According to the Firefox blog, the Firefox browser will start using Firefox 94 from the Linux desktop EGL back-end, combined with support for graphics drivers, WebGL will improve performance and reduce resource consumption.
According to reports, in order to use hardware acceleration APIs like OpenGL with window systems like X11 or Wayland, an interface that combines them is needed. For OpenGL on X11, most programs use GLX, and its successor EGL is used in Wayland, Android, and embedded fields.
Firefox has previously supported EGL on the Android side. After a period of testing, EGL performs better, so I decided to bring it to the Linux side. Starting from Firefox 94, users who use Mesa driver >= 21 will support EGL by default, and it is expected to be launched this week. Users of proprietary NVIDIA drivers need to wait for a while because the currently released driver lacks important extensions. (EGL does not currently support AMD drivers)
Join RealMi Central on Telegram, Facebook & Twitter
After switching to EGL, the Firefox browser will get the following improvements:
- Improved WebGL performance: Thanks to DMABUF zero-copy buffer sharing, WebGL can be done in a sandbox without the need to go to and from system memory. WebGL can be used in games, Google Maps and other scenarios.
- Reduce power consumption: If only a small part of the content changes, Firefox will no longer need to redraw the entire window. Common examples are small animations on the website or when loading tabs.
- Fewer bugs: Compared with GLX, EGL is more modern, more suitable for complex hardware accelerated desktop applications and used on more platforms.
- The default hardware video decoding.