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With all the work going on right now to get Linux to properly support HDR, another patch set has landed to hopefully get some of it hooked up. This is the second attempt, after the first Request For Comments was sent in April.

The work as before is being done by Melissa Wen, Joshua Ashton and Harry Wentland with the purpose to "enhance AMD KMS color pipeline for Steam Deck/SteamOS by exposing the large set of color caps available in AMD display HW".

While the work right now is targeting Steam Deck / SteamOS with Gamescope, naturally this work will lend itself to the overall stack and getting it working elsewhere. This new patch set is different to before, as they've removed the KConfig option to instead keep it behind the driver-specific AMD_PRIVATE_COLOR property.

As a reminder, the Steam Deck work will be for external screen handling, since the Steam Deck itself does not have a HDR screen. Although, perhaps with a Steam Deck 2…

So hopefully we can start to see more upstream support for HDR and Colour Management begin to land soon, unless they need to adjust it some more.

In other related news, Xaver Hugl of KDE has been putting in plenty of work to get it all hooked up in Kwin and their blog post highlights some of the work going on there. As noted by Nate Graham's usual overview, the first parts of the work have landed in Plasma 6.0 for their Wayland session.

Lots of moving parts right now but very exciting to see.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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5 comments

CatKiller May 24, 2023
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Hopefully Nvidia & Intel won't drag their feet so we can have a vendor-neutral solution.


Last edited by CatKiller on 24 May 2023 at 1:23 pm UTC
elmapul May 24, 2023
QuoteAs a reminder, the Steam Deck work will be for external screen handling, since the Steam Deck itself does not have a HDR screen. Although, perhaps with a Steam Deck 2…

unless some other company try to sell an HDR screen mod for the deck.
ya know, some are already trying to sell screens with better color/resolution, so who knows?

the only negative thing here is a reminder that features like this appeared first on windows, this is not an incentive to migrate to linux its one less incentive to stay on windows instead.

not that im asking for "exclusive features" or anything like that but open source should/need to stay in the forefront of inovation otherwise no one will value it, it will always have this labeling of "alternative" and even worse, that word with an bad conotation.
ElectricPrism May 24, 2023
Fantastic news. I look forward to being able to do accurate color critical work on KDE.

It's a great time to be a professional using Linux in many aspects.
TheRiddick May 25, 2023
Yeah it has got to a point where NVIDIA is dragging behind now for sure.

I think Intel will adopt this quite fast given its MESA driver support is coming along.

Certainly as a 4090 owner, I do feel some buyers remorse given my card has a major bug under Wayland atm that hinders WL testing/usage. It's made worse by NVIDIA just ignoring the issue(s) while AMD Open drivers continue to get weekly fixes...
pleasereadthemanual May 25, 2023
Quoting: ElectricPrismIt's a great time to be a professional using Linux in many aspects.

Now we just need an image manipulation program that supports non-destructive editing, and Natron to port to Qt5/Python 3, but at least Nuke supports GNU/Linux anyway (not really a consumer/prosumer tool, though). Finding a viable replacement to After Effects on GNU/Linux is hard...I guess there's DaVinci Resolve Fusion, too.

On the other hand, GIMP's GTK3 port is done, they're working on properly supporting Wayland, and then they can work on the interesting fundamental stuff like vector shapes and other non-destructive editing features like smart objects and non-destructive effects. And previews for effects! A few more years and I can see GIMP being workable for professional use.

On the NLE side, Kdenlive is getting some big changes soon which will make quick adjustments much easier. There's still Lightworks for users who want a professional NLE.

I really want color accuracy for working with Darktable, which is a fantastic RAW processing program.

Audacity is being ported to a more modern toolkit, overall UX makeover, and is getting great new features, after Muse Group acquired the Audacity trademark and employed the Audacity team.

Running Affinity Creative Suite through WINE is finally starting to seem like a viable option, at least until GIMP gets those non-destructive editing features.

So, not too bad at all. Finding a good After Effects replacement has been tough for me, though. I recently stumbled across Enve, though I'm not sure this software will work either. It doesn't seem to be under active development anymore.

Work on high-level stuff in the compositor and kernel is important...but having great creative software for users to use seems like the bigger challenge currently.
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