Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) is one of the most important pieces of open source for Linux gamers, as it's the tech used by various game engines and games. It's also about to continue changing the game for the Linux desktop in the upcoming version.
What does it actually do? It's a cross-platform development library designed to provide low level access to audio, keyboard, mouse, joystick, and graphics hardware.
It has been announced that the SDL 2.0.22 will default to Wayland, preferring it over X11. This is another big step towards Wayland properly being a replacement for the old and crusty X11 everywhere. With this we might end up seeing more games and applications be native to Wayland, rather than having to run through XWayland.
Developer Ryan C. Gordon (also known as Icculus) mentioned on Twitter: "If you or your distro has not supplied a libdecor, you absolutely want to get that in place by around March 2022". A lot of the heavy lifting involved was done by Ethan Lee (also known as flibitijibibo), who mentioned on Twitter that almost all of the work involved was funded by sponsors of their GitHub.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
TheRiddick 28 Jan
Wayland still has loads of little problems that all add up.. X11 does too but actually has solutions to them for the most case!
Last edited by TheRiddick on 28 January 2022 at 5:18 am UTC
Quoting: TheRiddickDefaulting to X11 until they get full display control and management integrated in Wayland... it still not possible to execute display adjustments or ICC controls correctly like how xgamma or xrandr allowed (often made available in WM settings or GUI tools).
Wayland still has loads of little problems that all add up.. X11 does too but actually has solutions to them for the most case!
Those sound more like problems for a desktop environment than for a game.
Quoting: ZapporQuoting: TheRiddickDefaulting to X11 until they get full display control and management integrated in Wayland... it still not possible to execute display adjustments or ICC controls correctly like how xgamma or xrandr allowed (often made available in WM settings or GUI tools).
Wayland still has loads of little problems that all add up.. X11 does too but actually has solutions to them for the most case!
Those sound more like problems for a desktop environment than for a game.
Indirectly impacts gaming however: not all games are fullscreen where some of this might be bypassed, and games are generally speaking launched from within a desktop environment / window manager. Even if the game is fullscreen, some of the screen settings applied directly through the likes of xgamma and xrandr are picked up anyway because "fullscreen" these days is closer to full screen sized borderless window.
Nothing resolvable by SDL2 of course, but it's important for Wayland adoption that such things are fixed, which might in turn impact just how much development focus X11 and Wayland each receive in SDL2.
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