Valve Developer Hints At Major Breakthrough In Linux HDR Compatibility

The Operating System war raged on from the late 80s to the late 90s. It was ultimately won by Microsoft, but despite being outcompeted by Microsoft, Linux still has been able to survive solely due to the dedication of its users. Nevertheless, its users face many hindrances, including hardware compatibility issues.

But, because the code is open-source of the OS, the Linux community has been able to resolve those issues with time. One of those demanding problems was the operating system’s incompatibility with HDR. It greatly hampered Linux’s popularity among PC gamers. But now it seems the issue is soon as teased by a Valve developer.

MAJOR TAKEAWAYS 

• A possible breakthrough has been made toward solving Linux’s HDR compatibility problem, as suggested by a tweet by a Valve developer.
• Pierre-Loup, a developer on the Steam Deck team was able to run games like Halo Infinite and Death Stranding on an AMD desktop with HDR enabled.
• HDR compatibility was one of the major issues faced by Linux users. Work to find a solution to it saw little progress over the years.
• But after AMD published its hardware code to incorporate Linux into its hardware, major leaps have been made toward finding a solution.

Valve developer, Pierre-Loup, who is on Valve’s Steam Deck development team tweeted that he had been able to run games like Death Stranding, Halo Infinite, and Deep Rock Galactic. He ran the games on an AMD desktop with HDR enabled. According to him, this breakthrough in Linux’s HDR compatibility was achieved due to the work of Josh Ashton.

New Linux gaming milestone: with the latest work from Josh Ashton, HDR can now be enabled for real games! Tested it tonight on my AMD desktop with Halo Infinite, Deep Rock Galactic, DEATH STRANDING DC. Very early and will still need some time to bake to be useful to most. pic.twitter.com/S7DzLMe6Ng

— Pierre-Loup Griffais (@Plagman2) January 3, 2023

Josh Ashton is a Linux programmer known for his work on DXKV (Vulkan-based implementation of D3D9, D3D10, and D3D11 for Linux) and VKD3D (Proton’s Direct3D 12 implementation). He had been working on Gamescope, “A micro-compositor that’s used on the Steam Deck to display your games and it can also be used on the desktop.

This also comes after earlier this year, AMD announced that it would continue working towards incorporating Linux into their hardware.

AMD published open-source code for their hardware “enablement” along with other user-space features. This step allowed Linux engineers to fix many of Linux’s compatibility issues with AMD hardware.

HDR compatibility has been a major issue with Linux. It was also one of the main reasons people hesitated to switch to Linux. Even though the OS was being used by servers widely, it failed to find traction among gamers. Essentially due to HDR incompatibility. Slow progress toward overcoming it has been made for years but with little success.

But AMD’s decision to “embrace” Linux has been a much-needed boost toward achieving that goal. That is essentially what drove this recent breakthrough. Though it still needs further polishing before it becomes widely used. Also, it is unclear whether it will be compatible with things other than games, such as web browsers.

Nevertheless, the Linux fandom was ecstatic with this new development. But whether it comes to ultimate fruition or not, only time will tell.