X.Org News Archives

While XWayland is normally used just for running root-less single applications like games within an otherwise native Wayland desktop, new patches from Red Hat that have been merged into the X.Org Server enhance XWayland's existing "root-full" mode of operation for allowing entire desktop environments and window managers to nicely function within the context of XWayland.

This weekend marked 38 years since the inaugural release of the X Window System at MIT.

This year's X.Org Developers' Conference (XDC) alongside WineConf has been formally announced for this co-located event planned to happen in-person this October in Minnesota.

It's been over one month already since the release of XWayland 22.1 while this morning v22.1.1 was issued with a handful of bug fixes.

The Cairo graphics library that is used by GNOME/GTK, Mozilla Gecko, and many other projects for vector-based 2D graphics drawing has decided to remove a number of its old drawing back-ends.

Libinput 1.20 is out today as the first update since last September to this widely-used Linux input handling library that is relied on both within X.Org and Wayland powered desktops.

Libinput 1.19 launched last September with high resolution scroll wheel support finally in place while libinput 1.20 is in preparation for release that improves that functionality. Libinput 1.20 also makes other improvements to this widely-used input library on the Linux desktop that is leveraged by both X.Org and Wayland based environments.

While many Linux enthusiasts like to cite Linux's stellar support for older hardware platforms, in reality that isn't always the case. For instance with many old X.Org user-space mode-setting drivers for powering old graphics cards at least for display purposes, they can no longer even build with with modern toolchains / software components. Given the lack of bug reports around such issues, there are very likely few users trying some of these vintage hardware combinations.

For the past several years the X.Org Foundation has been part of Software in the Public Interest (SPI) but are now considering other possible arrangements moving forward.

The race is on for delivering XWayland 22.1 in time for the spring Linux distribution releases with at least Fedora Workstation 36 expected to carry this updated package for allowing X11 clients to work atop Wayland compositors.

It's been almost one year already since the last XWayland standalone feature release separate from the X.Org Server codebase itself while now the next feature installment will soon be out.

Following yesterday's disclosure of four new X.Org Server security vulnerabilities that could lead to local privilege escalation, X.Org Server 21.1.2 is now available with those security fixes plus other changes.

Given the age of the X.Org/X11 code-base security issues have become quite frequent. It was nearly a decade ago that the X.Org Server was considered a "security disaster" and a security researcher saying it's even worse than it looks. Today another batch of X.Org Server security vulnerabilities have been made public.

Along with XWayland touchpad gestures, another shiny feature was merged this week into X.Org Server Git for XWayland: DRM leasing support!

XWayland is increasingly great shape especially when it comes to fulfilling the needs of gamers with simply running games lacking native Wayland support with great speed. But when it comes to other use-cases there are occasionally gaps and areas not yet fulfilled by XWayland versus the conventional X.Org Server. One of the latest examples of a feature now correctly wired up is touchpad gesture handling.

While just a point release, XWayland 21.1.3 that is out this morning is exciting in that it adds support for using NVIDIA's new proprietary driver that supports the GBM API for enhancing its Wayland support.

With X.Org Server 21.1 having finally shipped this week, the X.Org Server Autotools build system support has been killed off.

X.Org Server 21.1 is now officially available as this first xorg-server update in three years and what began development as X.Org Server 1.21 prior to the versioning change.

X.Org Server 21.1 continues running slightly behind schedule but out today is a second release candidate of that upcoming xorg-server version -- the first in more than three years.

The xf86-video-modesetting DDX driver that is commonly in use for systems running an X.Org Server will soon find better support if you have a multi-monitor configuration where only some displays can support variable rate refresh (VRR / Adaptive-Sync / FreeSync).

More than three years after X.Org Server 1.20 was released, it's set to finally be succeeded soon by X.Org Server 21.1 under its new versioning scheme. Out today is the X.org Server 21.1 release candidate.

For those continuing to make use of the X.Org Server, xf86-input-libinput 1.2 is now available for integrating the latest functionality of libinput input handling library.

Those reading Phoronix over the years likely know the X.Org Server has had an increasing number of vulnerabilities come to light in recent times and statements by security researchers like the security being even worse than it looks. Given the age of the X.Org/X11 codebase and many components being rather unmaintained these days, the security situation isn't that great combined with a lack of manpower. The security topic was under the spotlight today at the XDC2021 conference.

Alyssa Rosenzweig spoke today at the virtual X.Org Developers Conference about the ongoing work for bringing up Linux display and graphics support on the Apple M1 graphics processor.

At the moment when running the X.Org Server in a multi-monitor configuration with displays of different refresh rates, it can lead to a poor experience with a variety of visual deficiencies when running an unredirected full-screen window with page-flipping for DRI3/Present. There is now a change that was merged into the X.Org Server with a new "AsyncFlipSecondaries" to improve that experience when running multiple displays of varying refresh rates.

The X.Org Distributed Multihead X (DMX) DDX driver has been dropped from the X.Org Server source tree due to its rather broken state for more than one decade.

X.Org's DMX DDX driver for supporting Distributed Multi-Head X looks like it will be removed from the source tree after finding out the code has been rather broken for the past 14 years.

It looks like X.Org Server 21.1 (long in development the past few years as X.Org Server 1.21) will see a stable release in the coming weeks.

The X.Org Server has picked up a new "-fakescreenfps" option to help with VNC and other remote display scenarios.

The program/schedule for this year's XDC21 X.Org Developers' Conference was posted this week ahead of the event occurring in mid-September. There are many interesting talks about X.Org and beyond, which in recent years largely revolve around Mesa and Wayland.

Several X.Org/X11 components saw new releases on Sunday for kicking off August, including the xeyes program seeing its first non-point release in eleven years.

Last week marked a X.Org Server 21.1 development snapshot being released. While that snapshot noted there will "most likely be no proper release", there is discussion now over creating such a X.Org-Server-Without-XWayland release.

There hasn't been a major X.Org Server release since v1.20 three years ago and not much interest in seeing a new release with more Linux distributions switching to Wayland-based desktops and XWayland recently seeing its own standalone releases. But now there is an X.Org Server 21.1 development release as the first step towards a possible new stable release in the future.

Michel Dänzer of Red Hat is preparing the release of XWayland 21.1.2 as the newest update to this standalone XWayland package separate from a whole X.Org Server release for running X11 clients within a Wayland environment.

Libinput as the input handling library commonly used these days by the Linux desktop both under X.Org and Wayland environments is out with version 1.18 as its newest feature release.

Red Hat's Olivier Fourdan has landed the latest XWayland improvements into X.Org Server Git for primarily benefiting the NVIDIA proprietary driver stack.

While there are no signs of X.Org Server 1.21 shipping anytime soon, being merged today to the Git code-base is bumping X Input to version 2.4 with the introduction of touchpad gestures.

To no surprise at all, the X.Org Developers' Conference 2021 will be carried out virtually similar to last year given the COVID-19 pandemic. The free XDC2021 registration and call for presentations has now been issued.

A small patch merged to X.Org Server Git enables support for MIT-SHM shared memory pixmaps with XWayland.

Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative has uncovered another security issue with the X.Org Server.

The xf86-input-libinput driver that is used for leveraging the libinput input handling library on X.Org Server systems has reached the version 1.0 milestone.

Last year we wrote how the X.Org/FreeDesktop.org cloud hosting costs were getting out of control so much so that they would either need to start finding sponsors and/or cut the continuous integration (CI) services offered to the hosted open-source projects, among other measures, as the costs were ballooning greatly. Thanks to a number of improvements to their hosting configuration, that is becoming a more manageable amount.

With no one willing to step up and manage the X.Org Server 1.21 release and see it through for maintenance, Red Hat engineers who often managed those xorg-server releases are now moving ahead with standalone XWayland releases with that code pulled out of doing a full X.Org Server release and instead isolated to the XWayland bits for handling of X11 clients under Wayland. Today marks the inaugural release with XWayland 21.1.0.

Over the years Google Summer of Code (GSoC) has resulted in some really great projects in the X.Org ecosystem from work in the early days on the open-source Radeon graphics driver stack to VKMS more recently to many other improvements especially as it pertains to open-source graphics drivers / Mesa. But for Google Summer of Code 2021 at least, the organization will not be participating.

XWayland 21.1 is moving forward as a standalone XWayland release separated from the X.Org Server. Given that X.Org Server 1.21 isn't moving toward release with no one stepping up to oversee that long overdue update, Red Hat engineers have devised the plan for standalone XWayland releases that are separated from the rest of the xorg-server code-base to at least get the updated X11 client on Wayland support out to users.

Plans are moving forward for providing standalone XWayland packages that would ship the latest XWayland code for allowing X11 clients within Wayland environments, separate from X.Org Server releases as has been the bundling case to date.

With no new X.Org Server releases on the horizon but Red Hat / Fedora wanting to ship updated XWayland support that is developed as part of the X.Org Server code-base, Red Hat engineers are now stepping up to carry out such XWayland-only releases derived from the same source tree but stripping out the code not relevant to XWayland support.

Following Tuesday's disclosure of more X.Org Server security bugs, X.Org Server 1.20.10 was released that provides those input fixes plus a number of other patches that have been back-ported and accumulated in the 1.20 series.

Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative has uncovered two more security issues with the aging X.Org Server that as we roll into 2021 is still powering most of the Linux desktops.

It's been seven years since the release of libX11 1.6.0 for this central X11 library while on Friday was replaced by the libX11 1.7 series. The release is primarily made up of fixes but leading to the version bump is a new API that allows for applications to recover from I/O error conditions rather than being forced to exit.