GNOME 41 Release Candidate Arrives With Many Improvements

[finalzone]

- GNOME Settings Daemon will now automatically enable the power-saver platform profile when running low on battery.
- GNOME Settings Daemon will also now dim the screen quicker by default to save power.

A welcome improvment.

- Mutter has a number of fixes, including crash fixes. Plus Mutter brings better auto-rotation support and various low-level improvements.

That is an overdue for convertible devices considering the regression on version 40 compared 3.38. Current workaround was the use of add-ons that reverted the change. Will try once Fedora 35 Beta get updated.

[q2dg]

I just want Gnome Boxes to let me make bridged networks. Just that

[nabero]

But... but... I thought only kwin_wayland had crashes and missing features! Wasn't Mutter supposed to be the one that was perfect aside from needing performance optimization?

I think those crashes only happen when broken KDE apps are used under Gnome.

[caligula]

Hopefully a fix to make Gnome Photos usable on large quantities of photos.

The file manager is still unusable for folders with lots of pictures. Rendering the preview of each picture will adjust the scroll bar position. So annoying.

[caligula]

I think those crashes only happen when broken KDE apps are used under Gnome.

Well, apps like OBS Studio also disable Wayland portal support by default when run on GNOME.

[Black_Fox]

I'm a KDE+nVidia+X11 user who's fed up with pro-GNOME fanboys non-productively ragging on KDE every thread they can.

There are plenty of sane GNOME users who don't pollute KDE threads, even when they feel it's unfair (i.e. KDE fanboys shitting on GNOME in every GNOME news thread). Please be a kind human being, block the trolls and don't act like them. There's a high portion of good stuff coming from you specifically so I don't want to follow my own advice in this case.

[MrCooper]

Well, apps like OBS Studio also disable Wayland portal support by default when run on GNOME.

Not sure why though, it works fine here.

FWIW, it works out of the box with the Flatpak version of OBS Studio. With a native version, unsetting environment variables which reveal it's a GNOME session does the trick.

[hansdegoede]

"Plus Mutter brings better auto-rotation support and various low-level improvements."

That is an overdue for convertible devices considering the regression on version 40 compared 3.38. Current workaround was the use of add-ons that reverted the change. Will try once Fedora 35 Beta get updated.

One of the changse in GNOME 40 is that it has started honering SW_TABLET_MODE reporting (when available) and will disable auto-rotation on convertibles in laptop-mode (SW_TABLET_MODE=0). But on some devices SW_TABLET_MODE reporting is broken and it always reads as 0, causing auto-rotation to not work at all. So if auto-rotation does not work at all for you, please check "sudo libinput debug-events" output and see if maybe SW_TABLET_MODE is being reported as 0 and never changes.

If this indeed is the case, first of all please try a 5.14 kernel, most distros have add-on repos to test the latest official ("vanilla") kernel. If that does not help, please email me at [email protected] and then I'll work with you to get this fixed in the kernel.

[MrCooper]

Well, apps like OBS Studio also disable Wayland portal support by default when run on GNOME.

Turns out this is because Qt 5 does not use its Wayland backend by default if it detects a GNOME session, see https://github.com/obsproject/obs-studio/pull/4496. So, another workaround is

QT_QPA_PLATFORM=wayland obs

Still not sure why OBS hides its Pipewire plugin when Qt uses its X11 backend, in theory it should work fine regardless.

[finalzone]

One of the changse in GNOME 40 is that it has started honering SW_TABLET_MODE reporting (when available) and will disable auto-rotation on convertibles in laptop-mode (SW_TABLET_MODE=0). But on some devices SW_TABLET_MODE reporting is broken and it always reads as 0, causing auto-rotation to not work at all. So if auto-rotation does not work at all for you, please check "sudo libinput debug-events" output and see if maybe SW_TABLET_MODE is being reported as 0 and never changes.

If this indeed is the case, first of all please try a 5.14 kernel, most distros have add-on repos to test the latest official ("vanilla") kernel. If that does not help, please email me at [email protected] and then I'll work with you to get this fixed in the kernel.

Thanks Hans. Will do. I forgot to mention the issue affected GNOME Wayland as the auto-rotation works fine on GNOME on X.