The First X.Org Server 1.10 Snapshot Brings Some Fun

Following the hiatus last week with the X.Org Server 1.10 merge window being kept open to allow time for finishing up RandR 1.4 with per-CRTC pixmaps and then NVIDIA pushing for fence sync support in this release, the work has now settled and the merge window has closed. Keith Packard has also announced the first development snapshot of X.Org Server 1.10.

Up until the beginning of last week it looked like xorg-server 1.10 would contain just a lot of bug-fixes with no appearance of X Input 2.1 / Multi-Touch or any other major features, but then a lot of work ended up being pushed at the last minute. Keith wanted to get the per-CRTC pixmap support for the X Server finally finished after it was previously delayed from X Server 1.9. The per-CRTC pixmap support did hit the mainline tree this weekend as part of version 1.4 of the Resize and Rotate (RandR) X extension.

What per-CRTC pixmap support means and its benefits along with other RandR 1.4 changes are talked about in this Phoronix news post. RandR 1.4 also brings sprite transforms and changes that should make it easier for NVIDIA to properly support RandR 1.2+ functionality within their proprietary graphics driver for Linux/Solaris/BSD.

NVIDIA's Fence Sync support was also pulled into the X.Org Server tree yesterday before the feature merge window finally closed. While these NVIDIA-supplied open-source patches have been available since early this summer, it was not until the last minute that there was a technical discussion and some debate (where NVIDIA working on a new driver architecture was also brought up) over the fence sync design. In the end, however, these patches were merged in a way to please all parties the best as possible.

These are the major improvements, besides the bug-fixes, to be found in X Server 1.10. There's also been patches available for months that provide threaded input events for the X.Org Server and are in a state nearly ready to be merged, but alas it hasn't been merged. Tiago Vignatti, the principal developer behind the threaded input work, has been burned out from it (or is still in Toulouse partying ;)) and is no longer pursing mainline integration. Keith Packard though would be willing to accept this work for xorg-server 1.10 even after this feature freeze if there is some developer willing to finish off the input work.

The release announcement for xorg-server 1.9.99.901 can be found here. The official, stable release of X.Org Server 1.10 is expected in mid-February and will begin appearing with Q2'2011 Linux distributions like Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.04.