Although some X.org drivers have been updated for X server 1.7, development work is running behind schedule. New drivers from AMD, Intel and Nvidia and new Linux versions mean a number of corrections and enhancements in the graphics system. 3D support for newer Radeon GPUs is now adequate for Compiz. DRBD should make it into the main Linux kernel development tree in 2.6.32.

Nvidia announced a few days ago, on its forum, a new version of its proprietary driver for the Nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia 195.36.24 adds support for new GPUs, and fixes a few issues. But the most important thing is that Nvidia 195.36.24 has support for X Server 1.8.

While new stable kernel releases seem to have become somewhat less frequent, they now include more changes. Although the most recent version of AMD's proprietary graphics drivers finally work with X Server 1.7, NVIDIA's drivers already work with version 1.8. Videos of the Linux Audio Conference and the Collaboration Summit provide insights into audio and kernel topics

The X.org and kernel developers are working on drivers to support the DirectX 11 graphics cards in AMD's Radeon HD 5000 series. The kernel developers have released numerous new stable kernels and are discussing the integration of utrace in great detail.

Linus Torvalds has merged the kernel code for the GeForce-compatible nouveau open source graphics driver as a staging driver into the Linux main development tree – from which kernel version 2.6.33 will emerge in around two and a half months.

Version 9.3 of the proprietary Linux graphics drivers from AMD, known as Catalyst or "fglrx", will be the last to support the R300, R400 and R500 series GPUs, used for example on Radeon models 9500 to X1950.

On May 28th, 2008, NVidia decided to please the Linux world and launched version 173.14.05 of their graphics drivers, which brought preliminary support for X.org Server 1.5 (used in bleeding-edge distributions, such as Fedora 9). A few days ago, they decided to make the Linux users happy again, by releasing yet another bugfix version of their graphics drivers, Nvidia 173.14.09.

It's going on two weeks since the RadeonHD driver was made available, which is AMD's sanctioned open-source driver for the Radeon X1000 (R500) and Radeon HD 2000 (R600) series (as well as future generations of AMD GPUs).

One of the benefits of moving the different graphics hardware drivers over to using kernel mode-setting, an in-kernel GPU memory manager (whether it be GEM or TTM), and other newer X innovations is the possibility of now running the X Server without root privileges.