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Time for a little testing over the weekend, as the KDE team have released Plasma 6.2 Beta along with updated Plasma Wayland Protocols.

Some of the major changes include:

  • Turned on support for KWin's implementation of the Wayland color management protocol.
  • Per-monitor brightness control.
  • Ability to override apps that are blocking sleep or screen locking.
  • Discover: Ability to shut down after applying an offline system update, not just reboot.
  • Full Sticky Keys support on Wayland.
  • Support for turning on the "autoscrolling" feature of the Libinput driver.

While not technically a "feature", it will also include the new once a year donation request pop-up that was covered recently here on GamingOnLinux.

See the release announcement for more.

For the Plasma Wayland Protocols 1.14.0 release the changes are:

  • Add a protocol for externally controlled display brightness.
  • Output device: add support for brightness in SDR mode.
  • Plasma-window: add client geometry + bump to v18.
  • Add warnings discouraging third party clients using internal desktop environment protocols.

Will you be jumping in to help test the next release?

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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11 comments

It looks like features are starting to creep in that, if I understand correctly, use Wayland to do things you couldn't do in X. Like, can X do per-monitor brightness?
TrainDoc Sep 13
It looks like features are starting to creep in that, if I understand correctly, use Wayland to do things you couldn't do in X. Like, can X do per-monitor brightness?
No I don't believe X can control per monitor brightness. Glad to see KDE going all in on Wayland.
vox Sep 13
It looks like features are starting to creep in that, if I understand correctly, use Wayland to do things you couldn't do in X. Like, can X do per-monitor brightness?
Proper freesync support was already implemented in wayland for some time. In multi-monitor setups specifically if I remember correctly. In X even if you have identical monitors, you can't have freesync working.
It looks like features are starting to creep in that, if I understand correctly, use Wayland to do things you couldn't do in X. Like, can X do per-monitor brightness?
Proper freesync support was already implemented in wayland for some time.
When I said "features creeping in" what I meant was, actual user-facing software like DEs was starting to implement Wayland features that are new features they couldn't have under X.
actual user-facing software like DEs was starting to implement Wayland features that are new features they couldn't have under X.
For me, the biggest one has been multiple monitors with different resolutions. Just flat-out doesn't work on X. Works great on KDE Wayland, GNOME Wayland, and COSMIC. That one's been around for a while, though.

The biggest one in this post is the color management protocol support. Which...I'm surprised KDE is enabling??
It looks like features are starting to creep in that, if I understand correctly, use Wayland to do things you couldn't do in X. Like, can X do per-monitor brightness?
No I don't believe X can control per monitor brightness. Glad to see KDE going all in on Wayland.
X11 does support per monitor brightness, just run
xrandr --output DP-2 --brightness 1.5
for example, and it will only apply the brightness on monitor DP-2.
For me, the biggest one has been multiple monitors with different resolutions. Just flat-out doesn't work on X. Works great on KDE Wayland, GNOME Wayland, and COSMIC. That one's been around for a while, though.

The biggest one in this post is the color management protocol support. Which...I'm surprised KDE is enabling??
What do you mean? you can just set different resolution, it works. Do you mean different dpi per monitor? qt supports it and kde does too on x11 (but in kde that per monitor dpi is hidden behind an environment variable for x11).
For me, the biggest one has been multiple monitors with different resolutions. Just flat-out doesn't work on X. Works great on KDE Wayland, GNOME Wayland, and COSMIC. That one's been around for a while, though.

The biggest one in this post is the color management protocol support. Which...I'm surprised KDE is enabling??
What do you mean? you can just set different resolution, it works. Do you mean different dpi per monitor? qt supports it and kde does too on x11 (but in kde that per monitor dpi is hidden behind an environment variable for x11).
I don't know, but I just flat out could not get my graphics tablet + my monitor to work on GNOME or KDE with correct resolutions on X11. That's why I was forced to switch to Wayland. Now I have a third monitor, so it's even more impossible.

My primary monitor is 4K. My graphics tablet is 1920x1080. My graphics tablet needs 150% scaling; my primary monitor needs 200% scaling.

Whether it's GNOME or KDE, having different scaling options for different monitors in X11 just doesn't work. It's not possible.

This is because, as far back as the Xinerama days, X does not understand the concept of multiple monitors. The way Xinerama works is by treating all monitors as a single extended monitor. Having multiple display scales for a single monitor doesn't make sense.

But I really really need that feature because otherwise, one of my three monitors will be too small or far too large.

(and in any case, Wayland is a better experience for me aside from this, with the major exception of color accuracy)
TheRiddick Sep 15
* Wayland color management protocol.

This another feature that only works on MESA drivers and not NVIDIA?
* Wayland color management protocol.

This another feature that only works on MESA drivers and not NVIDIA?
The protocol isn't even merged yet (which is why I'm surprised it's enabled by default??), but it does need implementations all across the stack. I can't find out whether NVIDIA has implemented anything for it yet.

Implementations in Vulkan might be enough.
bonkmaykr Sep 17
They still have not fixed the bug where KWin force-syncs itself to the XRandR lowest common refresh rate. They fixed it in Wayland back in 2020 and refuse to acknowledge it for X users despite older KDE versions working just fine on X... I think I will stick to Trinity, sorry. The lack of proper maitenance on Plasma X11 is not acceptable. Even if Wayland is the future.
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