Server-Side GLVND Updated While X.Org Server 1.20 Drags On

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 10 January 2018 at 01:26 PM EST. 2 Comments
X.ORG
Adam Jackson of Red Hat has sent out the second version of the ongoing patches for providing server-side GLVND functionality for the X.Org Server.

Most of you faithful Phoronix readers should be familiar with GLVND, the OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch Library. That's the effort led by NVIDIA and supported by others in the ecosystem for improving the "Linux OpenGL driver ABI" by allowing for multiple OpenGL drivers to happily co-exist on the same system without fighting over libGL.so. and the like. That's been going well but server-side GLVND for the X.Org Server takes things a step further.

Server-side GLVND is the concept of the OpenGL Vendor Neutral Dispatch Library applied to the xorg-server. This allows for multiple OpenGL drivers to co-exist within the X.Org Server in cases like PRIME/hybrid laptops and other multi-GPU systems with hardware from different vendors. There's also possible implications for XWayland support improvements.

A few minutes ago Adam Jackson sent out server-side GLVND v2 as the latest patches. "This makes it possible to have different GLX providers on different screens in Zaphod mode, and to switch between kernel/GLX driver stacks without needing so much manual configuration."

It sounds like this code could soon be merged to Git but other additions still are planned.

It does look like X.Org Server 1.20 will get further delayed... It's already been over one year since the last major release (X.Org Server 1.19), quite longer than their previous ~six-month release cadence and the longest between releases in a decade. Back during the XDC2017 conference was talk of releasing X.Org Server 1.20 in January but that is now effectively impossible with still changes being merged and the code not yet branched and no release candidate phase yet. We'll see how much longer xorg-server 1.20 gets drawn out but now it's probably safe to say it will be too late for getting into Ubuntu 18.04 LTS and possibly even Fedora 28. Besides server-side GLVND, xorg-server 1.20 has been working on DRI3 updates, SteamVR / VR HMD improvements, GLAMOR improvements, HDR / DeepColor support, and other improvements.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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