I would like to know, given the recent spam of X.org versions, intel drivers, nouveau drivers and what not, what is the status of X.org in the -current cycle?

I remember when X.org 1.5 was out, there was issues with the new hotplugging feature and it was scrapped from being the next update. Now that 1.6.1 is out and 1.7 coming (supposedly) in July, maybe those who are working on its packages would like to tell us if we are likely to see these get pushed through, and what issues are remaining that is preventing such updates.

The reason I ask is that I am interested in the latest xorg intel drivers which do not work with xorg that comes with slackware, but I do not wish to build such things myself because I am not familiar with how it should work.

Here is what I have on -current as of today:

Indeed, even in current, xorg-server is still 1.4 branch

I don't really know if that would change and an upgrade to xorg-server 1.5 (or beyond) will be performed however, as far as the xorg-server itself, you could still build it with '-hal' and avoid problems that the hotplugging facility might cause you or you could just add AutoAddDevices "off" in your xorg.conf in the server flags section thus using your old device settings despite hotplug xorg's facilities.

Of course, the thing with "the issues" with xorg-server 1.5 where mostly related to the fact that users weren't prepared nor they read the changelogs/docs, you can still customize your device sections as you like by modifying the different policies or as I said earlier by changing boolean values to few settings in the xorg.conf (namely AutoAddDevices AutoEnableDevices)

I've done a bit of work on new X, and in my testing here, it seems mostly fine. It's still in a bit of flux, and I'm almost sure that the jump is too big to make at this point in the development cycle. I don't want to say too much more, because I don't want to dash any hopes or get any hopes up unnecessarily, so I'll just say this: it's on our radar. In other words, we are aware that newer Xorg is available, but at the same time, the current stuff we have still works.

I'm plannig to make comeback to Slackware (yet again ) but I pretty much need the newer Xorg and Intel driver as the older driver has some bugs for my card that prevent me from using the 2.4 series driver.
Have been waiting for the new Xorg and Intel driver for Slackware for a while now. Hopefully they will appear soon. I'm too lazy to compile myself and I would most likely just break the whole system by doing that.

At least the OpenBSD has diff for 2.6 driver so I can use it

For my motherboard (Intel DG43NB) xorg from current will NOT work, so I have had to do some compiling. I kinda got sucked into doing more and more upgrades, as some modules (and combinations of modules) had major problems.

What I'm running now (and it does all work together) is everything from the x folder in current except as replaced by the following:

dri2proto-2.0
inputproto-1.5.0
randrproto-1.3.0
xtrans-1.2.3
pixman-0.14.0
libdrm-2.4.9
mesa-7.4.1
xorg-server-1.6.1
xf86-input-evdev-2.2.2
xf86-video-intel-2.7.0

I hope these make it into current soon.

A while ago I compiled xorg-server 1.6 plus dependencies and up to date intel driver, I didn't find it stable though so I switched back to what Slackware has. It would be good to see this update at some point though as I believe it is getting better.

By the way if anyone is interested in compiling the latest xorg it is not that difficult using the Slackware provided xorg slackbuilds.

If you want the most performance from Intel cards it will require Xorg 7.4 as a base.

You'll next need to update the xorg server to I believe 1.6.1.

Following you'll need linux kernel 2.6.30rc7. Otherwise backport the GEM modifications.

Finally there are a few other module upgrades required to build xorg server. Mostly you're looking at proto modules, and a trunk version of Mesa3D.

xf86 intel driver will need to be 1.7 or better.


The updates I speak of with respect to the xorg server and xf86 intel driver are generally not found on the ftp site for xorg.

They are on some announce page., google it.

I would imagine a slackbuild would come in handy but be warned that KDM on 12.2 has a hard coded link to /usr/bin. Reason for me focusing on this package is that building your own Xorg requires you to specify a build directory. I think it's a bad idea to have xorg installed in /usr/bin. That directory is way too full.

Another interesting concept is the fact xorg utilities doesn't provide xinit / startx.

So what kind of gains can you expect?

typical opengl performance in windows is about the same with this development. **But there are various bugs you'll encounter.**

Anything wanting full screen focus, think games here, will corupt the display driver at times.

I found that switching to full screen when playing a video (using either mplayer or xine) and kernel 2.6.30-rc7 (or -rc6) will crash X. Using -rc5 works fine, but there are some new things I'd like to have, better performance for one.

I'm hoping this gets fixed in -rc8 or 2.6.30.

I think you may fire a bug entry on bugzilla.kernel.org