X.Org Server 1.11 Has Officially Been Released

X.Org Server 1.11 was officially released this Friday evening.

X.Org Server 1.11 was originally planned for released in mid August, but then the unfortunate passing of Keith Packard's mother (the X.Org release manager) led to a one-week delay. Our condolences go out to Keith Packard and his family.

After numerous belated releases from X.Org in the past, a one week delay is nothing to complain about, especially considering the sad circumstance.

While this is a new major X.Org Server release, it's mostly about bug-fixing. X Input 2.1 was delayed (with its touch-related features) to the next X.Org Server release (or later), there isn't any RandR extensions (after RandR 1.4 was restarted), and just nothing to get too excited over, besides addressing outstanding issues. Regardless, it's an improvement that incorporates six months of enhancements.

X.Org Server 1.11 does break the ABI for graphics drivers, but the latest NVIDIA binary driver already supports it and the AMD Catalyst blob will quickly (if it doesn't already, I haven't checked on my latest development copies).

The next release, X.Org Server 1.12, should be here in approximately six months. It will likely be discussed next month at XDC Chicago 2011 when the developers will next meet. One of the targets for the 1.12 release is smooth scrolling support.

There's also a question when X.Org 7.7 will be released. X.Org 7.6 was released back in late 2010, the X.Org Wiki says that "X11R7.7 development is underway for release in the second half of 2011," but there's been no discussions recently about tagging the 7.7 katamari. It's quite possible that X.Org 7.7 won't be released until early 2012 when X.Org Server 1.12 is here, but it's not too much of a big deal considering the modularization of X.Org and most Linux distributions already shipping the latest components.

X.Org Server 1.11 isn't being shipped in the upcoming Ubuntu 11.10 release, but it will be found in Fedora 16 and other distributions.

The official xorg-server 1.11 announcement is available from the mailing list. All it really says though is "Here's the final 1.11 release. Thanks, as always, to everyone who contributed code, testing, documentation and review."

For those wondering about the Wayland Display Server, see this Wayland status update when looking at it earlier in the week under Ubuntu 11.10.

Be sure to participate in the 2011 X.Org/Linux Graphics Survey.