Linux @lemmy.ml mr_MADAFAKA @lemmy.ml 9 mo. ago

New GNOME Mutter Code Prepares Fractional Scaling For XWayland

www.phoronix.com New GNOME Mutter Code Prepares Fractional Scaling For XWayland

37 comments

I feel like GNOME developers need to drop what they’re doing immediately and focus on making fractional scaling usable. Hi-DPI scaling is everywhere nowadays from TVs to laptop monitors, not supporting it properly is a massive problem for all affected users.

I’d switch to Linux pretty quickly if they made using my damn laptop a usable experience without dealing with blurry apps or having to use a microscope to read text.
- kde already has good fractional scaling, time to switch?
  
  I really like the GNOME app ecosystem, I like KDE too but I’m not sure I’d make it my default desktop environment.
  
  But then you have bad touchpad gestures... 😅
- This is exactly what this change is about. Most blurry apps are blurry because they don't support Wayland (yet/by default) and are running using XWayland.
  
  The only Wayland native software where I had problems with fractional scaling is Qt WebEngine which doesn't handle scaling correctly.
- Yeah also no idea why XWayland is a problem, in general their fractional scaling is hidden, and when enabling it everything is blurry.
  
  KDE works really well, for a long time, for Wayland and XWayland.
  
  Meanwhile Windows 11... idk.
  
  Windows 11 just has a fuckin grand mal seizure whenever you move a window from a scaled monitor to a non-scaled monitor.
- Fractional scaling has been perfectly functional on Gnome's Wayland implementation for some time already.
  
  I’m guessing you’ve never used an electron app before?
Still no VRR baked into version 46 is a bummer.
- It is. But every week I see they've been doing work on it.
  
  Apparently there's been an issue in which exiting some fullscreen programs causes the cursor framerate to come out of sync with the content on the display, causing cursor flicker.
  
  I think Plasma also had this issue, but pushed the feature anyway then ironed out the kinks while it was in production. Now it works pretty well.
  
  Gnome, sometimes frustratingly, doesn't really release things until they think they're perfect and as bug-free as possible.
  
  And I get it, and agree, it's led to Gnome being ridiculously polished and about as bug-free as an up-to-date DE can get.
  
  But sometimes I'm just like damn Gnome this must be slowing down your development
  
  Plasma never had this issue in any release, VRR has worked exactly the same since it was introduced until Plasma 6 (where there's some improvements for the "always" mode)
- Other than games, what are the benefits of variable refresh rate?
  
  Adjusting the refresh rate to the performance of the desktop is one.
  
  I also heard it would make it easier to manage multiple monitors sporting different refresh rates, although I haven't had issues with that personally.
  
  Maybe it could be integrated into other difficult to run 3D graphics workloads, like CAD or 3D design work?
  
  But yeah pretty much just games tbh
  
  It's mainly for games of course.
  
  It's also good for video, as it can play videos at the highest possible Hz multiple of the video's FPS. So for example 24 FPS video could be played back with 144 Hz, 25 FPS with 125 Hz etc. VRR isn't technically required for this as many non-VRR monitors support different video modes with different fixed Hz as well, but the transition between Hz is seamless (no need to change video mode).
  
  Other than breathing, what are the benefits of lungs?
  
  Some people just wanna breathe. Does there need to be another reason?
- Tbh I always disable VRR because I find the flicker in games and full screen video way too distracting. At first I thought it was my previous VA monitor but the exact same thing happens on my OLED.
  
  This isn't normal though, it shouldn't flicker.
This is the best summary I could come up with:

A merge request was opened this week for plumbing fractional scaling support for XWayland clients running on the GNOME Mutter compositor.

Jonas Dreßler opened a merge request with a patch from Jonas Ådah that has been working on the functionality for allowing scaling-aware XWayland clients to scale themselves using the scale-monitor-framebuffers functionality.

The patch explains: "When monitor framebuffers are scaled, this special cases Xwayland and sends output regions in a way that Xwayland think everything is N times as large as the logical region, where N is the ceil of the max monitor scale.

Dreßler noted in the merge request that the coordinate space conversion has been working out well.

Being past the feature freeze for GNOME 46, short of it being unexpectedly allowed as a late addition, it won't be wrapped up until GNOME 47 in September.

Similarly, also missing the feature freeze is the GNOME Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) functionality.

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