Well, Linux team at Nvidia certainly know their job, because they released new version of Nvidia Linux display driver 100.14.19 not long after X.Org 7.3 started showing up in popular Linux distribution. It even looks like they actually waited for X.Org to release 7.3 first, so they could sync with it pretty fast. I can only agree with such strategy. :) The new drivers come with all sorts of fixes and improvements and I can't wait to test it on my desktop.

This morning, hardworking Debian developers pushed the remaining pieces of the brand new X.Org 7.3 to Debian sid (unstable) distribution. And it must be said, a well done job!

ii  x11-apps            7.3+1      X applications
ii  x11-common          1:7.3+2    X Window System (X.Org)
ii  x11-session-utils   7.3+1      X session utilities
ii  x11-utils           7.3+1      X11 utilities
ii  x11-xfs-utils       7.3+1      X font server utilities
ii  x11-xkb-utils       7.3+1      X11 XKB utilities
ii  x11-xserver-utils   7.3+1      X server utilities
ii  xbase-clients       1:7.3+2    miscellaneous X clients - metapackage
ii  xorg                1:7.3+2    X.Org X Window System
ii  xorg-dev            1:7.3+2    the X.Org X Window System development
ii  xserver-xorg        1:7.3+2    the X.Org X server
ii  xutils              1:7.3+2    X Window System utility programs


Sunnyvale, Calif - September 7, 2007 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced a major strategic initiative to support the Open Source development community for ATI Radeon™ graphics processors. The week of September 10th, AMD plans to provide an open source information and development package supporting the ATI Radeon™ HD 2000 series as well as ATI Radeon™ X1000 series of graphics processing units (GPU) on Linux desktops. To accelerate this initiative, AMD partnered with Novell's SuSE Linux engineering team.

Features

• Xorg server 1.4 - see Server14Branch for more details. Highlights:
  • RandR 1.2: RandR 1.2 offers output hotplug, as well as on-the-fly output reconfiguration and mode switching.
  • Input hotplug: Input hotplug allows hotplugging of input devices, and also adds enhanced support for touchscreens and tablets, through either HAL or D-Bus.
  • KDrive: Numerous enhancements have been made to the KDrive codebase, including better support for multiple input devices.
  • DTrace: When running on OpenSolaris, DTrace support is available in the X server, allowing detailed accounting of operations inside the server.
  • EXA: A great deal of work has been done on the EXA framework to make it more usable.
• New applications: xbacklight
• New drivers: xf86-video-glide, xf86-video-vermilion
• New man pages for API's: libXinerama, libXcomposite, XKB functions in libX11, Xtest functions in libXtst
• Support for font catalogue directories in font path
• xdm: Xft support added

Referencing the post Nvidia Linux driver 100.14.11 and Linux kernel 2.6.23. Here I have reported the patches for older versions of Nvidia drivers. The procedure to follow is the same described in the above document.

This is the first development release of Compiz Fusion, the result of more than six months of work and polish. The first stable release, 0.6.0, will follow after the Compiz 0.6.0 release.

Compiz Fusion is the result of a merge between the Compiz community plugin set "Compiz Extras" and the parts of the Beryl project that are independent of the window manager core. The two communities have re-united to create a user experience for Linux that rivals anything available on other platforms.

The merge between Compiz and Beryl, combined with the continuing increase in stability, reliability, and usability both in Compiz, Compiz Fusion and the surrounding software environment (better driver support and so on), means Compiz Fusion will be included in many more distributions. Compiz and Compiz Fusion will be enabled by default in some of them, making Compiz usage easier for everyone.

Well, they're not working together. Unless you're not willing to tweak it a little bit. So, out of the box, you won't be able to test brand new Linux CFS scheduler, merged in the 2.6.23-rc1 release, if you drive your Nvidia card with the proprietary driver. I guess that's what we get for running binary drivers.

This one has bothered me for a long time. The solution is, of course, simple. But, I still don't understand why was it necessary to force users to search so hard for this piece of information, where all the older X server releases worked OK out of the box?

If you find that after upgrading to X.Org 7.3 your display becomes very slow, and you own ATI Radeon, all you need to do is to put this line in the Device section of your xorg.conf:

Jerome Glisse announced today that a small team of X.Org developers has managed to provide the initial support for ATI R500-based cards (ATI Radeon X1300 up to X1600 at the time) by reverse engineering. The released code is definitely not yet ready for the normal users, but it's the big step ahead nevertheless. Especially having in mind how ATI (now owned by AMD) has not provided specifications of their hardware to the open source community. Jerome writes:

Release Highlights

• Adds support for new GPUs: GeForce 8600 GTS, GeForce 8600 GT, GeForce 8600M GT, GeForce 8600M GS, GeForce 8500 GT, GeForce 8400 GS, GeForce 8400M GT, GeForce 8400M GS, GeForce 8400M G, GeForce 8300 GS, Quadro FX 1600M, Quadro FX 570M, Quadro FX 360M, Quadro NVS 320M, Quadro NVS 140M, Quadro NVS 135M, Quadro NVS 130M.
• Adds support for Quadro FX 4600 G-Sync and Quadro FX 5600 G-Sync boards.
• Improved notebook GPU support.
• Improved RenderAccel support for subpixel antialiased fonts.
• Added XV brightness and contrast controls for GeForce 8 GPUs.
• Improved interaction with newer Linux kernels.
• Fixed a locale-interaction issue in the nvidia-settings configuration file parser.

Possibly the greatest news last few days has been the announcement of possible code merge of Beryl and Compiz, two great 3D desktops for Linux. Everything started with Quinn Storm's posting to Beryl development list titled Merge On (details still to be decided) where he writes:

Well, I've read all the arguments, and I think I may have been being overly cautious. It is indeed a concern that we might lose our freedom in a 'merge', but I have been convinced that it isn't a major concern (and of course we reserve the right to re-fork). ... I hope for good things in the future for all of us.

If you're a heavy user of the Linux VGA console, you'll like this feature. Recent 2.6 kernels have added support for soft scrollback. This feature enables you to have much bigger scrollback buffer than the standard console has, at the price of slightly slower console output.

ATI Linux display driver (fglrx) version 8.29.6 is out.

New Features

The ATI Proprietary Linux software driver introduces Linux Kernel 2.6.18 support.

Resolved Issues

The following section provide a brief description of resolved issues with the latest version of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver. These include:

• Unreal Tournament 2004: Using the in-game options to change the desktop display resolution no longer results in the display failing to refresh properly when exiting the game.
• SpecViewPerf: Running the sub-test UGS-04 no longer results in the operating system failing to respond.

New version of NVIDIA's display driver for Linux (and FreeBSD) was released yesterday.

Release Highlights

• Added support for X.Org 7.1.
• Added support for XVideo with the Composite X extension when using X.Org 7.1.
• Improved interaction with newer Linux kernels.

You can download it here.

ATI has released version 8.28.8 of its fglrx Linux display driver, part of the ATI CATALYST suite.

New Features

This section provides information on new features introduced in the latest release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver.

Display Switching Support for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad Products

This release of the ATI Proprietary Linux driver provides Display Switching support for IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad products containing a supported ATI Radeon® Mobility™ product. This feature allows users to use the hotkey function Fn+F7 to toggle between display devices connected to the laptop.