It’s been over four years now that the GNOME Mutter pull request has been open for introducing dynamic triple/double buffering support. It’s still not clear that it will be ready for merging with GNOME 48 due out in March but at least the patches have been updated to work with the latest upstream Mutter code.
Canonical engineer Daniel van Vugt who has been spearheading the dynamic double/triple buffering support for GNOME to benefit Ubuntu Linux recently updated the patches. Daniel noted in this week’s status update that the triple buffering patches were updated.
In particular, Mutter recently merging Wayland timing and queuing protocol support required changes to the triple buffering patches. The patches were further refactored to address a complaint raised around the order of commits.
The merge request for adding the code is currently up to 993 comments on the 25 patches.
It’s not clear that the triple buffering patches will be accepted into Mutter in time for GNOME 48… The GNOME 48 feature freeze is set to happen in a little more than two weeks on 1 February. So short of any last minute miracle, it’s looking increasingly unlikely it will not be accepted this cycle. In any event the likes of Ubuntu and Debian continue to carry the patches themselves for their Mutter package to enhance the experience particularly for the likes of Intel and Raspberry Pi graphics.
Ubuntu 25.04 is set to ship with GNOME 48 in April paired with their patches.
