Intel 2.2 X.Org Driver Coming Soon

It's been six months since Intel had introduced their xf86-video-intel 2.0 driver for graphics adapters on X.Org and two months since their most recent release (v2.1.1), but we are on the heels of a new Intel driver release. The Intel X.Org video driver will soon reach version 2.2.0 and contains a number of fixes and other enhancements since the xf86-video-intel 2.1 release. Among the many changes include defaulting to EXA as opposed to XAA, 965 IGP fixes, and improved support for G33/35 integrated graphics. Most of the changes, however, are just fixes. Just about 15 minutes ago, Jesse Barnes of Intel had bumped the driver version to 2.1.99, which will be the testing pre-release prior to the xf86-video-intel 2.2 introduction. Jesse had confirmed this information on the X.Org mailing list. Of course, once the Intel 2.2 X.Org driver is introduced, we'll be sure to let you know (you can also be notified by subscribing to our RSS feed).

Update (Nov 8): The xf86-video-intel 2.1.99 announcement has now been made on the X.Org mailing list. From this announcement, the Intel 2.2 driver is designed for X server 1.4.x, Mesa 7.0, and the latest DRM. Aside from the EXA highlight we mentioned, xf86-video-intel 2.2 is the first Intel driver release to support a tiled front buffer and frame-buffer compression. Also included with this release will be improved back-light support and additional TV-Out properties.