OpenChrome Now Defaults To EXA

There's a new release of the OpenChrome open-source VIA X.Org driver.

The VIA kernel mode-setting (KMS) driver still isn't ready for merging -- it doesn't look like it will hit the next merge window (the Linux 3.5 kernel) -- but the X.Org driver is still catching-up in other areas.

Changes for the new OpenChrome 0.2.906 release include X-Video support for the VX900 chipset and EXA is now the default. While the default switch has finally been made from XAA to EXA, compositing is said to be buggy and thus disabled. That's it for three months of work out of the open-source VIA camp, plus a couple of bug-fixes.

EXA has been around for more than a half-decade and was first incorporated into X.Org 7.0. Only now half-way into 2012 is the OpenChrome camp enabling this X.Org 2D acceleration by default... Which is good since XAA is finally being removed from the X.Org Server (XAA is the predecessor to EXA).

The new OpenChrome release was announced yesterday by Xavier Bachelot on the OpenChrome list.