Upgrade Xorg 1.19 on Ubuntu 16.04

The latest Xorg 1.19 has been released and it is said to solve the tearing issues with Nvidia + Intel Optimus setups. I have been struggling with that a lot and can't wait to try it.

I wonder: Are there any update guides on how to update xserver + kernel for the new Xorg release? I failed to find any documentation on that. I realize I can download the Xorg 1.19 and execute the install, however not knowing the documentation, I am not sure how to roll back in case of catastrophic failure.

Additionally, I am on kernel 4.4 - I realize that the new Optimus support needs (I believe) kernel 4.5 or higher. If wanting to install it on my local machine, I believe that the download compiles it on that machine before installing it. Does that mean that I should install the kernel before installing Xorg so that the compilation would be against the kernel that I am running?

Update: Now available for 16.04.2 users.

You need to enable this repository for latest xserver:

https://launchpad.net/~canonical-x/+archive/ubuntu/x-staging

It will give you xserver 1.19.3 assuming you were already using 16.04.2 (HWE)

You also need an nvidia driver with the May bug fixes. I'm using the 375.66 driver from here

https://launchpad.net/~graphics-drivers/+archive/ubuntu/ppa

Do a complete purge and reinstall of the nvidia drivers. e.g.

sudo apt purge nvidia*

and then reinstall, perhaps by the GUI additional drivers tool. Then make a file /etc/modprobe.d/zz-nvidia-modeset.conf with contents:

options nvidia_375_drm modeset=1

make sure you have Optimus enabled in Bios (it's "Hybrid" in my Thinkpad P50), and off you go. Definitely no more flicker. I don't know how stable it is yet, time will tell.

Long and detailed answer here: Screen tearing on Nvidia GTX960m