Wayland Video Playback

I have an AMD Ryzen 7 6800H mini PC. This has a modest integrated graphics card. And, one of the things holding me back from switching to Wayland was video playback. When I watch a video on Wayland, there is a loss of frame rate to the point where I get motion sick.

I was recently watching RetroBytes' "The History of X11". And it suddenly occurred to me that the problem might be that I'm using an application compiled for X11. And that is forcing my video to be emulated by XWayland. This might be a source of the latency I experience.

I'm using openSUSE which comes with a Wayland version of KDE. I logged into "Plasma (Wayland)". And I watched a video--specifically in Firefox. Firefox enabled Wayland support by default starting last December.

Watching a video on Firefox was fine.

Watching on YouTube, I tried to summon the Stats for Nerds. But it wouldn't launch. I'm not very sophisticated in terms of graphics. So, I don't have a frame rate number to give.

I can't be sure of the problem I was experiencing before. And I don't blame XWayland, Vivaldi, or whatever was causing the latency. But, my deal-breaking issue is solved. And, I feel comfortable switching to Wayland now.

Firefox Support

Firefox version 121 and later come with Wayland support enabled by default.

You can check what protocol Firefox is using by opening a new tab and going to the address "about:support". That internal Firefox diagnostic tab has a line called "Window Protocol". The Window Protocol line should simply read "Wayland" if that's what you're using (instead of "x11").

You can see an example of this output in the Phoronix article below. The about:support page is shown in the background of a screen capture there.

References

Firefox 121 Now Available With Wayland Enabled By Default | Phoronix

The History of X11 | RetroBytes | YouTube

AMD Ryzen 7 6800H Mobile Processor Specifications | AMD

AMD Radeon 680M Specs | TechPowerUp GPU Database

Created: Wednesday, January 31, 2024

Updated: Wednesday, January 31, 2024