X development veteran Keith Packard has released version 1.10 of X.org's X Server. A list of all changes, mostly minor improvements and bug fixes, are included in the release email. The most prominent new feature is the Fence interface, which was contributed by NVIDIA developers and improves the synchronisation between OpenGL-based and X rendering contexts.

Almost more noteworthy are all the components that didn't make it into the new version of X Server – such as version 1.4 of RandR (Resize and Rotate), which was mainly developed by Packard. He removed it at short notice, less than 24 hours before issuing version 1.10 because the developers were unhappy with the client interfaces. The developers had already previously postponed X Input 2.1 and Threaded Input Events to later versions of X Server.

Further changes were made to the video driver ABI during the development of X Server 1.10, which means that proprietary drivers will need to be adjusted by their developers to make them work with the new X Server. In January, NVIDIA had already released a driver beta that supports preview versions of X Server 1.10

There are no plans for a separate version of X.org that includes the new X Server; X.org 7.7 is roughly scheduled for release in the second half of 2011 and will probably use a series 1.11 X Server, which should be available by then. Distributions expected to be released this spring, such as Ubuntu 11.04 and Fedora 15, will use the new X Server.

(crve)