X.Org Saw A Lot Of Work In The 2010s Even With Wayland Taking Off

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 28 December 2019 at 07:00 PM EST. 18 Comments
X.ORG
Here's a look back at the most popular news over the past decade on X.Org out of our one thousand plus articles on the topic during the 2010s. Even with Wayland taking off in recent years and effectively reaching parity to the X.Org Server for common use-cases, the X.Org Server has continued seeing new development especially in the areas of GLAMOR and XWayland. Sadly though we're ending the 2010s without a major stable release of the xorg-server since May 2018.

In looking back at X.Org during the 2010s besides the work on the likes of XWayland/GLAMOR, there were infrastructure changes with X.Org Foundation joining the SPI, various security vulnerabilities coming to light out of the aging codebase, multi-GPU enhancements, improvements around virtual reality (VR HMD) setups, and other modern hardware improvements.

Recapping All The Interesting Talks Of XDC2014
The XDC2014 conference officially ended on Friday and was followed on Saturday by X.Org developers drinking wine and cycling around Bordeaux, France. For those not in attendance that haven't been keeping up with all of the Phoronix articles, here's a summary.

X.Org Might Lose Its Domain Name
Unless there's a miracle, the X.Org Foundation stands to lose one of its biggest assets: its single-letter domain name.

Red Hat Expecting X.Org To "Go Into Hard Maintenance Mode Fairly Quickly"
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.

Video & Input Driver ABIs Will Change Again For X.Org Server 1.19
A few days ago the X.Org video and input driver ABI versions were bumped again following some breaks in the interface.

X.Org Server 1.15 Release Has Several New Features
While X.Org Server 1.15 was delayed from its September release target over having no new features at the time, the final release of X.Org Server 1.15 is now available.

Ubuntu Announces Mir, A X.Org/Wayland Replacement
Canonical has lift the lid on Mir, it's name for the display server they are designing in-house. Mir will replace the X.Org Server on Ubuntu and it's not based upon Wayland or any other existing display server project.

X.Org Server 1.8.2 Release Candidate 2 Is Here
Earlier this month there was the release of X.Org Server 1.8.2 RC1, but last night the second release candidate was pushed out by Peter Hutterer, who has been managing the X Server point releases. The 1.8.2 RC2 release should be quite representative of the final release barring any last minute problems.

X.Org Foundation Loses Its 501(c)(3) Status
The X.Org Foundation has lost its 501(c)(3) non-profit status and is now seeking new options, including possibly joining a larger organization.

A Vast Majority Of Linux's Input Improvements Are Developed By One Individual
While there is an ever increasing number of open-source developers focusing on the Linux graphics stack with the GPU drivers and related infrastructure, it's quite a different story when it comes to the Linux input side. It's basically one developer that has been working on the Linux input improvements for the past number of years.

Open-Source HTML5 Terminal Emulator To Support X11
The Gate One HTML5-powered terminal emulator and SSH client that goes without needing any browser plug-ins and supports many SSH/terminal features is working on bringing X11 support to the web-browser. The developer claims that this X11 support in the browser written in HTML5 will be fast enough to support video playback and he's made a video demo as proof.

The Re-Opened X.Org Server 1.15 Pushes Ahead
At the XDC2013 X.Org conference it was decided to postpone the X.Org Server 1.15 release until year's end to let more features land. Keith Packard has now gone ahead and merged some of the new code and issued a new development release.

EGLStreams XWayland Code Revised Ahead Of X.Org Server 1.20
It's still not clear if the EGLStreams XWayland support will be merged for xorg-server 1.20 but at least the patches were revised this week, making it possible to merge them into this next X.Org Server release for allowing the NVIDIA proprietary driver to work with XWayland.

X.Org Server 1.11 Has Officially Been Released
X.Org Server 1.11 was officially released this Friday evening.

Another X.Org Security Bug Found, Dates Back To 1991
Another X.Org Security Advisory had to be publicly issued today to make known a buffer overflow in an X.Org library that's been present in every X11 release from X11R5 and the code was completed way back in 1991.

The Shiny New Features Of X.Org Server 1.20
With the release of the long-awaited X.Org Server 1.20 finally being imminent, here is a look at the many features that were merged over the past year and a half for this long drawn out release process. While more of the Linux desktop continues moving towards Wayland, X.Org Server continues evolving as shown by the 1.20 release and as part of that is also plenty on the XWayland side.

Proof Of Concept: Open-Source Multi-GPU Rendering!
Now that David Airlie's vga_switcheroo has went upstream in the Linux 2.6.34 kernel that provides hybrid graphics support and delayed GPU switching, David went on to look for something new to work on in his downtime when not busy with tasks at Red Hat. This new work is on GPU offloading / multi-GPU rendering.

X.Org Server 1.13 Released With Massive Changes
After being in development for the past half-year, and at a time when much of the ongoing Linux desktop activity for the display server/stack is being focused on Wayland, X.Org Server 1.13 was released this evening. For a change, X.Org Server 1.13 does actually pack a number of promising new features.

Don't Bet On "X12" Succeeding X11 Rather Than Wayland (Or Mir)
While there's long been an X.Org Wiki page with some pipe dreams for X12 as the successor to the X11 protocol, don't bet on it ever happening.

We Have Mir & Wayland, But There Still Could Be X12
While the Mir Display Server and the Wayland protocol are widely viewed as the next-generation display technologies for Linux systems, there's already been delays with Mir and Wayland hasn't yet been widely adopted. Even if/when Mir and Wayland manage to lift off, the X.Org Server won't suddenly die and will be supported for years to come.

EXWM: Turning Emacs Into An X Window Manager
Emacs is known to be a fully-customizable text-editor that can yield crazy abilities from playing games to emulating vi/vim to being an "OS inside an OS" with Emacs Lisp. The latest feature for Emacs is serving as an X Window Manager.

X.Org 7.7 Goes Into FreeBSD, KMS Is Ready
While X.Org 7.7 was only released last week, this updated set of X packages have already worked their way into FreeBSD. The FreeBSD developers request your help in testing.

X.Org Server 1.19 Officially Released With A Year's Worth Of Improvements
It's been more than one year since the release of X.Org Server 1.18 was released and several weeks past the planned release of X.Org Server 1.19, but nevertheless it's out there today under the "Cioppino" codename.

X.Org Server Finally Adapted To Better Deal With 16:9 & 16:10 Displays
In 2018 the X.Org Server will introduce better support for 16:9 and 16:10 ratio monitors!

FreeBSD Gets A New X.Org With Intel KMS
The FreeBSD team working on X support have announced a set of X.Org updates to bring the FreeBSD package support to X.Org 7.5.2, which now includes Intel KMS support.

It Looks Like X.Org Might Be Safe For A Few More Years
It looks like a miracle happened just in time for X.Org.
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About The Author
Michael Larabel

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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