X.Org 7.4 Finally Released

"It's been a hell of a time getting X.Org 7.4 out the door, but this afternoon Adam Jackson has released this long-delayed update to this X system. X.Org 7.4 is arriving after the release of X Server 1.5.1 earlier in the day. Yes, it's finally here! In this article we have information on the features that make up this release along with what it's taken to get X.Org 7.4 primed for release."

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Companies, Developers Contributing To The X Server

Since our article yesterday entitled X Server 1.4.1 Is Released, No Joke where we shared that the X.Org server update -- a critical part of the Linux desktop -- was released albeit significantly late and the blocker bug list wasn't even cleared, it's sparked discussions on our forums and other online communities on how the X.Org release management can be improved and how new developers can become involved. One of the most common recommendations has been to get more software (distribution) vendors involved, seeing as they are the ones shipping X.Org to many of the desktop users around the world. However, as there hasn't been a list (or at least not in some time) that looks at each of the commits to the X server in regards to each of the companies and the developers involved, we've provided one in this article that covers all X Server activity going back nine years.

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The State of X.Org

"Phoronix has up an article looking at the release of X Server 1.4.1. This maintenance release for X.Org, which the open-source operating systems depend upon for living in a graphically rich world, comes more than 200 days late and it doesn't even clear the BugZilla release blocker bug."

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OpenBSD + Xinerama + x11/awesome

Xinerama(3) has been part of the OpenBSD X distribution for some time. I was able to get a chance to play with it when I got my hands on a second video card and monitor.

As an x11/dwm user, I leaned towards x11/awesome as my Xinerama-aware window manager. More information about how I got Xinerama working and how I configured x11/awesome below.

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The Progress Of X.Org 7.4

If all goes according to plan, X.Org 7.4 will finally be released this month. This release isn't quite as elaborate as X.Org 7.3, which introduced input hot-plugging, EXA enhancements, and RandR 1.2 to just name a few features, but X.Org 7.4 is another update better enhancing this X server. In this article, we are presenting a release overview of the features to be found in X.Org 7.4, what's been delayed, and how this release is panning out.

Using two monitors with X.org

I recently started building up a new box which will eventully become both a workstation and a jail server. This computer has two monitors attached and it runs pretty good.

X.org releases version 7.3, gets hotplugging support

X.org is the underlying graphical workhorse that powers pretty much every desktop installation on Linux and Unix operating systems. Today marked the mildly delayed new release of X.org version 7.3, which corresponds to server version 1.4. The X.org community has been working out the last of the bugs since their code-base became semi-frozen on August 1st (which they refer to as "Code Slush") and are now confident that the release will be worth the wait. The so-called killer feature of this version of X is the new support for hotplugging of input devices (such as keyboard, mice, touchscreens) as well as output devices (monitors, projectors, and so forth).

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X.Org 7.3 Released

Features

* Xorg server 1.4 - see Server14Branch for more details.

* New applications: xbacklight

* New drivers: xf86-video-glide, xf86-video-vermilion

* New man pages for API's: libXinerama, libXcomposite, XKB functions in libX11, Xtest functions in libXtst

* Support for font catalogue directories in font path

* xdm: Xft support added

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X.Org 7.3 Preview

Scheduled for release tomorrow is X.Org 7.3. Among the new features for X.Org 7.3 include the Xorg server 1.4, an application for adjusting a display's backlight, updated display drivers, and support for font catalog directories.

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How to cross compile modular Xorg on NetBSD

Jörg Sonnenberger has worked hard on getting modular X.org crosscompiled in pkgsrc as part of the xpkgsrc Google Summer-of-Code project. The code's being merged into pkgsrc right now, and crosscompiled X binaries for testing are already available for sparc64, sparc, macppc, and amd64/x86_64.

Joerg also posted a first set of instructions on how to cross compile modular X.org on NetBSD yourself, from latest pkgsrc.

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HEADS UP: xorg 7.2 update in progress

Dear FreeBSD Users,

Within the next 24 hours, the long-awaited update to the X.org 7.2 windowing system will be committed to the ports tree. This upgrade has been 6 months in the making and would not have been possible without the dedicated work of Florent Thoumie , Dejan Lesjak and many others in our army of
developers.

For the past two weeks the ports tree has been frozen while our developer community has concentrated on testing and refining the upgrade process. This is a major upgrade, but we have worked hard to smooth out the road bumps that have been encountered during testing so far. We believe that the upgrade is now ready for general deployment, but particularly cautious users may wish to delay their upgrades and monitor the freebsd-ports@FreeBSD.org and freebsd-x11@FreeBSD.org mailing lists for discussion of remaining issues that may be encountered by users.

Please note that it will unfortunately not be possible to perform this update without some manual intervention. Please refer to the /usr/ports/UPDATING file to learn about the steps necessary, and the changes involved. One important aspect of the upgrade is that X.org 7.x is no longer installed in the /usr/X11R6 directory; instead it installs in /usr/local along with the other ports.

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HEADS UP: xorg 7.2 ready for testing

Dear porters,

We are now ready for xorg 7.2 testing! Over the past week we have done extensive tests of various upgrade scenarios, fixed many remaining bugs, and now the upgrade is looking good. Of course, we can't possibly test everything, so that's where you come in.

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Xorg-conf: base de datos de configuraciones de X Window

Esta es una muy buena idea que podría haber sido útil desde hace mucho antes: básicamente, el sitio Xorg-conf intenta recopilar los archivos de configuración xorg.conf, comprobados y verificados, de una variedad de combinaciones de placas de video, monitores y dispositivos de entrada (mouse/teclado)...

Varias vulnerabilidades en servidor X.Org

iDefense ha publicado varias vulnerabilidades en el servidor X.Org, que utilizan muchos sistemas operativos de código libre.

Alguna de ellas permiten una escalada de privilegios a usuarios locales, pero hay otra que incluso podría ser explotada de forma remota para ejecutar código arbitrario...