The answer is a bit complicated. Linux has a long history with HDR where you would need exact software and hardware, or else no HDR… Just know that it will get easier because the ball has already started to roll in the correct direction.
But the shortest way I can say it now,
If you use Valve’s game mode, (which is possible to get either using steamos, bazzite, chimera OS, nobara, or you can manually set it up. You should be able to get it to work. This should work for windows games that support HDR. AFAIK there are no Linux games yet supporting HDR. It should be possible to get videos playing with HDR also, but that would be an exercise for the reader, or wait until people make it easier.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I currently believe the newest version, of KDE and Gnome are now HDR ready. If I am wrong you might just need the newest beta which will become stable Q2 this year.
Playing videos, I believe the newest version of MPV just got HDR support. With more apps incoming.
Anything that let’s a gamepad or a remote browse your videos? AFAIK not yet, but be patient, as this is all new
If you use Valve’s game mode, (which is possible to get either using steamos, bazzite, chimera OS, nobara, or you can manually set it up. You should be able to get it to work. This should work for windows games that support HDR. AFAIK there are no Linux games yet supporting HDR. It should be possible to get videos playing with HDR also, but that would be an exercise for the reader, or wait until people make it easier.
gamescope is what you’re going to want to search for if you’re attempting this exercise. I just set gamescope in the launch options for the games where I want HDR.
Wayland has had HDR support for around 6 months (using Arch, btw, so YMMV depending on how current your distro is). The issue has been that there is no way for an application to determine if your hardware supports HDR because Wayland doesn’t have color management protocols.
The Wayland color management protocols are done and are targeted for the next major release of Wayland (in a month or two, roughly). In the meantime, in applications that supports it (like mpv if you want to watch movies) you can launch it with ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1 to let it know that your setup can use HDR. Once the protocols are released you won’t need to do this.
You can edit/create a .desktop file for HDR mpv like so:
You’ll want to not use cinnamon for HDR, cinnamon is not going to get it for a very long time, KDE is a much more up to date environment and it works mostly out of the box on the most recent versions. Although I don’t think those patches have made it to mint yet.
As it stands, it’s only available on the Plasma and Gnome desktop environments.
The HDR stack on Linux has went through a lot of change recently, and much of the stack has only just been finalised/standardised. It’ll take a while to mature, and to arrive on distros like Mint.
What is hdr and why do people care about it? Seems like another doly atmos that is just made to sell expensive hardware and invent a solution looking for a problem.
Simplest explanation is HDR enables more color bits per pixel so you have much higher contrast in bright and dark images. It’s pretty much essential if you are using OLED panels as these can turn off pixels for a realistic/not washed out black.
Interesting, thanks. I just assumed monitors themselves handle that same way as monochrome monitors manage to display the same content as shitty gaming monitors and art monitors with huger rgb coverage.
I just bypass the requirement by installing Linux Mint instead
I did the same on my media center mini PC. Any idea how to check/enable HDR?
The answer is a bit complicated. Linux has a long history with HDR where you would need exact software and hardware, or else no HDR… Just know that it will get easier because the ball has already started to roll in the correct direction.
But the shortest way I can say it now,
If you use Valve’s game mode, (which is possible to get either using steamos, bazzite, chimera OS, nobara, or you can manually set it up. You should be able to get it to work. This should work for windows games that support HDR. AFAIK there are no Linux games yet supporting HDR. It should be possible to get videos playing with HDR also, but that would be an exercise for the reader, or wait until people make it easier.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but I currently believe the newest version, of KDE and Gnome are now HDR ready. If I am wrong you might just need the newest beta which will become stable Q2 this year.
Playing videos, I believe the newest version of MPV just got HDR support. With more apps incoming.
Anything that let’s a gamepad or a remote browse your videos? AFAIK not yet, but be patient, as this is all new
gamescopeis what you’re going to want to search for if you’re attempting this exercise. I just set gamescope in the launch options for the games where I want HDR.Wayland has had HDR support for around 6 months (using Arch, btw, so YMMV depending on how current your distro is). The issue has been that there is no way for an application to determine if your hardware supports HDR because Wayland doesn’t have color management protocols.
The Wayland color management protocols are done and are targeted for the next major release of Wayland (in a month or two, roughly). In the meantime, in applications that supports it (like mpv if you want to watch movies) you can launch it with
ENABLE_HDR_WSI=1to let it know that your setup can use HDR. Once the protocols are released you won’t need to do this.You can edit/create a .desktop file for HDR mpv like so:
Here’s a link to the topic on the Arch wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/HDR_monitor_support
TL;DR: Official support in a few months. But this is Linux, so you can get things sooner if you want to tinker.
You’ll want to not use cinnamon for HDR, cinnamon is not going to get it for a very long time, KDE is a much more up to date environment and it works mostly out of the box on the most recent versions. Although I don’t think those patches have made it to mint yet.
HDR is kinda complicated right now.
As it stands, it’s only available on the Plasma and Gnome desktop environments.
The HDR stack on Linux has went through a lot of change recently, and much of the stack has only just been finalised/standardised. It’ll take a while to mature, and to arrive on distros like Mint.
What is hdr and why do people care about it? Seems like another doly atmos that is just made to sell expensive hardware and invent a solution looking for a problem.
Simplest explanation is HDR enables more color bits per pixel so you have much higher contrast in bright and dark images. It’s pretty much essential if you are using OLED panels as these can turn off pixels for a realistic/not washed out black.
Interesting, thanks. I just assumed monitors themselves handle that same way as monochrome monitors manage to display the same content as shitty gaming monitors and art monitors with huger rgb coverage.