environment using Wayland.
- The Sway 1.6 custom environment and the Wayfire 0.7 composite server were released using Wayland.
- An updated driver has been proposed for Wine, which allows you to run applications using GDI and OpenGL / DirectX through Wine directly in a Wayland-based environment, without using the XWayland layer and without removing Wine's binding to the X11 protocol. The driver adds support for Vulkan and multi-monitor setups.
- Microsoft has implemented the ability to run Linux applications with a graphical interface in environments based on the WSL2 subsystem (Windows Subsystem for Linux). For the output, the RAIL-Shell composite manager is used, which uses the Wayland protocol and is based on the Weston codebase.
Finally, for those who are interested in being able to test this new version, they can download the source code for compilation from the following link.