X Server
The X server project holds sources to build an X server separately from a full X distribution. The only drivers supplied are based on the kdrive framework.
Translucent windows
Translucent windows are not an intrinsic element of recent X server development, rather they come from a combination of many separate projects working together. Take a look at Keith's Screenshots and then read a more detailed article on how translucent windows work
The xcompmgr utility in xapps CVS is a sample compositing manager. You can enable client-side shadows with -c or server-side shadows with -s. There is also the transset utility to set the transparency of windows as a whole.
Installation
X Server development now happens in git. See Infrastructure/git/Users
One way of installing is to to just get a copy of xorg/xserver git repository and build it with configure, make and make install. You need to use --enable-kdrive option to build kdrive. However, there are build dependencies on other components. You can install their development packages if your distribution is pretty recent. If that doesn't work, you can get the dependent packages one by one from git. Or build the full modular X.org, that will provide the necessary dependent libraries.
Browse git with gitweb
There is a rough guide for installing the Kdrive X Servers from old CVS in the /InstallGuide.
The todo list
There's a list of non-strategic development tasks that are either under way or need help in the /ToDoList.
Mailing Lists
The http://www.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/xorg mailinglist is the place for discussion of the X Server.
The xserver-commit mailinglist archives commits to the X Server.
See Also
XFree86 patches
The patches taken by WarrenTurkal. The overview done by NaKee is here. Full file listing of the patches here.
Related People
TODO
Page for NaKee