X.Org Server Gains Support For Auto-Binding Secondary GPUs To The Screen

Written by Michael Larabel in X.Org on 10 August 2019 at 09:30 PM EDT. 31 Comments
X.ORG
Adding to the changes to find with the eventual X.Org Server 1.21 release is a change from Red Hat that has been carried by Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora for years.

The merged change is about automatically binding secondary GPUs to the screen, particularly helping out cases like hybrid graphics laptops or USB DisplayLink setups driving secondary displays. Previously there's been some RandR magic for users (or scripted setups) via xrandr for handling this setup while now the patch by David Airlie will auto-bind the GPUs to the screen.

It took years for this patch to be accepted upstream due to this behavior largely being a desktop environment decision over its monitor/display behavior with regards to the auto-configuring of secondary GPUs/displays.

More details via the comments in this commit. Though without any xorg-server 1.21 release being on the horizon, most Linux desktop users outside of RHEL/Fedora or those carrying this patch likely won't see this behavior change until 2020.
Related News
About The Author
Michael Larabel

Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

Popular News This Week