Red Hat Is Hiring So Linux Can Finally Have Good HDR Display Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Red Hat Is Hiring So Linux Can Finally Have Good HDR Display Support

One of the areas where Linux has struggled on the desktop has been around HDR (high dynamic range) display support while that will hopefully be addressed in the coming months with Red Hat hiring an engineer to focus on that problem...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Red-Hat-Hiring-For-Linux-HDR

[wswartzendruber]

I wonder if HLG will be supported. I wonder if HDR monitors even do HLG.

[You-]

I dont know why HLG was even invented the way it was.

The idea is great - you can progressively improve quality in an organic manner without resorting to different streams.

However it can only the spectrum "above" SDR and not below, so you cant get greater contrast in darkness.

They should have started progressive enhancement from allowing the darkness, especially as no broadcaster was using anything that would automatically upscale into HLG anyway.

(I would love to see the usual Red Hat haters post in this topic. Find flaws and blame for why Red Hat is doing this development.)

[Britoid]

I wonder if this is because a film studio using RHEL needs HDR?

[cjcox]

I wonder if this is because a film studio using RHEL needs HDR?

The only thing that comes to mind is "bad choice". RHEL? For desktop?

[tomas]

BTW, this HDR feature will be wayland exclusive. More info from Christian Schallers post here

https://blogs.gnome.org/uraeus/2021/09/16/cool-happenings-in-fedora-workstation-land/

And no, despite what some people claim, X11 does not support HDR and it probably never will. I think that from this point going forward, this will be increasingly common. We will see features being added that only work with Wayland, which is natural after all. Wayland and associated technologies like pipewire for screencasting and libei for emulated inputs are closing the feature gap to X11 and once this is done we will see new capabilities and features that build upon wayland that will not be brought to X11.
It also looks increasingly likely that wlroots will be the defacto building blocks for future wayland compositors. We already have Sway, Wayfire, Valves Gamescope, KwinFT, Phosh and some others that are built on wlroots.

[stormcrow]

The only thing that comes to mind is "bad choice". RHEL? For desktop?

It's obvious. Because even $200 - $300 monitors have HDR-10 now, and Linux's support is abysmal. It's not even all that great for HiDPI. Studios are more likely to use Macs or Windows front ends with Linux compute cluster back ends.

[ChristianSchaller]

I wonder if this is because a film studio using RHEL needs HDR?

That is in fact an important part of the motivation, but also efforts like Red Hats new car infotainment effort contributes to wanting to see this happen.

[ChristianSchaller]

It's obvious. Because even $200 - $300 monitors have HDR-10 now, and Linux's support is abysmal. It's not even all that great for HiDPI. Studios are more likely to use Macs or Windows front ends with Linux compute cluster back ends.

Actually almost all studios use Linux for the desktop.

[Britoid]

That is in fact an important part of the motivation, but also efforts like Red Hats new car infotainment effort contributes to wanting to see this happen.

Any specific film studio requesting this? like Pixar?

I can't see why HDR would be useful in a car?