Mutter Wayland

Mutter Wayland is an open source window manager program for the GNOME project, specifically designed to support the modern Wayland display server. It is also known as the official port of Mutter for Wayland.

The project has been successfully ported to the Wayland display server on September 2013. Its main design goal is to replace the standard Mutter version when GNOME will switch to the modern Wayland window system.

What is Mutter?

Mutter is an open source project designed to replace the deprecated Metacity window manager in the GNOME desktop environment, offering compositing functionality among other unique features.

Both Mutter and Mutter Wayland projects are distributed as part of the GNOME project, providing decorations for all windows. They use GTK+ for drawing window frames and doesn’t reveal the concept of "window manager" to the end-user.

A window manager doesn’t try to be a desktop environment, thus there are various open source window managers out there that can easily replace an entire desktop environment.

Keyboard shortcuts

Global keyboard shortcuts include Alt+Tab for forward cycling between active windows, Alt+Shift+Tab for backward cycling between active windows, Alt+Ctrl+Tab for forward cycling between panels, and Alt+Ctrl+Shift+Tab for backward cycling between panels.

In addition, users can use the Alt+Escape keyboard shortcut to cycle between active windows using a pop-up thingy, Ctrl+Alt+Left Arrow for navigated to the previous workspace, and Ctrl+Alt+Right Arrow for navigating to the next workspace.

Furthermore, the Ctrl+Alt+D keyboard shortcut will minimize all windows and display the desktop. Various window mouse bindings and keybindings are also available, as well as session management integration.

Bottom line

Summing up, Mutter Wayland is yet another important component when we talk about porting the entire GNOME desktop environment to the Wayland display server. It provides users with the same features found on the current Mutter program.

What is new in this release:

• Fix crash when running as X11 compositor [Adel; #727115]

What is new in version 3.12.0:

• Fix grab issue with SSD xwayland windows [Rui; #726123]
• Misc. bug fixes [Jasper, Ray, Rui, Florian; #727011]

What is new in version 3.11.5:

• Fix CSD titlebars being placed off-screen [Jasper; #719772]
• Add support for subsurfaces [Jonas; #705502]
• Expose MetaWindow:skip-taskbar property [Florian; #723307]
• Fix legacy tray icons showing up blank [Adel; #721596]
• Fix configuration of cloned monitors [Adel; #710610]
• Misc bug fixes and cleanups [Jasper, Adel, Marek, Jonas; #720631, #723468, #720818, #723563, #723564]

What is new in version 3.11.4:

• Don't leave focus on windows that are being unmanaged [Owen; #711618]
• Reduce server grabs [Daniel Drake; #721345, #721709]
• Improve heuristic to determine display output name [Cosimo Cecchi; #721674]
• Atomically unmaximize both directions [Jasper; #722108]
• Misc bug fixes [Debarshi, Andika, Florian; #721517, #721674, #722347]

What is new in version 3.11.3:

• Fix focus issues with external OSKs[Jasper; #715030]
• Add a MetaCullable interface [Jasper; #714706]
• Fix window keybindings [Rui; #719724]
• Fix settings keyboard/pointer focus for new clients [Rui; #719725]
• Fix window group paint volume [Owen; #719669]
• Fix frame extents problems [Owen; #714707]
• Add shortcut to move windows between monitors [Florian; #671054]
• Fix problems with focus tracking [Owen; #720558]
• Misc. bug fixes and cleanups: [Rui, Colin, Lionel, Jasper, Owen; #712833, #719557, #719695, #719833, #678989, #720417, #720630]

What is new in version 3.11.2:

• Support setting a NULL opaque region [Andreas; #711518]
• Sync keymap from X to wayland [Giovanni; #707446]
• Implement support for subsurfaces [Jonas; #705502]
• Don't focus the no-focus-window for globally active windows [Jasper; #710296]
• Support "hotplug_mode_update" property [Marc-AndrA; #711216]
• Fix resize operations using mouse-button-modifier [Lionel; #710251]
• Fix position of attached modals for CSD windows [Giovanni, Owen; #707194]
• Misc. bug fixes [Rui, Jasper, Neil, Florian; #712247, #711731]

What is new in version 3.11.1:

• Fix tile previews getting stuck on right click during drags [Lionel; #704759]
• Use new UPower API [Bastien]
• Set hot spot when cursor set from wl_buffer [Jonas; #709593]
• Expose min-backlight-step [Asad; #710380]
• Misc. bug fixes and cleanups [Jasper, Olav, Magdalen; #709776]

What is new in version 3.10.1:

• Don't apply fullscreen workarounds to CSD windows [Giovanni; #708718]
• Fix hangs during DND operations [Adel; #709340]
• Misc bug fixes [Dan, Giovanni, Jasper; #708813, #708420]

Requirements:

• Wayland / Weston
• GNOME