Sway 1.8-rc1 Wayland Compositor Brings More Secure Screen Lockers, Improved Vulkan Code

The first release candidate of the Sway 1.8 Wayland compositor is now available for testing.

The ext-session-lock-v1 protocol allows for a privileged Wayland client to lock the session and display arbitrary graphics while the session is locked. The client remains responsible for performing authentication and informing the compositor when it should be unlocked. The compositor also has the option of restricting the protocol to a special client launched by the compositor itself or expose it to all privileged clients if so desired.

Sway 1.8-rc1 also adds the "output unplug" command to remove virtual outputs, support for libinput's new high resolution scroll wheel events is now supported. The libinput "disable while trackpointing" functionality is also now wired up.

Sway 1.8-rc1 also brings various improvements to its Vulkan renderer.

Rounding out the major features is xdg-activation-v1 protocol support for more reliable workspace matching when launching new clients. Among the bug fixes and other changes is also supporting CAP_SYS_NICE on Linux to improve scheduling.

Downloads and more details on the Sway 1.8-rc1 Wayland compositor release via SwayWM On GitHub.