Several DDX Drivers Aren't Yet Ready For X.Org Server 1.20

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 12 May 2018 at 07:38 AM EDT. 13 Comments
X.ORG
If you were hoping to build the newly-released X.Org Server 1.20 on your system(s) this weekend, be forewarned that a number of the DDX drivers haven't yet been updated for supporting the API/ABI changes of this big server update.

A number of the smaller, obscure drivers like Tseng, SiS, R128, and March64 haven't yet been updated for xorg-server 1.20 support but also the more prominent xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-amdgpu DDX drivers have not yet seen new releases with xorg-server 1.20 support.

NetBSD's Thomas Klausner has outlined some of the build failures against the new X.Org Server 1.20.


Presumably there will be new Radeon/AMDGPU X.Org driver releases soon for adding 1.20 support. On the Intel side, it will be interesting to see if they tag a new 3.0 release candidate or not. It's been three years since their last xf86-video-intel 3.0 release candidate and now five years since their last stable release of the Intel DDX driver. Most Intel Linux users now rely upon xf86-video-modesetting but for whatever reason they do not want to issue an official 3.0.0 release but at the same time not kill off the DDX driver.

For those using the NVIDIA proprietary driver, the newest 396 series driver does already support 1.20.

If you just use the generic xf86-video-modesetting and xf86-input-evdev/xf86-input-libinput drivers you should be in good shape, but this is a public service announcement to those using the other drivers. Or perhaps we'll also see X.Org developers re-consider which DDX drivers they'll continue supporting with some of these vintage DDX drivers receiving little to no testing and in some cases for hardware around two decades old and only supported by user-space mode-setting and of little use on modern Linux desktops.
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