> For example, a Linux distro running on WSL can (and will) use GPU partitioning (aka PCI/GPU passthrough) and a special implementation of DirectX
That is still just a normal VM, but it's nice that it's automated.
> enabling the installed video card to accelerate graphics within X and/or Wayland.
nit: X and/or Wayland is not involved in application rendering at all - its applications themselves that use the GPU and its acceleration directly.
Wayland and/or X is only involved when the apps are all done rendering[0], and the display servers own rendering is the comparatively simple task of stitching windows together[1], and sometimes not even that.
0: You can send buffers early over Wayland if you also send a sync fence, but this is just forwarded as a render dependency that the GPU scheduler will patiently wait for.
1: well also dealing with stuff like color transforms which can be complex to understand, but are computationally cheap and for fullscreen content possibly entirely free.
Contributing to display servers and following kernel KMS/drm stuff, but #wayland on OFTC or #sway on libera chat are both very helpful.
Also https://wayland.app to see the current Wayland protocols (the Wayland core protocol is mainly some common primitives, most stuff is across the other protocols). For example, the sync object stuff is in https://wayland.app/protocols/linux-drm-syncobj-v1 (in many cases handled by your toolkit or WSI of choice).
That is still just a normal VM, but it's nice that it's automated.
> enabling the installed video card to accelerate graphics within X and/or Wayland.
nit: X and/or Wayland is not involved in application rendering at all - its applications themselves that use the GPU and its acceleration directly.
Wayland and/or X is only involved when the apps are all done rendering[0], and the display servers own rendering is the comparatively simple task of stitching windows together[1], and sometimes not even that.
0: You can send buffers early over Wayland if you also send a sync fence, but this is just forwarded as a render dependency that the GPU scheduler will patiently wait for.
1: well also dealing with stuff like color transforms which can be complex to understand, but are computationally cheap and for fullscreen content possibly entirely free.