The Most Interesting Google GSoC 2018 Projects: QEMU Vulkan, Virtual KMS, Nautilus GTK4

Google has announced the accepted student projects for this year's Google Summer of Code. As usual, there is an interesting mix of open-source software projects across the hundreds (or rather thousands) of applicants. Here's a look at the most interesting initiatives we found when going through the list.

The complete list of accepted GSoC 2018 projects can be found via this page.

Below is the most interesting GSoC 2018 projects I found when going through the different listings.

X.Org Foundation

- Improving the Linux DRM GPU scheduler (the AMDGPU scheduler spun out to DRM_SCHED) to better balance load by allowing the scheduler to feed multiple hardware queues from one software queue.

- A virtual KMS module so it could be used by headless systems or other cases where there isn't a native hardware KMS driver available for kernel mode-setting.

VideoLAN / VLC

- Qt interface redesign.

Wine

- Implementing missing Direct3D APIs.

- Automated game benchmarks.

Linux Foundation

- Various improvements to WireGuard.

ScummVM

- Implementing the engine used by Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites, two games produced close to three decades ago.

QEMU

- Vulkan support for guest VMs along the same lines as VirGL to OpenGL.

LibreOffice

- Revamped print dialog.

- Improving the Notebookbar.

- Improving LibreOffice for Android.

- Taking care of "100 paper cuts" for the UI/UX experience.

KDE

- Fwupd integration in KDE Discover.

- Improved touchpad/mice handling with libinput.

Haiku OS

- XFS file-system support.

GNU

- Systemd unit files for GNU Shepherd.

- Rewriting the Guix build daemon in Guile Scheme.

GNOME

- Porting the Nautilus file-manager to GTK+ 4.

- Improving the user-interface to Pitivi.

Gentoo

- Making the Rust language support a "first class citizen" on Gentoo.

- Portage-powered Android.

Fedora

- Improving the Fedora Android App.

- Developing "Fedora Happiness Packets" that is: "Happiness Packets encourages and makes it easier for people to send positive feedback to their peers (anonymously if they like). This project extends Happiness Packets by giving a Fedora Badge to anyone who sends a Happiness Packet to another contributor."

Debian

- A calendar database of social events and conferences.