Does anyone understand how HDMI 2.1 support is now no problem? I remember that 2.1 support in AMD's open source driver was blocked by the HDMI forum, but I haven't heard any news about them unblocking it. What changed?
It doesn't give any specifics about what changed on the HDMI Forum side, but this article [0] from June indicates that Valve worked closely with AMD to get it pushed through prior to the release of the Steam Machine (which supports HDMI 2.1 VRR).
As far as I can recall: some internal implementation documentation leaked which made the legal position tougher for them somehow to protect it as proprietary (it made sense when I heard it explained, but now I feel like I'm missing an important detail to that), and then Valve had some talks with the HDMI Forum to convince them to let it go, presumably so they could have such support integrated into Linux for their hardware (Deck, Machine, Frame, etc).
So now the HDMI Forum just doesn't really care anymore I guess.
IIRC, a non-AMD contributor was working on adding HDMI 2.1 support to Linux's AMD driver, and then AMD managed to get the HDMI Forum to see that their position was moot and was making things very awkward for AMD.
Oh this makes sense! Obviously, it can't be illegal for a non-forum-member to add HDMI support; it's just an HDMI forum policy after all, not law. That's certainly the link I was missing for this to make sense.
It's a well-formatted changelog of the most salient features of the release. Linus doesn't provide one apart from a list of added commits and merged branches, which isn't very useful unless you are a kernel developer.
I think it is mostly "marketing" for Igalia's services. If you want to pay people to do "stuff" in Linux and adjacent projects like Mesa, Igalia seems very competent.
I don't think there is much too it, it's a consulting firm. Would you hire a consulting firm with an empty tech blog portifolio? It's ticking a box, it's stating it's a consulting firm in tech, that it's target audience are companies with Linux machines etc...
It's more than that: free and open support for HDMI 2.1 in general. Previously it was only proprietary implementations that didn't leak the spec which were allowed. AMD is just the only one that has really good open source drivers which can benefit from it, and didn't work around the problem by converting HDMI to DisplayPort in a proprietary on-board GPU chip.
I have been using HDMI to game on TV for most or all of my adult life. Mostly console gaming. A few years back I built a dedicated gaming rig, but I still use it with a controller from my couch connected to a TV.
So this is a win for couch gamers and open source in general.
[0] https://www.digitalfoundry.net/news/2026/06/valves-hdmi-2-1-...
So now the HDMI Forum just doesn't really care anymore I guess.
What type of info do you get out of this for those who read this? So i can glance your insight?
This is a well-formatted changelog of the changes that Igalia has contributed to the release, AFAICT.
KernelNewbies publishes a much more general summary of changes (it is much longer than this one).
https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxChanges
https://kernelnewbies.org/LinuxVersions
https://lwn.net/Articles/1078068/ https://lwn.net/Articles/1078539/
All my monitors support DP, my GPU has more ports for DP ...
I am genuinely interested as I've never even considered using HDMI for my Desktop.
So this is a win for couch gamers and open source in general.