Wayfire 0.5 Wayland Compositor Brings Latency Optimizations, More Protocols

Wayfire, a Wayland compositor inspired by the likes of Compiz with different desktop effects, is out today with a new feature release.

Perhaps most exciting with Wayfire 0.5 is the work done to improve (reduce) the latency. Wayfire now better tracks how much time it needs to draw a frame, support for the presentation time protocol, and other work. Aside from latency improvements, there are Wayland protocol additions for primary selection for allowing middle-click-paste to work plus the output-power-management protocol for better handling display output power management behavior.

Wayfire 0.5 also comes with a new "wayfire-plugins-extra" package that incorporates extra plugins like drawing water ripple-like effects on the desktop, forcing fullscreen of windows/applications, drawing lines and shapes on the screen as overlays, a desktop magnifier, and other extra features.

More details on these improvements and more for the Wayfire 0.5 Wayland compositor can be found via Wayfire.org.