Top all-time · #3870
Martin Stransky
Personal blog · mastransky.wordpress.comprogrammingsystems
Martin Stransky's personal blog at mastransky.wordpress.com covers programming and systems. Since 2019, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 25 times, most often “Firefox on Fedora Finally Gets VA-API on Wayland”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-03-20, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (11) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Martin Stransky's posts on Firefox hardware video acceleration, WebGL and VA-API on Linux and Wayland. Commenters cite them as technical background from the engineer who worked on the feature.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 11 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Firefox hacking in Fedora
Most-linked posts?
- Firefox on Fedora Finally Gets VA-API on Wayland6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2020-06-04
- Firefox WebGL and fgx acceleration on Wayland4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-03-03
- Firefox and Linux in 20253 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2026-01-23
- /2021/01/10/firefox-were-finally-getting-hw-acceleration-on-linux/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-03-09
- Firefox Wayland Development in 20212 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-10-01
What Hacker News says?
That article is from 2021: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/firefox-were-fin... Note the wordings like “for some Linux users”, “restricted to AMD/Intel graphics cards”. Also check the comments, there’re many other issues, with 4k on Intel GPUs, different desktop managers, and so on. I think if these MPEG4 standards were freely available, Linux kernel developers would come up with something better. For ins…
Comment linking /2021/01/10/firefox-were-finally-getting-hw-acceleration-on-linux/
on ““ISO obstructs adoption of standards by paywalling them””Submitted Firefox Wayland Development in 2021 as a story · 45 points
HN discussionBang on! This just summarizes the experience of browser video hardware acceleration on Linux. Marred with bugs and incompatibility issues. Regressions are the norm for Firefox in this regard according to my experience using an Intel card. Since announcing support for HW video initially on Wayland, Firefox has been off to the races on this [0]. Despite requiring lots of hacks to enable flags as you linked on the Arch…
Comment linking /2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 94 to start using EGL on Linux”Submitted Firefox WebGL and fgx acceleration on Wayland as a story · 6 points
HN discussionIt's slightly more complex as there are some hardware/software combinations that don't work. This article gives some good steps to make sure it's enabled: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedor... I've also had to disable media.ffvpx.enabled in previous versions to enable VA-API for more than just VP9 (I haven't yet been able to verify if it's needed for this one).
Comment linking /2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 78”Submitted Wayland Proxy Load Balancer as a story · 5 points
HN discussionFor me possibly the most interesting feature of this release is the possibility Of good GPU support on Gnu/Linux/Wayland. https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-ac...
Comment linking /2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 75.0”Submitted Firefox and Linux in 2025 as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThanks for this! I found another article by Martin Stransky who worked on this feature and gives more technical details: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2021/10/30/firefox-94-comes...
Comment linking /2021/10/30/firefox-94-comes-with-egl-on-x11/
on “Firefox 94”Submitted Firefox and Linux in 2025 as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> While we're writing a wishlist, native Wayland support wouldn't go amiss. That goes for Firefox too! That will happen after it makes it's way into standard Firefox releases as Thunderbird is based off ESR. It is happening. See Martin's reply: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2018/10/09/firefox-on-wayla... > Martin Stransky October 9, 2018 at 8:12 pm > Unfortunately Thunderbird 60 is based on Firefox 60ESR which mi…
Comment linking /2018/10/09/firefox-on-wayland-update/
on “Thunderbird in 2019”Submitted Firefox and Linux in 2025 as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIf it is all so straightforward, what is your explanation for no web browser on Linux officially support video acceleration? Not Firefox, not Chrome, not Gnome Web, not Falkon, nothing. Despite video players just doing it. Just possibly, could it mean that it's actually not that straightforward in a browser ? By the way, if you would read the actual base of the story here, you would know why it took Firefox's Waylan…
Comment linking /2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 75 on Wayland now to have full WebGL, working VA-API acceleration”Submitted Firefox and GTK Emoji Picker as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe linked blog post makes it reasonably clear that this isn’t happening. https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-ac...
Comment linking /2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-acceleration-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 75 on Wayland now to have full WebGL, working VA-API acceleration”Submitted Firefox Wayland Development in 2021 as a story · 2 points
HN discussionTwo years ago, the support was added? https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedor... Also, enabled by default with Mesa in these days https://linuxstoney.com/firefox-has-hardware-video-accelerat...
Comment linking /2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/
on “RustDesk – Open-source TeamViewer alternative”Submitted Firefox on Fedora Finally Gets VA-API on Wayland as a story · 2 points
HN discussionFirefox has enabled hardware acceleration in GNOME Shell by default as of versions 84 (X11) and 85 (Wayland), if you are using AMD or Intel graphics.[2] The feature is enabled in KDE Plasma and XFCE by default (X11 only) as of version 88, also for AMD and Intel graphics.[2] [1] https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2021/01/10/firefox-were-fin... [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1696495
Comment linking /2021/01/10/firefox-were-finally-getting-hw-acceleration-on-linux/
on “Major Linux Problems on the Desktop, 2021 edition”Submitted Firefox on Fedora Finally Gets VA-API on Wayland as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMore context in these blog posts from the author of the patches: https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/03/03/webgl-and-fgx-ac... https://mastransky.wordpress.com/2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedor...
Comment linking /2020/06/03/firefox-on-fedora-finally-gets-va-api-on-wayland/
on “Firefox 80 to Support VA-API Acceleration on X11”Submitted Mozilla ships Firefox 121.0 with Wayland enabled as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Q3 Firefox Linux Update as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Fedora 35/36 now enables VA-API for Firefox by default as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
