Xorg has been Forked! [Solved]

[AVLinux]

X11 is neither alive nor healthy. X11 is old. X11 is designed to solve problems that existed 30 or 40 years ago, and hasn't adapted well to modern hardware, or modern use cases.

I hear this again and again yet how many thousands Linux Users across hundreds of Distros are using it just fine...? I recently had an absolute nightmare on Linux with a recent pro nVidia card, the new Linux driver situation was so bleak I ended up selling the card and going back the the AMD card it replaced and as I understand the situation with nVidia and Wayland is even worse! As I said before I haven't read the whitepapers on either but I think the arguments about Xorg are MUCH more theoretical and are definitely being amplified for justification more than actually being experienced by the end User. Whatever significant design flaws are in X they are certainly not obvious to the User. This smells like a do-over of the PulseAudio and PipeWire thing where PulseAudio was apparently so utterly horrible that it direly needed PipeWire to fix it yet in a non-professional Audio context for general Desktop usage I never used or tried a Distro where PulseAudio didn't 'just work' for daily Desktop Audio (Pro Audio is a whole other story). Of course it had problems but again the end User was blissfully unaware of them and seemed to get along OK. In the Linux world progress is an utterly chaotic process I guess... Wayland is the last rug-pull for me on Linux, as someone who both Uses and Distributes and like @Nokkaelaein requires a very specialized immutable long-term appliance type of installation many of Linux' production benefits are undermined by the relentless shifting sands reinventing of the wheel and planned obsolescence of it's core systems..

[DukeComposed]

Whatever significant design flaws are in X they are certainly not obvious to the User.

And that's a good thing. Old software tends to have had the luxury of having its rough edges sanded down and spackled over and so using it is less painful than using the rough-hewn new thing. At the very least the flaws of the old thing are well-known and more or less taken for granted.

Of course it had problems but again the end User was blissfully unaware of them and seemed to get along OK. In the Linux world progress is an utterly chaotic process I guess...

There are plenty of battles that have been fought in the tech world we will never know. I'm less concerned about Wayland being newer or fancier than X11 than I am that the X11 codebase has ossified and is becoming increasingly irrelevant and insecure over time. I'm also expecting that what X11 made possible Wayland will be able to make easy. Progress in the Linux world is now run, mostly, by corporate interests and this is a tough pill for a lot of the free/open/libre fanatics to swallow. Corporations have the funds to finance large projects and pay teams of people to build features they can sell. While the Linux ecosystem still has room for small projects that are Just One Guy Doing His Thing, it's pretty obvious which of these development models is going to have the velocity and durability to push for adoption, marketshare, and mindshare. Wayland isn't even the only X11 improvement plan we had. Maybe you remember Mir. Again, a corporate-sponsored development project that got pushed and pushed until it wasn't financially viable anymore, stopped competing, and exited the market.

I don't see X11 as a bad thing and I'm in no hurry to get rid of it. I'm much happier knowing that more enthusiastic folks have run ahead and tripped over themselves on all of the more obvious migration problems so that now a slower project like Xfce will have fewer surprises when revamping their DE. X11 has been around for a fair bit of time and isn't going away anytime soon -- provided you haven't taken a dependency on a project or service that's deprecating it as fast as they can. It's just a matter of looking around and realizing it's time to calmly pick up your things and start moving towards the exits.

It can feel a little like cod liver oil at times. Being forced to take your medicine because someone says "it's good for you". When we were children we'd stomp our feet and shake our heads and scream "I don't wanna!" and we ended up taking the medicine anyway because we didn't really have a say in the matter. I think a lot of the posturing over X11 now, primarily from end users like me, is wasted energy. The transition is going to be largely automatic for us. Version 5 will be X11, version 6 will add Wayland, version 7 will remove X11 entirely; or something to that effect. I, personally, won't have to convert anything. I'm not going to have to recompile my desktop icons or drag all my panel widgets from one spot to another in order to get them to work. It's going to be a relatively long time for me on Xfce, but I imagine the day the new Wayland-riffic Xfce hits my desktop I won't even notice a difference.

[proteusguy]

I don't trust huge codebase "supported" by lone wolves.

A reasonable objection but one in which is likely quite temporary unless the X11 folk start merging code improvements they've been ignoring for ages. Ultimately we will be forced to address the question of "as opposed to what alternatives?" Wayland is not going to replace X11 any time soon and there's strong efforts to stop the existing X11 code base from advancing. If I'm missing something factual that I'm not aware of I'd love to know details. Right now the "lone wolves" seem to be the only ones doing what's necessary. Scratching your own itch and then sharing the solution with the community is what open source is all about isn't it?

- - Ben Scherrey

[Adrian]

Wayland is not going to replace X11 any time soon

I think it was pointed out that KDE and Gnome won't even give you the option to run it on Xorg. Xorg is deprecated technology on the way to be replaced.

[proteusguy]

Wayland is not going to replace X11 any time soon

I think it was pointed out that KDE and Gnome won't even give you the option to run it on Xorg. Xorg is deprecated technology on the way to be replaced.

The key word in my comment is "soon". KDE and Gnome will abandon X only when Wayland demonstrates it's a viable replacement lest they also abandon their user base. I'm 100% for migration to a superior option and expect Wayland will ultimately get there. Until then, the X11 code base cannot be allowed to go into code rot. That's simply not an option (which you keep neglecting to address) and I'm surprised no one has brought up the irony of the situation in a forum that exists due to our refusal to adopt systemd! All the same arguments people are making against this XLibre thing are identical to the comments my peers make about me abandoning Ubuntu for MX-Linux!

Fortunately the Wayland issue appears to have a tractable solution, unlike systemd, which is architecturally unsound by design. We just have to be patient for Wayland to be able to deal with active code bases that it can't yet deal with. I don't see any reason to believe that won't come. Meanwhile we can't abandon X11 and the XLibre effort has brought this consideration to the forefront.

[Adrian]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the irony of the situation in a forum that exists due to our refusal to adopt systemd

I don't think that's why this forum exists. Also, I'm sorry to let you know, but the next release of KDE will come with systemd only by default (you'll still be free to do whatever you want with it but we'll not install sysvinit on the ISO -- and you'll have the sysvinit by default on the Xfce and Fluxbox releases)

[DukeComposed]

the X11 code base cannot be allowed to go into code rot. That's simply not an option (which you keep neglecting to address)

The X11 codebase is already going into code rot. The Venn diagram of the X11 devs and the Wayland devs is pretty much a circle. The people who make X11 are chomping at the bit to move away from X11 and that tells me just how long in the tooth it is. Does X11 work? Sure. Do you want to maintain it so the old team can go do cool Wayland stuff? One guy has said yes. Maybe he's looking for volunteers. (Make sure you've never had a vaccine, though. He's a stickler for human-only contributions.)

I'm sorry to let you know, but the next release of KDE will come with systemd only by default (you'll still be free to do whatever you want with it but we'll not install sysvinit on the ISO -- and you'll have the sysvinit by default on the Xfce and Fluxbox releases)

I wonder if this means that systemd will or will not be an option on the Xfce and Fluxbox flavors. I'm already happy knowing that MX-25 Xfce will still include sysvinit; it means there's hope for another MX-25 sysvinit_only respin.

[Adrian]

Xfce and Fluxbox from our tests will work just like the MX-23 with the same choices and defaults. KDE will be systemd only and probably Wayland by default (Xorg will still be a choice, even if I wanted to remove it for now there are some deep dependences, even sddm depends on Xorg).

[siamhie]

I'm sorry to let you know, but the next release of KDE will come with systemd only by default (you'll still be free to do whatever you want with it but we'll not install sysvinit on the ISO -- and you'll have the sysvinit by default on the Xfce and Fluxbox releases)

I wonder if this means that systemd will or will not be an option on the Xfce and Fluxbox flavors. I'm already happy knowing that MX-25 Xfce will still include sysvinit; it means there's hope for another MX-25 sysvinit_only respin.

I'm sure we will have the same options we have with MX-23 regarding XFCE and fluxbox. sysvinit by default with systemd available through the advanced options section. I boot systemd on my fluxbox desktop because of two programs I use.

[Artim]

I'm surprised no one has brought up the irony of the situation in a forum that exists due to our refusal to adopt systemd

I too am surprised by the attitude towards Xorg among a community that refuses systemd. Isn't SysVinit "abandonware" now and aren't we pitiful here, set in our ways and stuck in the past to still be using such old software when the new systemd is the bestest, most wonderfulest and awesomeful software in the history of ever?

I think in many Linux communities we would be ridiculed for our refusal to adopt systemd. After all, It's the future!

So I'm surprised to find any such "get with the times, Wayland is the future, Xorg is abandonware" attitude here. Adrian's suggestion that I "find another distro" reminds me a little of what's happening in the larger Big Tech world, where participants - even users in some cases - are invited to leave if they're not into a particular ideology. Very strange indeed.