GNOME 42 Lands DRM Privacy Screen Support

Now that Linux 5.17 has prepared DRM privacy screen support, the GNOME 42 is ready with its user-space side support for making use of this new standardized interface.

A growing number of newer laptops are having built-in electronic privacy screens for helping prevent others from viewing your screen contents. With Linux 5.17 the exposing of this support to user-space has been standardized for Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) / Kernel Mode-Setting (KMS) drivers plus there is x86-specific initialization code and other related infrastructure work for privacy screens. For user-space is a new privacy screen property for capable GPU/connector combinations so it can be easily toggled.

This DRM privacy screen support on Linux has been in the works for months and now for the recently closed Linux 5.17 merge window is in mainline and thus the DRM property is set in stone. As such, in time for March's GNOME 42 release is now the landing of their user-space side integration.

Privacy Screen integration is ready to go for GNOME 42.

This merge request to Mutter was merged today following the GNOME Settings Daemon support also being in place. This allows Mutter to monitor and toggle the privacy screen property, including hotkey handling.

DRM/KMS privacy screen support is now the latest on a growing list of changes for GNOME 42. GNOME 42.0 aims to be out as stable on 23 March, potentially within days of the Linux 5.17 stable release having the kernel-side support.