GNOME 40's Mutter Adds Atomic Mode-Setting Support

Adding to the list of big ticket changes for GNOME 40 is Mutter now supporting atomic mode-setting.

The popular mainline DRM/KMS drivers for years have generally supported atomic mode-setting while finally with Mutter 40 the bits are coming into place for GNOME. Atomic mode-setting is much cleaner than the older legacy mode-setting path, principally allows for testing of modes prior to applying, can reduce flickering in some instances, and also tends to be faster.

The new Mutter atomic mode-setting code has been tested so far across Intel, Nouveau, and AMDGPU as well as the EGLStream legacy back-end. Other functionality pertaining to display features has also been tested and in good shape. The one exception is virtual machines not currently doing the atomic mode-setting route for now but retaining the legacy mode-setting support.

More details on the now-merged atomic mode-setting support via the merge request that was honored on Friday.