More Changes Coming For DirectFB 1.8

While most of the Linux desktop world is focused around Wayland, X11, and Mir for the basis of the display technologies, DirectFB has continued marching forward and picked up many features this year and there will be another batch of features presented soon with DirectFB 1.8.

Among the achievements this year for the DirectFB project were DirectFB Weston support, a heck of a lot low-level enhancements were planned, and its Ilixi tool-kit reached v1.0.

Looking out ahead, there's already many changes queued up in the DirectFB core Git repository for the 1.8 release. Its release date has yet to be determined, but among the DirectFB 1.8 changes sitting in Git include initial Ultra HD / 4K resolution support, a preliminary X11 multi-layer implementation, and the Wayland display support.

DirectFB 1.8 also has queued up DRM/KMS support updates, new configuration options, better EGL run-time handling, C++11 code compiler compatibility, libEGL/libDFBEGL support, cmake build system support, and many fixes.

The DirectFB core Git code-base hasn't been touched in one month now, but the current work towards version 1.8 can be viewed via its Git web interface. The only indication of the DirectFB 1.8 release time-line from the project's website is from a post about the DirectFB 1.7.1 point release, " Small update, more to come in 1.8.0 shortly."