After six months of development, a stable release of the Wayland 1.21 protocol, inter-process communication mechanism, and libraries has been presented. The 1.21 branch is backward compatible at the API and ABI levels with the 1.x releases and primarily contains bug fixes and minor protocol updates. A few days ago, a corrective update for the composite server Weston 10.0.1 was created, which is being developed within a separate development cycle. Weston provides code and working examples for using Wayland in desktop environments and embedded solutions.
Key changes in the protocol:
- Support for the wl_pointer.axis_value120 event has been added to the wl_pointer interface for high-precision scrolling on high-resolution scroll wheel mice.
- New functions wl_signal_emit_mutable (a variant of wl_signal_emit that supports correct operation when one signal handler removes another) and wl_global_get_version (which allows querying the overall API version) have been added to the server.
- Development has been moved to the GitLab platform using the FreeDesktop.org project infrastructure.
- Cleaning and restructuring of the cursor configuration structures and functions have been carried out.
- The wl_shell protocol has been marked as optional for implementation in composite servers and declared deprecated. It is recommended to use the xdg_shell protocol for creating custom shells, which provides an interface for interacting with surfaces as if they were windows, enabling the movement, minimizing, maximizing, resizing, and other manipulations of surfaces on the screen.
- The requirements for the build system have been increased; the Meson toolchain of at least version 0.56 is now required for building. The flag 'c_std=c99' has been included during compilation.
Changes in applications, desktop environments, and distributions related to Wayland:
- In KDE, there are plans in 2022 to make the Plasma desktop session based on the Wayland protocol suitable for everyday use by a significant portion of users. Support for Wayland has been significantly improved in KDE Plasma releases 5.24 and 5.25, including support for color depths greater than 8-bit per channel, implementation of 'DRM leasing' mode for virtual reality headsets, and support for taking screenshots and minimizing all windows.
- In Fedora 36, systems with proprietary NVIDIA drivers default to using a GNOME session based on the Wayland protocol, which was previously utilized only with open drivers.
- In Ubuntu 22.04, for most configurations, the desktop session based on the Wayland protocol is enabled by default, but the X server is retained as the default for systems with proprietary NVIDIA drivers. A PPA repository has been proposed for Ubuntu, containing the qtwayland package from the Qt 5.15.3 branch, which includes fixes related to improving Wayland protocol support, accompanied by the KDE project.
- The release of the Sway 1.7 user environment, using Wayland, has been published.
- In the nightly builds of Firefox, Wayland support is enabled by default. Firefox has fixed a threading blocking issue, established scaling for pop-up windows, and ensured the functioning of the context menu during spell check. According to statistics from the Firefox Telemetry service, which analyzes data resulting from telemetry submissions and user interactions with Mozilla's servers, the share of Linux users of Firefox operating in environments based on the Wayland protocol does not yet exceed 10%.
- The release of the Phosh 0.15.0 mobile device shell, based on GNOME technologies and utilizing the Phoc composite server running on top of Wayland, has been published.
- Valve continues to develop the Gamescope compositor (previously known as steamcompmgr), which uses the Wayland protocol and is applied in the SteamOS 3 operating system.
- The release of the DDX component XWayland 22.1.0, enabling the launch of the X.Org Server to facilitate the execution of X11 applications in Wayland-based environments, has been published. The new version adds support for the DRM Lease protocol, which is used to create a stereoscopic image with different buffers for the left and right eye when outputting to virtual reality headsets.
- The labwc project develops a composite server for Wayland with features reminiscent of the Openbox window manager (the project is presented as an attempt to create an alternative to Openbox for Wayland).
- The first release of LWQt, a variant of the LXQt user shell based on Wayland, is available.
- Collabora, as part of the wxrd project, is developing a new composite server based on Wayland for virtual reality systems. Wayland-based server for virtual reality systems.
- The release of the Wine-wayland 7.7 project, allowing the use of Wine in Wayland-based environments without the need for XWayland and X11 components, has been published.
- Aaron Plattner, one of the leading developers of proprietary NVIDIA drivers, has published a report on the status of Wayland support in NVIDIA drivers.
- The release of the compositor server Weston 10.0 adds support for the libseat library, which provides functions for managing access to shared input and output devices, as well as components for color management that allow for color conversion, gamma correction, and working with color profiles.
- The porting of the MATE desktop for Wayland has continued.
- System76 is working on creating a new user environment called COSMIC, which utilizes Wayland.
- Microsoft has implemented the ability to run Linux graphical interface applications in environments based on the WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux). The RAIL-Shell compositor, which uses the Wayland protocol and is based on the Weston codebase, is employed for output.
- Wayland is used by default on mobile platforms Plasma Mobile, Sailfish, and webOS Open Source Edition,
Source: opennet.ru
