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.

Longtime AMD Linux kernel developer Harry Wentland presented yesterday at the X.Org Developers' Conference (XDC 2022) on the Linux desktop HDR support in a talk entitled "Is HDR Harder?"

The talk goes over the complexities of supporting HDR displays on Linux, the current architecture with Wayland versus what ideally needs to happen, and the DRM/KMS API that ultimately needs to come about for making this a reality. Plus the DRM/KMS API needs to be appropriate for cross driver vendor usage. Happening today will be more of a developer talk about the possible API.

For those wanting to learn more about the HDR complexities for the Linux desktop pertaining to the display drivers, Harry's presentation is embedded below and there is also the PDF slide deck.