Linux input expert Peter Hutterer of Red Hat shipped the much anticipated release candidate today for libinput 1.14, the open-source input handling library used by both X.Org and Wayland systems.
X.Org News Archives
1,198 X.Org open-source and Linux related news articles on Phoronix since 2006.
Longtime X.Org developer Alan Coopersmith who also maintains the X.Org stack for Oracle's Solaris has been trying to get out some updated X.Org modules with different code-bases having collected enough changes over the years to warrant new versions.
The 2019 X.Org Developers Conference for "all-things open-source graphics" is coming up at the start of October. But if you've been wanting to talk about something related to the Linux kernel, Mesa, Wayland, or related components, this week is your last chance to apply.
With the Fedora Workstation 31 feature outlook covered earlier this week, there was an interesting comment in that article by Red Hat's Christian Schaller that deserves special coverage.
With no X.Org Server 1.21 release being imminent, Red Hat's Adam Jackson today issued xorg-server 1.20.5 as a very small point release to the existing 1.20 stable series.
Merged this week to the X.Org Server code-base was an EGL-based GLX provider for helping XWayland and allowing some games to run nicely now under this X11 code-path for Wayland compositors. While not yet merged, another interesting bit of XWayland code is now under review as a merge request.
A notable improvement was merged into the "xserver" Git tree for the eventual X.Org Server 1.21 release that will improve the support for various Linux games relying on XWayland for running under a Wayland compositor.
X.Org's annual event, the X.Org Developers' Conference, is running like a well-oiled machined these days. While there are still months to go until XDC2019 in Montreal, a Call for Proposals has been issued for those wishing to speak at this annual gathering that pertains to Wayland, Mesa, libinput, Cairo, and related components as well, yes, the X.Org Server.
Work by NVIDIA to provide separate per-client vendor mappings for GLXVND were merged to X.Org Server 1.21 Git as another step towards improving the PRIME GPU offloading support when multiple GPU drivers are at play.
While formally the X.Org Server aimed to put out a new feature update every six months, in recent years they have been well off that trajectory with not much feature activity going on especially now that GLAMOR / XWayland / xf86-video-modesetting have stabilized and many Linux distributions eyeing Wayland by default. But there is now at least some little bit of interest in what's going into X.Org Server 1.21.
NVIDIA has been working on a new GLX extension to help the PRIME GPU offloading situation where multiple GPU vendors are involved and thus different OpenGL driver implementations. In particular, the proposed GLX_EXT_server_vendor_select is designed to better fit in to address PRIME GPU offloading obstacles introduced by their work on the now common GLVND OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch library.
While there were the recent X.Org Foundation board elections, a do-over was needed as their new custom-written voting software wasn't properly recording votes... So here's now your reminder to re-vote in these X.Org elections.
We haven't been seeing as much GLAMOR activity these days but then again the pace of X.Org Server development has certainly slowed up in recent years. GLAMOR as a reminder allows for X.Org Server 2D acceleration to happen in a generic manner via OpenGL / GLES and has been a common area for improvement.
During this year's X.Org Foundation elections there was the key ballot initiative on whether the X.Org Foundation should formally accept FreeDesktop.org into its umbrella. That measure, which required a super majority of members to approve, passed. But the X.Org Foundation Board of Directors voting hit an oops.
While X.Org and FreeDesktop.org are already closely related, administered by many of the same people, and FreeDesktop.org provides the hosting for much of the infrastructure, there isn't many formalities around FreeDesktop.org and the X.Org Foundation formally doesn't have control of FreeDesktop.org. But there's now a vote on whether the X.Org Foundation will formally accept FreeDesktop.org.
The X.Org Foundation is once again participating in the Google Summer of Code where student developers engage with various open-source efforts on a range of projects. If there are interested and capable participants, GSoC 2019 could bring a Vulkan settings/preferences user-interface for the Mesa drivers, new OpenMAX acceleration bits, and other possible initiatives.
NVIDIA's Andy Ritger has contributed a simple yet long overdue addition to the X.Org Server with the new "NoOutputInitialSize" option.
While X.Org Server 1.20.4 was just released a few days ago with XWayland improvements and more, for vintage computer enthusiasts there is now the X.Org Server 1.19.7 that was released independently to provide a six for helping out the SiS 6326. Yes, the graphics processor from 1998.
For those wanting a nostalgic X11 experience this weekend, the X11 Display Manager (XDM) has seen its first release since 2011.
Adam Jackson of Red Hat has issued the X.Org Server 1.20.4 point release with the latest stable updates primarily consisting of XWayland enhancements.
It shouldn't come as a surprise with X11R7.7 being the last "katamari" release and it having debuted back in 2012, but no further "bundled" releases of X.Org are planned.
Waffle is the seven year old project that started out as an Intel side-project to allow run-time selection of X11/Wayland support as well as OpenGL or OpenGL ES. It's been a while since hearing much about Waffle, but it is still being consumed and improved upon.
One of the exciting user additions to the forthcoming Linux 5.0 kernel is high resolution scroll wheel support for various Logitech and Microsoft mice. While the kernel support has landed, the user-space support is still pending.
Is there enough interest in seeing new point releases for older X.Org Server release branches to ship fixes almost exclusively aimed at improving decades old graphics/display hardware? We'll see, but at least one person wants to work on such releases.
While it's been ten years now that Wayland has been in development, a majority of the Linux desktops at the end of 2018 are still relying upon the X.Org Server. In 2018 we saw much better Wayland support out of GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma, but many Linux distributions -- including Ubuntu -- haven't transitioned over (or in the case of Ubuntu, back-over) to running a Wayland session. While the xorg-server remains at the heart of most Linux desktops, its development pace remains very slow.
If you happen to have any Number Nine Imagine 128 or Matrox graphics cards sitting around, there are new Linux X.Org display driver updates out this weekend for these vintage parts.
For fans of the i3 tiling window manager, version 4.16 was released this weekend as the project's newest feature release.
We've known that the X.Org Server security has been a "disaster" (according to security researchers) and while many bugs have been fixed in recent years, not all of the security bugs date back so far in the decades old code-base. Out today is X.Org Server 1.20.3 to fix a new CVE issued for X.Org Server 1.19 and newer.
The Arcan display server, which started off years ago sounding like a novelty with being a display server built off a game engine in part and other interesting features, is nearing feature parity with the X.Org Server.
It's almost been a half-year already since the release of the long delayed X.Org Server 1.20, but with no signs of X.Org Server 1.21 releasing soon, xorg-server 1.20.2 was announced today as the latest stable point release.
FreeDesktop.org is already effectively part of X.Org given the loose structure of FreeDesktop.org, the key members/administrators being part of both projects, and FreeDesktop.org long being the de facto hosting platform from the X.Org Server to Mesa and much more. But now they may be officially joining forces.
The X.Org Foundation Board of Directors decided today that their next annual X.Org/Mesa/Wayland conference will be held in Montreal, Canada.
The exciting X.Org Developers' Conference (XDC 2018) that took place two weeks back with talks ranging from open-source GPU drivers to continuous integration and more are now available for your viewing pleasure online.
The Virtual Kernel Mode-Setting (VKMS) driver may soon work with Wayland compositors and see other capabilities for this recently-merged DRM code.
Tomorrow marks the start of the annual X.Org Developers' Conference that is not only about the X11 server but also Mesa, Wayland, Linux input, and other areas of the desktop stack.
X.Org/X11 veteran Keith Packard has started working on better support for independent window scaling with the X.Org stack that would also allow for input handling with the scaled windows.
With many of the FreeDesktop.org projects having already transitioned from their CGit and hodgepodge of services over to Gitlab, the Direct Rendering Manager (DRM) trees appear to be up next.
The xf86-video-v4l v0.3.0 driver was announced today as the first new release for this DDX driver in ten years.
Just over one month away is XDC2018 as the annual X.Org Developers' Conference where a variety of X.Org, Wayland, Mesa, Vulkan, and OpenGL talks will take place. This year's schedule is particularly packed and full of interesting information.
As the first point release to X.Org Server 1.20 that debuted in May, xorg-server 1.20.1 is available today with dozens of fixes.
X.Org Server 1.20 was released back in May while now the "server-1.20-branch" was created at last to allow for X.Org Server 1.21 development to happen on master while letting the point releases to be worked out on the branched code.
Landing last week in the X.Org Server Git code is a change to ensure DRI3 gets enabled when using GLAMOR acceleration for XWayland.
If software development isn't your forte but are looking to help out a leading open-source project while logistics and hospitality are where you excel, the X.Org Foundation is soliciting bids for the XDC2019 conference.
While the initial EGLStreams-based support for using the NVIDIA proprietary driver with XWayland was merged for the recent X.Org Server 1.20 release, the next xorg-server release will feature more improvements.
The initial list of sponsors have been announced for the annual X.Org Developers' Conference (XDC2018) where Wayland, Mesa, and the X.Org Server tend to dominate the discussions for improving the open-source/Linux desktop.
Unrelated to this week's announcement of Microsoft acquiring GitHub, the X.Org code repositories will soon be managed on GitLab.
While the recently released X.Org Server 1.20 has initial EGLStreams for XWayland support to allow X11 on Wayland client application support for use with the NVIDIA proprietary driver, the support isn't automatically available when needed. Fortunately, that's being corrected for a future point release.
Peter Hutterer at Red Hat remains quite busy near single-handedly improving the Linux desktop input stack.
In addition to the Vulkan Virgl project another one of the interesting projects for Google Summer of Code 2018 is the development of VKMS, a Virtual KMS DRM driver.
While the recently released X.Org Server 1.20 has initial support for XWayland with EGLStreams so X11 applications/games on Wayland can still benefit from hardware acceleration, in its current state it doesn't integrate too well with Wayland desktop compositors wishing to support it. That's changing with a new patch series.
1198 X.Org news articles published on Phoronix.