Experimental VRR Support Might Still Land For GNOME 46

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Experimental VRR Support Might Still Land For GNOME 46

The long in-development work for Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) support plumbed into GNOME's Mutter compositor might still make it for the GNOME 46 desktop release due out this month. It's still being treated as an experimental feature at this point but a feature freeze exception is being sought to allow its inclusion this release rather than waiting for GNOME 47 in the autumn...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/GNOME-46-VRR-Exception

[kiffmet]

At this point, it doesn't really matter. What's another major software version of delay when you're already 3 years late to the party?…

[scottishduck]

It really feels like KDE is rapidly innovating while GNOME is entirely stagnant.

[spicfoo]

It really feels like KDE is rapidly innovating while GNOME is entirely stagnant.

It feels like Sway is rapidly innovating with KDE is entirely stagnant.

[johnandmegh]

It really feels like KDE is rapidly innovating while GNOME is entirely stagnant.

I absolutely love the philosophy and approach of KDE, and think Plasma is the most beautiful and functional desktop interface in modern computing...but in actual usage on my desktop, GNOME+Wayland is smooth and easy, while Plasma+Wayland has too many papercuts that strip away the joy of the design and the capabilities. Compositor crashes, menus popping up in the wrong places, clunky remote desktop tools, etc.

It may be true that KDE is rapidly innovating, but that sometimes comes at the cost of many different things feeling 80% done vs. fewer things feeling 100% done. If the additional 80% items are ones that benefit everybody, then perhaps it's worth it...I question if it's worth it for features that are surely niche in the overall computing landscape, though? (Such as VRR)

[Hibbelharry]

It really feels like KDE is rapidly innovating while GNOME is entirely stagnant.

Why? It wasn't too long ago KDE added vrr to it's wayland session. It's just not that Gnome is years later....

[aviallon]

Both feature freeze exceptions have been approved.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/freeze-breaks/-/issues/175

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/freeze-breaks/-/issues/174

[ahrs]

At this point, it doesn't really matter. What's another major software version of delay when you're already 3 years late to the party?…

They do have to land it at some point.

[You-]

Both feature freeze exceptions have been approved.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Releng/freeze-breaks/-/issues/175

https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Relen...s/-/issues/174

Still waiting for the string freeze request: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Teams/Trans...n/-/issues/122

[You-]

The development of VRR in mutter has been interesting to follow.

An interesting complication has been limited bursts of time the developer had to put into the feature, which often resulted in him becoming unavailable at inopportune moments.

The merge request had been rebased by other developers prior to gnome 45 but the VRR lead developer did not have time to push it forward. Then in gnome 46 cycle, it was decided to get the merge request in early to avoid issues and identify problems, but the VRR developer was not available at the time.

I am pretty sure I saw that happen once or twice before too, where the merge request was not ready at the last minute due to other reasons.

Even more recently, he is currently undergoing personal life changes that have made him less available for the last two weeks, which have complicated developers.

Kudos to him for pushing through, I suspect many others would have stopped when hit by multiple life issues and left the feature incomplete.