Version 26.04
of the niri scrollable-tiling Wayland compositor has been released. The most
notable change in this release, as the "most requested niri feature by far",
is support for the blur effect using the Wayland protocol's
ext-background-effect. This
release also features optional configuration
includes, screencasting support enhancements, and a number of improvements for
input devices.

In short, background blur turned out to be a massive undertaking. Not because of
the blur algorithm itself (by the way, if you want to learn about different
blurs,
including the widely used Dual Kawase, I highly recommend this blog post), but
because window
background effects in general required a lot of thinking and additions to the
code,
especially to make them as efficient as possible. This is one of the most
complex
niri features thus far.

LWN covered niri in July
2025.

https://lwn.net/Articles/1069939/
--- SBBSecho 3.37-Linux
 * Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (618:250/24)