There is a lot of work as usual with these new alpha releases, especially on the Mutter side a number of notable updates for when acting as a Wayland compositor. Below is a look at some of the changes that caught my attention.
Mutter 42 Alpha has:
- Allowing input events to happen at full-rate rather than being limited to the monitor refresh rate.
- Support for AGBR and XBGR formats with DMA-BUF.
- Support for the Wayland DMA-BUF buffer feedback extension for improved multi-GPU support around direct scanout handling.
- Mutter also now considers Wayland sub-surfaces for direct scanout abilities , which notably helps Firefox among other software.
- Preferring GBM over EGLStreams where possible such as on the latest NVIDIA proprietary driver.
- Support for EGL_KHR_partial_update for more efficient screen updates. Separately, Mutter also has improved damage handling.
- Hold gestures have been added.
- Improved on-screen keyboard handling under X11.
- Mutter on Wayland now allows clients to maximize windows regardless of constraints.
- Crash fixes and memory leak fixes.
See the full list of changes for the Mutter 42 Alpha.
GNOME 42 Alpha changes include items such as:
- Improved window tracking.
- Support for extensions to opt-in to running on lock/login-screen action.
- The screen magnifier will try better to avoid offscreen rendering.
The full list of GNOME Shell changes can be viewed here .
Following the alpha, the GNOME 42 Beta is expected for mid-February while the official GNOME 42 desktop update is penciled in for 23 March.