X.Org Server Development Continues Trending Quite Low
With the X.Org/X11 Server being rather mature, more and more developers focusing on Wayland and alternatives than X11, and more work happening in shared components like libinput and Pixman, the development pace of the xorg-server is significantly lower than years prior to 2015. In 2016 there were just 556 commits year-to-date with 14,542 lines of new code and 10,589 lines of code removed. In 2015 there were 510 commits while in 2014 were 939 commits. In 2014 there was 72k lines of new code, 21k lines in 2013, 341k lines in 2012, and 112k lines in 2011. The volume of commits in 2015~2016 are around the 2004 level.
The most active X.Org developers of those working on the server this year were Adam Jackson, Keith Packard, Eric Anholt, Olivier Fourdan, Michel Dänzer, and Hans de Goede. This year have been contributions to the X.Org Server from just 60 authors -- the least amount of developers since 2005. Red Hat continues to be the number one company contributing to the X.Org Server development.
The overall size of the X.Org Server continues to be rather flatlined: about 1,700 files and 707k lines of code. This year did see the release of just one major release, X.Org Server 1.19, which came behind schedule.
Those wanting to dig through more xorg-server development stats can find my fresh GitStats output as of this morning via this directory.
For those curious about the most-viewed X.Org news on Phoronix in 2016:
X.Org Might Lose Its Domain Name
Unless there's a miracle, the X.Org Foundation stands to lose one of its biggest assets: its single-letter domain name.
Video & Input Driver ABIs Will Change Again For X.Org Server 1.19
A few days ago the X.Org video and input driver ABI versions were bumped again following some breaks in the interface.
It Looks Like X.Org Might Be Safe For A Few More Years
It looks like a miracle happened just in time for X.Org.
Are You Sure You Want X.Org To Die?
Whenever posting news items about the X.Org Foundation, it's common to routinely see a few comments about "let X.org die already!", "Wayland is the future!", and other similar remarks.
Missteps Of The X.Org Foundation
With the recent news of X.Org possibly losing its valuable domain, many have commented in our forums and elsewhere how this could have possibly happened... However, in reality, it is sadly not much of a surprise.
X.Org Hit By New Round Of Security Issues, Multiple Libraries Affected
Back in 2013 we heard how X.Org security is worse than it looks and how for a period there were many X.Org security issues. It's been a while since last seeing a number of X.Org security vulnerabilities come about at once, but that's changed with this morning's disclosure.
PRIME Synchronization & Double Buffering Land In The X.Org Server
For those making use of DRI PRIME for multi-GPU systems (mainly in the context of iGPU + dGPU notebooks), the xorg-server's PRIME code now has synchronization support and double buffering.
AMDGPU's xf86-video-amdgpu vs. Mode-Setting DDX Performance
To complement the xf86-video-ati vs. xf86-video-modesetting benchmarks from quite a while ago, here are some tests of the 3D performance in seeing any performance differences between the xf86-video-amdgpu DDX for the GCN 1.2 GPUs versus using the generic xf86-video-modesetting driver.
X.Org's Indirect GLX State Is Frightening Researchers
Researchers and scientists appear up in arms this week over the state of Indirect GLX (IGLX) in the X.Org Server and the potential they'd lose the remote OpenGL rendering support they've been accustomed to using for seeing visualizations from clusters / super-computers on their workstations.
The Interesting Wayland/Vulkan/Graphics Talks Happening This Month At XDC2016
Coming up in just two weeks is the X.Org's XDC2016 conference taking place in Helsinki, Finland. Here's a preview of some of the interesting talks.
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