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[return to "The X.Org Server just got forked (announcing XLibre)"]
1. throwa+9[view] [source] 2025-06-06 10:37:14
>>throwa+(OP)
Well-known developer Enrico Weigelt just forked the X server from freedesktop.org after getting the boot [0].

[0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...

[1] https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/commits/xlibre/prepare/

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2. chrism+04[view] [source] 2025-06-06 11:25:46
>>throwa+9
“Getting the boot” is rather vague. Is there any more information anywhere, background, &c.?

My general impression (quite possibly incorrect) was that X.Org Server is largely treated as “done”, making only bugfixes and such these days.

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3. JimDab+E4[view] [source] 2025-06-06 11:32:36
>>chrism+04
From the readme:

> That fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to elimitate competition of their own products. (classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics)

> This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed.

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4. hello_+B5[view] [source] 2025-06-06 11:42:19
>>JimDab+E4
> moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project

That's what I've always thought. The "X11 developers" pushing for Wayland weren't original developers so much as RedHat "maintainers," who (understandably) wanted a frontier to explore rather than janitorial work. All I know for certain is that X11 (even as of 15 years ago) mostly worked, while Wayland of 2025 is still full of headaches & breakages.

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5. dralle+w7[view] [source] 2025-06-06 12:01:18
>>hello_+B5
X did not "just work" for me 10 years ago, and neither is Wayland "still full of headaches and breakages"

I've had no substantial problems because of Wayland in the last, like, 5 years.

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6. antiso+0s[view] [source] 2025-06-06 14:24:17
>>dralle+w7
Thanks for your anecdotes. Here's a couple of counter-anecdotes:

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X has "just worked" for me since at least ubuntu 8.04 (that's 2008, april, over 17 years ago, for those counting), probably earlier.

I don't recall having any particular issues with X on the fedora machines I ran before I switched to ubuntu 8.04, but I don't recall clearly enough to be able to confidently say that I didn't have any X issues.

OTOH, I also don't specifically recall having X issues since some time around Red Hat 6 or so, which would be around 1998 or 1999, so it might be more like 25-26 years since X didn't "just work" for me.

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About a year ago, I heard that wayland might be approaching a usable state. So I decided to give it a try on a raspberry pi that I was setting up.

It took literally about 15 minutes before I ran into a problem where I wasn't able to do something I've been doing for decades on X. And I want to stress that I was hoping it would work - I was not out to find a reason not to use wayland, I just happened to run into one inside of about 15 minutes.

I spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to do what I wanted to do on wayland. I put a nontrivial amount of effort into trying to solve the issue on wayland. During the course of this, I found several different/conflicting pieces of advice, none of which worked for me. I think IIRC I found one option which sounded promising but which meant recompiling the compositor, or something very-nontrivial like that.

I balked at that and switched the system over to X.

And the problem instantly went away, and everything started working again. And that machine currently has an uptime of well over a hundred days.

I would love for wayland to be a thing that actually works to the point that it's a viable replacement for X, but I grow more and more skeptical every year that this doesn't happen. I Expected it like a decade ago.

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7. const_+W52[view] [source] 2025-06-07 05:05:44
>>antiso+0s
The reason X "just worked" is that it's very bad, obolsete software that nobody would touch so we all just got used to the things that didn't work.

High DPI, multiple monitors, hot-plugging, OpenGL... these things were hacks and pretty much never worked right. There's also very necessary for modern computers. We all just didn't care.

So what if my thunderbolt dock needed a reboot to connect a monitor? So what if youtube drops a few frames here or there? So what if I need to enforce vsync across the entire desktop just so I don't get splitting? So what if vertical bars appear for a few seconds after suspend? So what if 1.25 scaling looks like ass?

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