Xorg has been Forked! [Solved]

[dreamer]

Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything! from Github

One can always discuss pros and cons from a tech perspective. I don't know a lot about that. What rubs me the wrong way is that Apple and Microsoft managed to gradually modernize their 80s display stacks into the current day and age without causing massive upheaval among Apple and Microsoft third party developers. Yeah, these are big corporations, but it don't think it takes that many devs if you do it gradually. Basically one dev wrote the display stack for Android 1.0. The truth is probably that nobody wanted to pay for X11 modernization.

One "theory" is that there was industry demand for Linux based "appliances", basically full-screen applications. So classic window functionality was actually an afterthought (not priority number 1) and offloaded to the community: Gnome, KDE etc. So the complexity has been transferred to compositors even if building blocks such as wlroots exist.

The winners are for example Valve that only needs basic display functionality for Steam Deck. The losers are all the classic window managers.

From my own perspective it's just another transition:
I disliked PulseAudio. 5 years after its introduction in Ubuntu it worked pretty well. Nothing to complain about then.
I disliked systemd. After 5 to 10 years everything was ready and now it's probably the most problem-free init because many applications expect it.
I disliked Wayland. 5 years from now maybe I will say: "It's working pretty well. I have nothing to complain about." For the time being I think only KDE, Gnome and a few other DEs and compositors are really usable with Wayland.

For what it is worth I believe we already see Wayland limitations on X.org since many DEs have transitioned to modal and non-resizable dialog windows. Or maybe it is a design trend since I see some of that also on Windows. Maybe it's just the mobile paradigm.

[FullScale4Me]

And in the end, the Linux world will still have the pre-fork stable release to use as they had been.

This guy will shortly fade [back] into obscurity. He's had his five minutes of 'fame', so to speak. Times up!

[Artim]

I totally get it. As long as we have a choice, it's all good. ALSA still works so we don't have to have only Pulseaudio. Runit is quick, sysvinit is stable - we have choice. If desktop Linux becomes a take-what-you're-given-and-like-it kind of thing, then it's too much like the proprietary OSes that many of us left behind for freedom from corporate lock-in.

For most of us we choose our own web browser (I like mine because...), email client, office suite, desktop environment and/or window manager - but we have a choice in the matter. We can even run a different kernel if we choose to. I don't know enough about all the "guts" of an OS to say which is better between this and that, but I think choice is what FOSS and Linux are all about, so I hate to see good, time-tested software die of neglect - or because "Big Tech" has a favorite and wants to impose it on everybody. For that reason alone, I hope XLibre does well.

[atomick]

Linux Desktop Users should have their Choice and user experience by install select!.
nothings perfect. yet X11 under desktop providing the full on gueue add driver support. (nvidia was pushed long ago by MS to negate providing linux driver release, nor allowing some odd feature MS was to command by)
mostly for the game markets.

hope distro devo types provide the choice and or remove and replace methods set into motion tested by both method.
Who was it that forced to remove X11 and .Xauthority etc from root. Some Admins developed alot of zenity and yad scripts
now have to jump thru hoop to attempt to keep their works operating. Or cheat and copy from sudo's user account and hack it setting desktop:0.0 and export Display? trick.
like to see #9 Artim per "Wayland Breaks everything" time shall tell.

[proteusguy]

Is there any anticipation that MX-Linux will start using/supporting XLibre any time soon? Sounds like X11 is a dead project in terms of updates and Wayland isn't ready for prime time yet. Is there any reason not to replace X11 with XLibre?

[siamhie]

Sounds like X11 is a dead project in terms of updates and Wayland isn't ready for prime time yet.

Xorg just released xorg-server-21.1.18 and xwayland-24.1.8 on June 18th 2025. https://www.x.org/releases/individual/xserver/

[Adrian]

Is there any anticipation that MX-Linux will start using/supporting XLibre any time soon? Sounds like X11 is a dead project in terms of updates and Wayland isn't ready for prime time yet. Is there any reason not to replace X11 with XLibre?

I don't talk for the entire team, but personally I won't touch that with a 10 foot pole. I don't trust huge codebase "supported" by lone wolves.

[rambo919]

Well eventually it will be a choice of the deliberately strangled xorg or the for now at least one man team xlibre..... or just going wayland. The problem is that an unintended side effect of this drama has been a highlighting of wayland problems that atm are impossible to solve.... so a lot of people atm if forced to choose will choose xlibre over wayland and it will have nothing to do with any controversy.

We must be more careful of wishful thinking, of "believing in" software rather than soberly evaluating the options. It's entirely possible that as things stand if all forms of xorg disappears all the Linux support gained in the last decade will evaporate overnight because of all the problems and packages that will be forced to be discontinued.

I can understand the frustrations of the xlibre dev, I can also understand how he believed that politicizing this would galvanize support.... problem is such galvanization can go either way especially since Linux is not dominated by real revolutionaries anymore, the socialist core that has always galvanized what should be just software have gained socio-economic dominance to a degree they never had before and have turned tyrannical in their desire to consolidate and maintain their newfound power. Everyone else that actually are attracted to Linux just for the freedom and not the socialist radicalism is now being tarred and feathered as "far right wing" by corporate controlled entities who are trying to de-fredomize everything for lack of a better term. The revolution has reached the point of eating it's own as the pigs and the men become the same thing.

The storm is here, it can either sustain or destroy Linux.... time will tell.

[Artim]

OpenMandriva and Devuan are enthusiastically backing XLibre, along with Artix and a couple of others, so I expect there to be plenty of support for this supposedly "lone wolf" effort to keep a great software project going.

[anticapitalista]

OpenMandriva and Devuan are enthusiastically backing XLibre, along with Artix and a couple of others, so I expect there to be plenty of support for this supposedly "lone wolf" effort to keep a great software project going.

Where is your evidence for this claim?