GNOME 42.8 Enables Atomic Mode-Setting for NVIDIA/GBM, Improves Wayland and AMDGPU Support

Also brings improvements to GNOME Control Center, GNOME Bluetooth, and various core components.
GNOME 42.8

Jeremy Bicha announced today the release of GNOME 42.8 as the eighth maintenance update to the GNOME 42 desktop environment series, which is still supported until the upcoming GNOME 44 release hits the streets in late March 2023.

GNOME 42.8 is a pretty small update for those still using the GNOME 42 desktop on their GNU/Linux distribution. However, it brings an updated Mutter window and composite manager that disables client modifiers when the open-source AMDGPU driver is in use and enables atomic mode-setting for the NVIDIA graphics driver with GBM support.

Previous GNOME 42 releases denied using the atomic mode-setting with the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver because the mode-setting device was initiated before attempting to initialize the renderer because EGLStream-based page flipping is not compatible with atomic mode-setting.

In addition, the new Mutter release included in GNOME 42.8 better handles stage view updates without allocation and fixes window screenshots so they won’t be cut off at the bottom right anymore.

GNOME Shell has been updated as well to no longer allow Wayland popovers to block the Activities Overview, as well as to properly apply permissions for saved inhibited shortcuts, an issue that was present in the Fedora Linux 37 Workstation distribution, breaking key grabs and passing of keys to virtual machines or remote systems.

GNOME 42.8 also brings an updated GNOME Control Center app that features various improvements and fixes to the Wi-Fi, Online Accounts, About, Applications, Keyboard, Mouse, Power, Printers, Region, Cellular, Users, Search, Color, and Network pages.

Among the most interesting changes here, there’s the ability to access the settings of known Wi-Fi networks on the Wi-Fi page, a fix for a crash in the Network page when disconnecting a Wi-Fi device, as well as the ability to display a fallback avatar in the Users page when the one that was set by the user fails to load.

Other than that, a new GNOME Bluetooth version is present as well in this release with a fix for an issue with the pairing dialog misbehaving for some Bluetooth Classic keyboards as the passkey disappeared after the first digit was typed, and a new version of the Nautilus file manager that fixes a crash when pasting invalid clipboard data.

All users that use the GNOME 42 desktop environment series are encouraged to upgrade to the GNOME 42.8 release as soon as the packages arrive in the stable software repositories of their GNU/Linux distributions.

Two more maintenance updates are planned for GNOME 42 before it reaches end of life, namely GNOME 42.9 in mid-February and GNOME 42.10 in mid-March 2023.

Last updated 1 year ago

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