The release candidate for X.Org Server 26.1.0 (xorg-server 26.0.99.901) has been published, signaling the start of the testing phase before the final stable release. This upcoming release will be the first major update to X.Org Server in the past five years, with the previous significant branch 21.1 being released in 2021.
Some key changes and updates included in X.Org Server 26.1.0 compared to xorg-server 21.1 are:
- Removal of the autoconf/automake build system in favor of supporting only Meson.
- Xwayland is now a separate project and is no longer part of xorg-server, with over 21 thousand lines of code removed from the code base.
- Byte-swapped clients, which allow the client and server to use different byte orders, are now disabled by default.
- Connections to the font server are disabled by default.
- Added support for DPMSInfoNotify events from DPMS 1.2.
- Support for XFixes 6.1 and the AllowForceTerminate option added in xorg.conf.
- Added DRM platform (Direct Rendering Manager) for BSD systems.
- Logs for non-root users have been moved to the $XDG_STATE_HOME/xorg directory.
- Xvfb now supports multiple display controllers (CRTC) and up to a 13-button mouse.
- Outdated DMX, EXA, and shadow pixmap extensions have been removed.
- Additional tests are included in this release.
The release encompasses all remaining X-servers not associated with Xwayland, including Xorg, Xephyr, Xnest, Xvfb, Xwin (for Microsoft Windows), and Xquartz (for macOS). For testing purposes, it is recommended to build and run Xorg with libpciaccess 0.19 (released in March 2026), as at least one fix depends on the new API introduced in this version.