X Server 1.8 Release Candidate Is Here

Keith Packard has just made available the first release candidate of X Server 1.8 and confirms that its release schedule is still on track. Snapshots and the Git code for X Server 1.8 go back to last year, but with a planned release by the end of March, Keith has now started working on release candidates.

X Server 1.8 will feature a move away from HAL with udev input handling and xorg.conf.d support. This major X Server update also has new DMX2 code and DRI2 2.2 support, but it is yet another X.Org Server update that goes without XKB2.

X Server 1.8 Release Candidate 1 contains dozens of changes since the earlier snapshots and then also what is available in the X Server 1.7 series that has been around since last October. NVIDIA's newest beta already supports X Server 1.8, but it will be many months before AMD is likely to support this updated X Server in their Catalyst Linux driver (they still lack support for X Server 1.7).

Other minor work in this release includes updates to EXA, KDrive, Cygwin/X, and XQuartz. The X Server 1.8 Release Candidate 1 announcement can be read on the X.Org mailing list. It's great to see that the new X.Org release process may actually be working for putting out timed, consistent releases.