Linux really has come a long way
Linux really has come a long way
I just installed EndeavorOS on an HP Spectre360 that’s roughly 2 years old. I am honestly surprised at how easy it went. If you google it, you’ll get a lot of “lol good luck installing linux on that” type posts - so I was ready for a battle.
Turned off secure boot and tpm. Booted off a usb stick. Live environment, check. Start installer and wipe drive. Few minutes later I’m in. Ok let’s find out what’s not working…
WiFi check. Bluetooth check. Sound check (although a little quiet). Keyboard check. Screen resolution check. Hibernates correctly? Check. WTF I can’t believe this all works out the box. The touchscreen? Check. The stylus pen check. Flipping the screen over to a tablet check. Jesus H.
Ok, everything just works. Huh. Who’d have thunk?
Install programs, log into accounts, jeez this laptop is snappier than on windows. Make things pretty for my wife and install some fun games and stuff.
Finished. Ez. Why did I wait so long? Google was wrong - it was cake.
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I don't know when the last time you used Wayland was but in Plasma 6 I wouldn't say it "breaks other things." Before Plasma 6 I had plenty of problems and stuck on X11 but now it's great. So give it another try if you haven't recently. Every issue I used to have with it a year ago is gone.
As for the obscure parameters, as of Plasma 6.1 all you have to do for games is add
gamescope --hdr-enabledto the launch options for the necessary games. I don't think that's particularly difficult or obscure. You can also set up Steam itself to run in gamescope with --hdr-enabled and then every game will have it.For HDR movies/TV/YouTube you can copy/paste the necessary options into your mpv.conf and then forget about it. It's a one-time thing and then it works forever.
The biggest place HDR is missing is in Firefox, but Firefox doesn't have HDR on Windows either so that's not a Linux thing that's a Firefox thing.
In my opinion, HDR on the desktop isn't really there yet in general. Not just on Linux but on computers as a whole. HDR right now is really only for enthusiasts. The only monitors that properly support HDR1000 are $500+ for the entry level ones and $800+ for the decent ones. And you have to choose between miniLED with local dimming that don't have enough zones yet or OLEDs that get burn-in after a year.
I use Wayland exclusively, and I'm on up to date Arch. I'm talking about issues like screenshare issues with software, XDG desktop portal screenshare randomly breaking, steam notifications started positioning wrongly, steam's search stopped working (not 100% sure if those two are Wayland)...
I also tried running a game in game scope with HDR enabled, experimenting with options and env cars I found online, but it just didn't work. It was a sample size of one, but it was one game I wanted to play with friends, so I gave up in favor of just playing.
I also don't use MPV - I tried testing HDR with it, and it probably worked fine, but I don't have the right media to test it. (Side note: I should try mpv more seriously, but I haven't needed a video player much in general)
An extra annoyance is the fact that the LDR colors are quite off with HDR enabled on Plasma. I suspect this is the fault of the display or configuration, but it's still something I'd have to spend time researching and fixing, only to barely get any use out of it.
I haven't tried setting up steam itself in gamescope, but wouldn't it be limited to one window then? Could try it just to experience an HDR game, but otherwise it's a bit of a deal breaker.
You might be right about it being for enthusiasts in the first place, but I feel like there's a lot of people who will just pay up for a good screen that includes HDR, and on Windows I'd imagine you can just turn it on and start getting HDR from various sources - something that will surely become possible on Linux, but will take a while longer.
All that said, I'm not saying this to shit on Wayland or the developers' work on HDR. Not long ago HDR was something that just wasn't possible, and people were whining it'll take another 10 years at this rate. I'm excited to see the next update on this, as well as stable wider adoption, but that's the thing - that's something I'm anticipating, not something I'm gonna be using now.
I also tried running a game in game scope with HDR enabled, experimenting with options and env cars I found online, but it just didn't work.
To be fair I don't play a lot of games so I have only used HDR in Baldur's Gate 3 and Elden Ring but it worked perfectly in both so I am 2 for 2.
An extra annoyance is the fact that the LDR colors are quite off with HDR enabled on Plasma. I suspect this is the fault of the display or configuration, but it's still something I'd have to spend time researching and fixing, only to barely get any use out of it.
Plasma is supposed to be able to display SDR content correctly while HDR is enabled (which Windows 10 can't even do) but I can't actually test that properly because my monitor doesn't allow you to disable local dimming while in HDR mode so desktop stuff is completely unusable anyway. But if it doesn't look right it is probably something you can fix in your monitor's OSD.
I actually suspect the colors are correct and your normal colors are the incorrect ones. If your monitor has a wider gamut than sRGB you need to either A) set it to sRGB mode or B) use a calibrated ICC profile. If you aren't doing one of those then all of your colors are oversaturated. When you switch into HDR they are correct but it looks dull in comparison because you're used to them being wrong. It's a pretty common thing people experience on Windows as well. Not a lot of people realize their colors are horribly inaccurate by default.
Also, most people only turn HDR on when it's needed. You can add a keybind for it in Plasma's shortcut settings. The commands are
kscreen-doctor output.1.hdr.enableandkscreen-doctor output.1.hdr.disable. You may need to change the output number to the correct one.I haven't tried setting up steam itself in gamescope, but wouldn't it be limited to one window then?
Yep. I don't like it honestly. It's just an option if you want to set it up once rather than on a per-game basis.
but I feel like there's a lot of people who will just pay up for a good screen that includes HDR
That's the thing, even if you pay up there aren't actually any "good" HDR monitors. At least not in the same way as there are good HDR TVs. That's why some people use 48 inch TVs as monitors instead of actual monitors. There's a few monitors that are "good enough" but I wouldn't call any of them "good" right now. I am one of those people who considers anything below HDR1000 to not be real HDR. If you look at the rtings.com monitor table, out of 317 monitors they've reviewed only TWO of them actually hit the 1000 nits of real scene brightness needed for HDR1000. And both are miniLED with local dimming which have haloing and blooming because there's not enough dimming zones.
I have a feeling that by the time genuinely "good" HDR monitors exist (maybe 2-3 more years) that will be enough time for Linux programs to seamlessly support it instead of requiring launch arguments.
I do have my screen set to sRGB, and it is possible it's simply incorrect in SDR - when I enable HDR, everything looks greenish IIRC. As for color profiles, I think there might've been a built-in profile that was automatically enabled in the settings? It's possible I'm looking at horrible colors and not realizing, but at least I'm not doing things like a friend, who "optimized" his colors to improve gaming performance, and keeps complaining about colors being weird 😅
Color management is annoying, since you need a correct reference to verify anything, and I never looked into that.
As for the monitors, I specifically meant good screens, not screens with good HDR - I feel like if you go for a good screen these days, it'll likely have some HDR support, letting people simply try it out with little effort on Windows.
Oh if you have it set to sRGB mode then they should be accurate enough. That means it's something else. My previous monitor also had a green tint in HDR and that was just because that monitor's HDR was awful. If you want to check if it's the monitor itself, you could try it with Windows or attach a Roku/Chromecast/Firestick type device that can output HDR. If it's still green it's the monitor's fault and if it looks fine then it's Plasma's fault.
And yeah plenty of monitors have "some HDR support" it's just not real HDR unless it gets bright enough (and dark enough). The whole point of having a High Dynamic Range is that the range is well... high. Black should be black and extremely bright things should be extremely bright. A lot of monitors advertise "HDR400" or "HDR600" but don't have local dimming and only go to like 450 nits. At that level it's barely going to look different from SDR which a lot of people run at 300-400 nits anyway. The overall range of brightness is around 0.2-450 when it should be 0-1000. That 0.2 doesn't seem like a lot but if you've ever seen a completely black image in a dark room you know how not-black that is. Which is why OLED and local dimming are so important for HDR.