I've been toying around with xorg (from the ubuntu packges) a little.

First of all, xorg does have benefits for me. For example, gnome-terminal becomes a lot faster with it, due to Xft improvements (and this makes a huge difference when you have a fast-scrolling text such as a compile running!) I used to have a non-Xft terminal handy for that.

The much-called-for gimmics such as transparency and shadows worked more bad than good for me. They were really slow. Enabling them later on a runing session completely messed up my display, hiding all windows etc.; running it first was okay though. I hope this will become faster in future, so cool effects will be possible if you want to show Linux capabilities (animations are always slower than immediate displays, so I don't want them for working. Sure, zooming in and out of applications when switching is cool, but instant switches are better)

Now for the bad parts: due to all the low-level work going on in xorg, it has it's rough edges. For example, xorg locks up with DRI on my (older) radeon Mobility FireGL 7800. I hope, adding the fix for #2361 will make DRI work again for me. The bug apparently applies to at least all M7 family chips, that is RV200: Radeon 7500, M7, FireGL 7800.

I guess this is only one example of drivers breaking in xorg. So before releasing xorg with a new Debian stable, several months of stabilization should be done... Unless we move the drivers to volatile, that is.

I'll keep you (= the xorg people, especially from Ubuntu) updated if the fix for #2361 helps with my card. I know of some hoary users bitten by this.