AMD Continues Working Toward HDR Display Support For The Linux Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: AMD Continues Working Toward HDR Display Support For The Linux Desktop

One of the rather elusive items on the Linux desktop is High Dynamic Range (HDR) display support... There's been code in the works for years but across desktops and drivers, it's still a long-term effort getting HDR support on the Linux desktop. Even going back to 2016, with NVIDIA's cross-platform driver code the Linux desktop remained the bottleneck. There is at least some ongoing work to address this long-term issue with AMD this week presenting on the topic...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/AMD-2022-Linux-HDR-Display-Hard

[Danny3]

Nice to hear that AMD still continues to try to bring HDR support to Linux!
I don't understand why doesn't Intel joins them in this endeavor as it's something that their users will benefit too from it.
And I think also Valve and Red Hat should join AMD as this will benefit both videos but also games!
I'm not saying anything about Nvidia as they will probably try to be assholes again and try to invent another interface that works only with their GPUs and drivers.
Of course it would be cool if KDE and Gnome developers jump on this too as other DE developers don't care about Wayland.
Since it's pretty unlikely that these come together and solve the HDR problem in a reasonable time, I wonder now if I can somehow passthrough the GPU's HDMI port to a Windows virtual machine and push a movie with its HDR metadata from there with the help of MPC-HC+MadVr like I did it in the past with Windows 7 on bare metal plus these two.
I think I heard someone being able to do it but I don't know where and I don't know how to do it if it's possible.

[_r00t-]

Nice to hear that AMD still continues to try to bring HDR support to Linux!
I don't understand why doesn't Intel joins them in this endeavor as it's something that their users will benefit too from it.
And I think also Valve and Red Hat should join AMD as this will benefit both videos but also games!
I'm not saying anything about Nvidia as they will probably try to be assholes again and try to invent another interface that works only with their GPUs and drivers.
Of course it would be cool if KDE and Gnome developers jump on this too as other DE developers don't care about Wayland.
Since it's pretty unlikely that these come together and solve the HDR problem in a reasonable time, I wonder now if I can somehow passthrough the GPU's HDMI port to a Windows virtual machine and push a movie with its HDR metadata from there with the help of MPC-HC+MadVr like I did it in the past with Windows 7 on bare metal plus these two.
I think I heard someone being able to do it but I don't know where and I don't know how to do it if it's possible.

Well said. HDR.. RustCL and a lot of other features that I hope will bring many commercial applications to Linux 🙂

[ms178]

I still miss 10-bit color support on Linux with Steam.

[Anux]

And I think also Valve and Red Hat should join AMD as this will benefit both videos but also games!

Watch the talk, he mentions some devs from Redhat and Wayland because there need to be changes/extensions in the protocol.

Since it's pretty unlikely that these come together and solve the HDR problem in a reasonable time, I wonder now if I can somehow passthrough the GPU's HDMI port to a Windows virtual machine and push a movie with its HDR metadata from there with the help of MPC-HC+MadVr like I did it in the past with Windows 7 on bare metal plus these two.

I'm already playing HDR games in a Win VM for years (search for vga passthrough) and someone on phoronix mentioned that mpv can play full screen HDR under Linux (not shure about hard and software specifics).

It all sounds pretty great but Harry Wentland mentioned multiple times that he doesn't know much and don't cares about ICC profiles. But I think that this is essential to make a new standard that doesn't need a full redesign in the coming future.

Also a problem he doesn't touch is different frame rates or even VRR which will be a problem with direct scanout.

[mppix]

Nice to hear that AMD still continues to try to bring HDR support to Linux!
I don't understand why doesn't Intel joins them in this endeavor as it's something that their users will benefit too from it.
And I think also Valve and Red Hat should join AMD as this will benefit both videos but also games!
I'm not saying anything about Nvidia as they will probably try to be assholes again and try to invent another interface that works only with their GPUs and drivers.
Of course it would be cool if KDE and Gnome developers jump on this too as other DE developers don't care about Wayland.
Since it's pretty unlikely that these come together and solve the HDR problem in a reasonable time, I wonder now if I can somehow passthrough the GPU's HDMI port to a Windows virtual machine and push a movie with its HDR metadata from there with the help of MPC-HC+MadVr like I did it in the past with Windows 7 on bare metal plus these two.
I think I heard someone being able to do it but I don't know where and I don't know how to do it if it's possible.

https://wiki.gnome.org/Initiatives/HDR

This is well in progress but there is a lot to do..

[MastaG]

Yes you can do pci passthrough and pass your GPU to your Windows VM and there are also ways for getting HDR output working when using applications such as Kodi that utilize your video card directly with GBM.
However I think it's unacceptable that we don't have it available in the major DE's like Gnome and KDE.
It should have been there last year already.

[NeoMorpheus]

Saw the title and was excited!

Read the article and left sad.

Meanwhile back to Win 11+Playnite for my gaming PC, instead of SteamOS 3.

[Chugworth]

The problem with HDR is that it's easy to be fooled. On my television, I can't really know for sure if I'm viewing HDR content unless its menu specifically says that it is. I imagine on a laptop with no display indicator for HDR, it would be quite easy to think you're running with HDR when you're really not. That would be one thing to look out for when HDR arrives in Linux. Hopefully there will be some log entries or something that shows HDR is actually active on the display.

[brucethemoose]

Watch the talk, he mentions some devs from Redhat and Wayland because there need to be changes/extensions in the protocol.


I'm already playing HDR games in a Win VM for years (search for vga passthrough) and someone on phoronix mentioned that mpv can play full screen HDR under Linux (not shure about hard and software specifics).

It all sounds pretty great but Harry Wentland mentioned multiple times that he doesn't know much and don't cares about ICC profiles. But I think that this is essential to make a new standard that doesn't need a full redesign in the coming future.

Also a problem he doesn't touch is different frame rates or even VRR which will be a problem with direct scanout.

Yeah thats the catch. *Supporting* HDR and actually displaying content properly are 2 entirely different things, hence the latter is still an issue on Windows.


Getting MPV to properly tonemap or even just pass through metadata to your TV is tricky, if not impossible with stuff like Dolby Vision.


I get why the linux community has ignored HDR for so long though. The 2 big applications are Windows games and video streams/blu-rays with DRM. Though HDR mastering would be useful in stuff like Blender, I don't think workstation demand is huge.