The following announcement appears at XFree86.org . . .

The XFree86 project has released XFree86 version 4.2.0, the fifth full release in the XFree86 4 series. XFree86 release 4 is a major re-design of the basic architectural underpinnings of XFree86's implementation of the original X Consortium's X… Server. This re-design allows for a modular interaction between the hardware drivers and the XFree86 core X server. With 4.x, upgrades to the X server with new and unsupported hardware can be easily done and installed without undergoing the previous process of rebuilding an X server. All that is required is installing the new driver module and updating the configuration file.

The road to XFree86 release 4 began as an architectural concept in mid 1997, with the serious framework being implemented in code the beginning of 1998. There were several snapshots on the road to 4.0 which are now part of the 4.0 base release. The 4.2.0 version is an upgrade to 4.1.0, which include more hardware ports, code enhancements and bug fixes.

Release 4 also included the long-awaited integration of the DRI (Direct Rendering Infrastructure). This upgrade into the code base gives XFree86 the abilities of accelerated direct 3-D graphics rendering, used widely in games and other visualization programs.

Specific release enhancements can be viewed in the Release Notes.

 
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