Mozilla Preparing To Test WebRender With "Qualified" Linux Users

While Linux users can today manually enable WebRender support for their Firefox installations, Mozilla is making the necessary adjustments to begin experimenting with enabling this Rust-written GPU-based rendering element for "qualified" Linux devices.

Mozilla isn't yet attempting to enable WebRender by default everywhere but for experiment purposes to have the ability to enable it for a reasonable sub-set of users. What's being deemed "qualified" at this point are systems matching all of the following criteria:

- Running Intel graphics with Mesa 18.2 or newer... No NVIDIA or Radeon graphics at this time, but just Intel with the i965 Mesa driver. Mesa 18.2.8 is the specific version requirement to match what shipped in Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

- Running a resolution of 3440 x 1440 or less... No 4K fun for now.

So assuming you are running with Intel graphics on Mesa 18.2.8+ and not using a 4K/5K display, with the latest Firefox Nightly builds you could soon find yourself using WebRender if you didn't already enable it. The change is outlined and pending via Bug #1543217. Manually forcing WebRender can be done for all users via the MOZ_WEBRENDER=1 environment variable.