Faster, lighter, smarter!

Sep 24, 2008 12:02 GMT  ·  By

The most awaited Linux technology of this year, X.Org 7.4, was finally released last night, after months and months of hard work. The X Server 1.5.1 is also included in this new version of the X.Org package, and it resolves a few issues, such as: conditionalize Composite-based backing store on pScreen->backingStoreSupport, the RELEASE_DATE was moved below AC_INIT, shared pixmaps for EXA were disabled, and reply swapping & panoramiX request were fixed.

X.Org 7.4 comes with a lot of updated and new drivers, starting with the ones for video, font, input, proto, and others. We've listed below some of the important features of X.Org 7.4:

· PCI bus accessing/scanning code was replaced with the libpciaccess library in PciReworkProposal; · Compositing tests were added in x11perf 1.5; · Abstract socket namespace support was added under Linux in xtrans 1.1; · Completeness fixes and stability improvements were added in xf86-input-evdev 2.0.x package, which should work out of the box with a vast range of devices. Also, as a bonus, mice middle buttons are now emulated; · Support for RadeonHD 1xxx/2xxx/3xxx series graphic cards, was included in the xf86-video-ati 6.9.x package. Moreover, all chipsets benefit of full RandR 1.2 support; · EXA is now much faster (including font rendering). The code was also cleaned and correctness was fixed; · Numerous i18n fixes and additions were added in the libX11 1.1.5 package; · There are also some updates for Mac OS X users, such as: launchd support, Xquartz fixes, and more; · Last but not least, the xorg-server 1.5 package includes the following improvements and fixes: faster shutdown and startup, EDID 1.4, secure RPC authentication, Xephyr includes DRI and GLX passthrough support, smarter auto-configuration, coherent and pervasive XACE security framework, easy GL code development, lots of input-related bugfixes and code removal.

For more information about this release, visit the official release announcement.

Download X.Org 7.4 right now from Softpedia.