prepare for KWin-lowlatency 5.15.5!

2019/05/07 5:00 AM (UTC -5) | tildearrow

in around 7 hours I'm going to release KWin-lowlatency 5.15.5, which will bring major changes to improve usability.

while the majority of these changes have been already up in Git for weeks, i haven't tagged a proper release because I was waiting for upstream to bump its version number.

the changes are:

• NVIDIA support (finally!)
• a different approach to low-latency, now using glXWaitVideoSync instead of DRM VBlank. this means you don't have to tinker with the code anymore if you have more than one card.
• more options under System Settings > Display and Monitor > Compositor. this allows you to tweak latency/stuttering balance and some other stuff.
• no more linear animations, unless you enable it in the options. this means animations now look smoother and less robotic.
• close ability in Present Windows effect. remember how there was a big debate over KWin devs removing this functionality for no valid reason? well, I've brought it back now!
• full-screen unredirection! this means lowest latency and higher performance in full-screen apps.
• possible addition of a Gentoo ebuild. traditionally KWin-lowlatency has been available in source code form, or as a PKGBUILD in the AUR (Arch Linux), but now i've been in talks with agates to bring this fork of KWin to Gentoo.
• now going to be distributed as a patch file, besides Git, for people who prefer patches (and for the upcoming Gentoo ebuild).

the changes offered by upstream are:

• unsets QT_SCALE_FACTOR, because it seems to cause problems in some cases, according to a user.
• fixes building the compositor with Qt 5.13.
• the Fall Apart effect no longer animates pop-ups.
• emoji and other non-BMP characters are now displayed correctly in title bars.