[A bit of an early tease, since while the build will be available
internally near the end of this week, it wouldn't be expected to
go out as Solaris Express: Community Edition for another two
weeks, since nv_57 just went out today. I'm sending this out
now so I don't forget when that happens.]
Xorg 7.2 has been integrated into Nevada build 58, which should
be available from the usual WOS image sources later this week.
Major changes you should know about:
- Previously, Xorg was delivered only as a 32-bit x86 binary.
This release adds 64-bit x86 & 64-bit SPARC binaries as well.
- Xsun is still the default on SPARC, as Xorg on SPARC has
almost no graphics device support as yet. This build includes
a single video driver "wsfb" which provides a dumb framebuffer
using the Sun standard fb ioctls - it is only known to work on
the m64 on-board graphics in an Ultra 5/10 at this point, though
should work on other m64 devices, and eventually on XVR-100 & cg6
as well. wsfb will never run on most SPARC 3-D graphics cards,
which don't allow raw/dumb frame buffer access, so users of those
will need to wait for a device-specific Xorg driver from the SPARC
graphics team (or a community port of an open source driver for
cards which have those available for other OS'es).
- On Nevada, 64-bit will be the default on x86 machines running a
64-bit kernel. You can override this by running (as root):
svccfg -s x11-server setprop options/server=/usr/X11/bin/i386/Xorg
If you are using an existing Xorg module from a source other than
the X gate (i.e. the Xtsol module from the TX team or nvidia's
accelerated driver), you will need to stick to the 32-bit Xorg
until those are ported to 64-bit.
(When this is backported to S10, the 32-bit will be the default
to avoid having this compatibility issue being introduced by a
patch, and you will have to run svccfg with the amd64/Xorg path
to enable 64-bit mode.)
- If you are using nvidia graphics, you have the choice of using the
32-bit Xorg (as noted above) with the existing 32-bit nvidia driver,
or the 64-bit Xorg with the open-source/unaccelerated nv driver.
To use nv, you must pkgrm NVDAgraphics NVDAgraphicsr and reboot to
unload the nvidia kernel module. (We are expecting a 64-bit version
of the nvidia driver from nvidia shortly, and will send out a followup
message when it's available.)
- Intel chipset users will temporarily lose DRI support until 6497788
is integrated into ON by the video-china team.
- Xorg no longer supports LBX - ssh X forwarding with compression is
recommended for remote low bandwidth connections instead.
- /usr/X11/bin/Xvfb is now included, based on the Xorg sources, so you get
the Xorg set of extensions.
- Instead of an Xorg-based Xnest, this build instead includes
/usr/X11/bin/Xephyr which provides similar functionality (an X server
running in a nested window on another server) but in a method more similar
to Xvfb (rendering to an in-memory frame buffer directly, then displaying
that image on the host server) so that it can provide extensions and
drawing mechanisms not present in the host server - for instance, Xephyr
running on Xsun can provide the Render & Composite extensions, and even,
using xrandr, rotate the output. (Note that in b58, the 64-bit builds
of Xephyr won't work due to bug 6520998 - this is fixed in b59.)
If that wasn't enough excruciating detail - more details about the changes
in this release can be seen in PSARC 2007/051, available at:
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/arc/caselog/2007/051/onepager/
--
-Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith at sun.com
Sun Microsystems, Inc. - X Window System Engineering
