MX Linux Forum

One of the largest contributors to the Xorg project has decided to fork it! He says the Xorg people are content to let it become obsolete and die. But not everyone is all that fond of Wayland, and a lot of software just isn't "wayland-ready" yet.

The developer of the fork, named XLibre, writes:

XLibre project's fork of the Xorg x-server, with lots of code cleanups and enhanced functionality.

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

This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with Big Tech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activist groups, state actors, etc.

Those of us who a little hesitant about Wayland might consider this to be good news: XLibre has a future, so we don't have the "vendor lock-in" that FOSS used to oppose with such passion. What do y'all think? The old reliable x-server will live on! XLibre is to be released sometime this month.

In my view this is way too complex piece of software that if it doesn't get enough traction (a lot of developers excited or paid to work on it) is best to let it die.
I think wayland is the future.

Artim wrote: Fri Jun 06, 2025 11:38 am XLibre has a future, so we don't have the "vendor lock-in" that FOSS used to oppose with such passion. What do y'all think? The old reliable x-server will live on!

I don't know about that. X was already forked once almost 20 years ago by The OpenBSD Project. It's called Xenocara and they still use it for the X11 subsystem. I have yet to see any Linux distros convert to Xenocara the way some adopted a similar OpenBSD fork... of OpenSSL.

This project has a very slim chance of succeeding because of how it's being handled, and by whom (pretty much singlehandedly). It's got a strong stench of stay-away-from-this, and even Torvalds basically called the guy insane a few years ago (as the person wrote on the kernel mailing list how vaccines are creating a new humanoid race, lol). Bridges to the Xorg project were burned as the guy submitted tons of untested code that happened to also severely break common functionality, and drama ensued. Also, from the readme of this fork:

"Module ABIs have changed - drivers MUST be recompiled against this Xserver verison [sic], otherwise the Xserver can crash or not even start up correctly", "Proprietary NVidia drivers might break", annnnd so on. Everything I've seen seems to be in the category "oookay, I'll pass" :P

... ... Wayland is the future, but not yet the present ;-)

If they brought back TinyX I might be interested, but as others have said, Wayland is the future for Linux, (& maybe BSD).

Wayland probably is the future for most Linux OSes. For me it's about choice, though. We 'nixers and FOSS fans tend to resist vendor lock-in and being told we must use this or that software. Xorg is being deliberately killed in favor of Red Hat's Wayland. But forking any open-source project is neither unusual nor a bad thing.

But forking any open-source project is neither unusual nor a bad thing.

Nope, it's about making smart decision and not using something so complex like Xorg that has unfixable bugs and is "maintained" by one dude. It is *deliberately* killed because it was never designed properly with security in mind, X11 was released 40 years ago. Do what you please, that's the freedom that open software offers, even including making bad decisions.

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

Artim wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 4:45 am Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything! from Github

That screed seems to be almost like Chicken Little-esque but does list things that work great under X11 but are either broken or partially working under Wayland. Hopefully in due time all those issues listed would been fixed under Wayland either on the compositor side or the window manager side.

Artim wrote: Fri Jun 13, 2025 4:45 am 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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

proteusguy wrote: Wed Jun 18, 2025 9:37 pm 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/

proteusguy wrote: Wed Jun 18, 2025 9:37 pm 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.

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.

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.

Artim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 6:37 am 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?

I think it is too early to talk about X.org forks. I think X.org will be around for a long time. It's still the baseline that "just works". So I would say Trixie plus at least two more Debian releases with X.org support, possibly more.

I don't know how much hardware support is tied to X.org, but with Wayland "root-full implementation" you should be able to run a full X.org session inside Wayland and thus get Wayland hardware support. This is how some X.org-only window managers could survive in a Wayland world.

anticapitalista wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 6:41 am

Artim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 6:37 am 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?

In the OpenMandriva forum, they've already added it to "cooker" (development), and Devuan posted in X:

That Devuan image is just some random post/rant posted on X.
There is no official mention of anything on their website or forum and no packages built or being built (unlike OpenMandriva and Artix).

If you say so... but I do hope they keep the software alive and healthy.
Here it is already in the Arch AUR... I think the first official release is June 21st.

I will probably drop Xorg and go Wayland completely in the KDE release, maybe not the next one, but the one after for sure. @Artim, if you have a problem with that, look for another distro.

I have no interest in incorporating a 40-year old technology that has lots of problems, not to mention the lack of trust in the developer -- apparently people at Xorg had to scramble to fix the mess that the leaving developer left behind https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-Ser ... Of-Reverts

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:21 am I will probably drop Xorg and go Wayland completely in the KDE release, maybe not the next one, but the one after for sure. @Artim, if you have a problem with that, look for another distro.

That's hardly necessary (yet). But I have been playing around with a desktop adaptation of FreeBSD just for fun. No systemd, no big corporate takeovers, no issues with X.

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:21 am I will probably drop Xorg and go Wayland completely in the KDE release, maybe not the next one, but the one after for sure. @Artim, if you have a problem with that, look for another distro.

I have no interest in incorporating a 40-year old technology that has lots of problems, not to mention the lack of trust in the developer -- apparently people at Xorg had to scramble to fix the mess that the leaving developer left behind https://www.phoronix.com/news/X.Org-Ser ... Of-Reverts

Well, KDE won't give you the choice as it is dropping all Xorg support in a year or two.

The issue is really with desktops and window managers that do not (yet) support Wayland (the vast majority) including 2 that MX releases (Xfce and fluxbox).

That's a good point, but there's no reason for those desktop/window managers not to add Wayland support, Xfce has experimental support for Wayland.

Artim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:32 am That's hardly necessary (yet). But I have been playing around with a desktop adaptation of FreeBSD just for fun. No systemd, no big corporate takeovers, no issues with X.

BSD rubs me the wrong way (it's not the license, I'm fine with that), I don't like the monolithic approach which usually they claim is their advantages, I am more of a "mix and match" fan.

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:21 pm That's a good point, but there's no reason for those desktop/window managers not to add Wayland support, Xfce has experimental support for Wayland.

yeah but they do it by scraping their xfwm4 window manager.

for me, I'll worry about when I have to, and not before.

Artim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:08 am If you say so... but I do hope they keep the software alive and healthy.
Here it is already in the Arch AUR... I think the first official release is June 21st.

I don't really have any view on XLibre .

However, I'm not sure you can put much significance on an individual choosing to prepare PKGBUILDS of whatever packages they want in the AUR.

It's not an official Arch thing.

dolphin_oracle wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:49 pm

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:21 pm That's a good point, but there's no reason for those desktop/window managers not to add Wayland support, Xfce has experimental support for Wayland.

yeah but they do it by scraping their xfwm4 window manager.

for me, I'll worry about when I have to, and not before.

I agree.
I think people underestimate how long X.org will be around (patched by X.org devs). At least 2030, but probably longer. It's available in RHEL9.
Also, as far as I know no one will upgrade classic window managers to Wayland since it requires a complete rewrite.
Regarding KDE I have read X.org support will be there until KDE 7. KDE 7 is probably not even in the planning stage, since it requires Qt7. KDE5 had versions up to 5.27. Now KDE is at version 6.4.
SysVinit is still kept around by maintainer Jesse, MX Linux, Devuan and PCLOS. Expect X.org to have a similar fan base to keep it going.
Another thing: There is a small bug in lightdm that prevents Wayland sessions from being launched. I think XFCE (and Cinnamon) devs have prepared a workaround, but for anyone wanting to use Wayland today, upstream lightdm isn't there yet (patch rejected for now).

dolphin_oracle wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:49 pm

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:21 pm That's a good point, but there's no reason for those desktop/window managers not to add Wayland support, Xfce has experimental support for Wayland.

yeah but they do it by scraping their xfwm4 window manager.

for me, I'll worry about when I have to, and not before.

Very sensible.
For antiX, we'll see what comes of this fork, but I'm not holding my breath.
(I would love to be wrong though).

Hi,

I don't know all of the full and technical explanations for Xorg vs. Wayland but I think Wayland will also be slowed down a bit by the huge number of applications that haven't yet been pressure tested with the Xwayland X11 compatibility layer. As an example for Audio production I use the Ardour recording program which is also the base of Harrison Mixbus. On the Ardour forum there are numerous reports of people having performance issues with Ardour on Gnome and KDE relating to using the Wayland session, these problems disappear when Xorg is used. Pretty much all production programs that utilize Plugins have a double helping of potential issues because there are thousands of Plugins and they are currently designed for X11 (or use X11 toolkits). To be clear I'm not 'against' Wayland I'm simply saying there are a lot of scenarios where it is not yet working smoothly and it is not yet widespread enough in Linuxdom to have gotten exposed to every task that people use their Linux computers for. In production circles the same thing is occurring with PipeWire, although it was a pretty seamless transition from PulseAudio the JACK (pipewire-jack) side of PipeWire is still not working as well as it's JACK predecessor and PipeWire is quite mature now. I'm sure there are many Wayland and Xwayland incompatibilities to yet be discovered.

AVLinux wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 4:44 pm Pretty much all production programs that utilize Plugins have a double helping of potential issues because there are thousands of Plugins and they are currently designed for X11 (or use X11 toolkits). To be clear I'm not 'against' Wayland I'm simply saying there are a lot of scenarios where it is not yet working smoothly and it is not yet widespread enough in Linuxdom to have gotten exposed to every task that people use their Linux computers for.

Heh, this is 100% my sentiment as well; I considered writing about it here, but decided not to. Everything you said is spot on in the current situation, yes. Running production software both (extremely) current and legacy, spanning four different plugin standards, three different native hosts, everything configured manually on a case by case basis, around thousand different executable binaries, all of them showing a GUI of some kind; adding to these, modular environments that have their own such standards, and so on and so forth. Everything installed and in many cases locally compiled, from outside of any apt repo or similar. There are just way too many special use cases like this that are still on way shaky ground in regards to switching to Wayland and expecting everything needed to "just work", also considering the realtime nature of systems like this. I don't doubt I'll be switching to Wayland at some point but when that time comes, it is still going to take weeks/months to even test whether everything works or not.

Artim wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:08 am If you say so... but I do hope they keep the software alive and healthy.

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. Is Wayland perfect? No, of course not. But Wayland has the advantage of being built on top of what we've learned and improved over the years since X11 was the only game in town.

A lot of people love systemd because it's a learned improvement on sysvinit. Where sysvinit was primitive, they say, systemd is sophisticated. A lot of people still use Morse code, too. And once in a while you'll still find somebody who uses a slide rule to solve math problems instead of a calculator.

There are pros and cons in throwing out the old thing and adopting the new thing. There are certainly growing pains, as many of the Linux users who were early Wayland adopters will admit. There are, too, cons about staying on the old thing. Growing up is hard. Splitting off, grafting, and replanting onto a new stock is hard. Linux is fully in its awkward teenage phase now: too old to be completely revamped with a new technology stack, too young to have a foundational dependency everyone is forced to rely upon. It's time for an upgrade, one decades in the making. And each project that depends on X11 is working through how to complete the transition at their best pace.

Edit: typo

Adrian wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 12:24 pm BSD rubs me the wrong way (it's not the license, I'm fine with that), I don't like the monolithic approach which usually they claim is their advantages, I am more of a "mix and match" fan.

I'm quite the opposite. I grew up on MS-DOS and Windows 3.11 and the appeal of open source operating systems started to become apparent to me in the late 1990s(?) when I read a CNet.com article called "Bye-bye, Windows" by Christopher Lindquist. He outlined a few different OSes and, specifically, he mentioned FreeBSD 3.2. What attracted me to FreeBSD over Slackware or Red Hat at the time was that there was a monolithic approach. If something went wrong, there was one place I could point a finger and say "Hey. This doesn't work."

Now, all these years later, very little has changed. Linux folks love to deflect blame. BSD folks love to deflect blame. Linux folks say "Well, that's a different project, you need to go upstream and complain to those people." BSD folks love to say "Well, that's documented behavior, we'd love to change it, here's a thread from six years ago where we discussed fixing it and, wowzers, we just would love to have more resources to address the issue." Don't you know, BSD is dying, after all. Wink.

Neither camp is better. Neither camp is, in practice, worse. Both have let me down. Ask me for stories. I'll tell you. Anyone still standing on one as better than the other on principle alone isn't using the product and reporting bugs.

File a bug, gauge the response. You'll find out pretty quickly which camp you prefer.

I think it's more of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathe ... the_Bazaar type of thing. I'm in the bazaar camp.

Adrian wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 1:13 am I think it's more of a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathe ... the_Bazaar type of thing. I'm in the bazaar camp.

And that's fine. There's a boon in having a completely customized, finely-tuned sports car that you built yourself. This is only useful if you're skilled enough to build your own custom sports car. For most people, myself included, we need a little help and we have to hope that someone knows how to, competently, hook up an engine and a suspension and a transmission and rack and pinion steering.

I, too, love the freedom to be able to pick and choose my options in Linux. There are multiple BSD projects but if one said "we're migrating to systemd" I'd be as outraged as any Linux user who's suddenly told "we're only going to offer KDE from now on." Some of the users would be happy with that choice, some of the users would be outraged. And rightfully so. It's better, in my opinion, for users to be able to make their own decisions. But there's a caveat.

I point it out because, frankly, many users aren't capable of making their own decisions. Many users need someone to put the pieces together and make it all work. I'm sure someone out there has downloaded the Linux kernel source code and built it and downloaded the Xfce or KDE source code and built that, too, and is running a completely custom Linux system and I'm glad he's smart enough to be able to do that and the feds haven't kicked in his door to arrest him for doing so because the licenses all agree with each other that he's allowed to do what he's done.

And yes, he could just install a BSD and get the same thing for a lot less effort. And just as I felt when I was a teenager, I liked that option, too. I still do. But that's the crux of the matter: control over the components versus functionality of the overall system. Make a decision.

There are projects that take control away, but that provide functionality: Debian. Devuan. Ubuntu. Linux Mint. MX. Arch. Dozens more. Smart folks who know how to work a compiler take the bits and bobs and get a working OS. I, myself, and dozens of other forum users never could accomplish this. And there are plenty of newbies and neophytes who love MX and fail to appreciate that MX Linux isn't just this singular, magical thing; someone had to bring the kernel and the bootloader and the UI together and make it all run and build an ISO that gives a working live session but also there's an installer and they both have a word processor and a browser and so on and so on.... it's staggering how much work goes into making a thing people can download and use for free. To put it simply, we are shocked.

Maybe you fall on the cathedral side of things. Maybe you fall on the bazaar side. Maybe you don't care which side you're on, but you're just a cheapskate and you want the one that costs less. Maybe you care about scale and, whatever you do, you want to be able to do it a thousand more times. Or you're creative and you want to do something unique and then distribute it to fans or followers. BSD will let you do that, and charge money if you like. GPL will let you do that, but you have to outline how to you did it so people can do the same thing you did, for free.

That's the agreement. That's the new cathedral and the new bazaar. With BSD you can take code, change it, and release it without sharing the source, for free or for money. With GPL you can sell the code if you want, but you have to, have to, HAVE TO publish your code. Where you fall between the cathedral and the bazaar largely depends on what you want to get out of the experience. Are you an entrepreneur, or an artist? Unlike folks who work at IBM and Oracle and Microsoft and Apple and HP and all the other proprietary code corporations, you have options.

Edit: typo

DukeComposed wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 2:07 am Are you an entrepreneur, or an artist?

Well, literally both over here ... In mindset, and also in very concrete official bureaucratic / taxation terms, lol.

For me, personally, the OS is for running the (often proprietary) tools I need, to do what I do, both for myself and my clients. It's a bonus if the system is technologically beautiful and allows me to do maintenance tasks, etc, in ways that some other system can't. MX is huge in that regard. But in any case, all of this is for running the software I need and doing it with impeccable realtime performance. In the end, if using X11 lets me run this stuff better, I'll use that, and if Wayland does it better, I'll use that. The same with sysvinit and systemd. Something like BSD has never been a realistic option in a use case like this. Little by little, Linux has become a great platform for this, especially with the uniquely functional and mature live system / snapshotting that MX Linux provides. That's a "allows me to do maintenance tasks in ways that some other system can't" right there. There is still one (1) piece of software that I so wish would support Linux natively, but it doesn't seem likely... so I keep Windows around for that. (A de facto tool used especially in orchestral writing for film / tv / game soundtracks. I have invested tens of thousands into that ecosystem during the years, and there is no real substitute.) But yeah. Having your own Linux environment in a known, functional state, able to start and deploy just like that... is great, and MX with its said tools makes all the difference for me.

DukeComposed wrote: Thu Jun 19, 2025 11:02 pm
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..

AVLinux wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 10:46 am 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.

AVLinux wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 10:46 am 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.

Adrian wrote: Wed Jun 18, 2025 10:16 pm 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

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.

Adrian wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:27 pm

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.

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)

proteusguy wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:46 pm 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.)

Adrian wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:55 pm 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.

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).

DukeComposed wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 11:19 pm

Adrian wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 9:55 pm 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.

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.

I think it's not so much irony as rank cognitive dissonance especially because it was stupidly (and angrily) politicized.

There are many parallels with the two saga's.... but this time it's more an issue of wayland still having too many drawbacks in comparison for too many people. This is going to cause a lot of negative disruption if it actually goes through unless everyone being pressured to adapt their packages actually manage to do so.... I am talking large numbers of packages simply being deprecated because they cannot function in any way on wayland leaving open voids where they used to be.

I don't think the capture effort with wayland will be as successful as it was with systemd even though a lot of lets call them corporate overlords think it will. Probably because their main interests are on the server side and they don't understand desktop needs. This is going to be a repeat of "well if it only works on windows stay on windows" but what happens if "stay on xorg" stops being feasible? It will cause people to revert from Linux back to Windows. Could become a hell of a circus.

Artim wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 6:47 am

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.

SysV init doesn't have a bright future in my mind either, we keep seeing people who have problems with VPN apps (and many other) that don't work on SysV init. The systemd-shim is barely maintained and the guy who kindly works on that might not be able to jump through the hoops to make it work next time. This upcoming release is fine for Xfce and Fluxbox, but KDE will be systemd only, that might happen in the future to Xfce and Fluxbox too, but I don't have a magic orb to see the future.

I do find it very strange when people who use the results of our effort come here with attitudes like they are doing us some kind of favor for using the result of our work (for free, we don't ask for money and the donations from happy users are plenty for our small expenses -- the community would not be able to afford to pay me and other devs). I am happy to share for free whatever I'm working on (it's not even that much because whatever I use it's also shared with me -- that's how open source works), but at the same you should feel free to use anything else and don't let the door slap your behind if you don't like the product of my effort -- I'm perfectly happy having a smaller community who doesn't feel like they are doing me a favor for using MX.

Artim wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 6:47 am

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.

Don't confuse your ideological preferences with MX's. MX-Linux doesn't "refuse" systemd.
From the faq page here https://mxlinux.org/wiki/help-files/mx-faqs/

What’s the deal with MX and systemd? How come there are still systemd packages installed?
Systemd is included in order to allow some important applications to run, but it is not enabled by default.
...
Is there a way that I can boot into systemd by default?
Yes. Boot into systemd by clicking on the line “Advanced options” on the opening screen (known as GRUB), then launch MX Boot options and check the box to “Enable saving last boot choice.”

As for XLibre, so far all that's happened is that some tinfoil hat wearing alt-right nutbag got his knickers in a twist, forked xorg and stuck a dog whistle filled readme on it. Does this affect MX in any way? Not at the moment.

I don't care if the lead dev is right-wing or left-wing, male or female, cis or trans, gay or straight. As long as we have a choice in things - like we do with systemd or runit or sysvinit and whatever else.

Artim wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 6:52 pm I don't care if the lead dev is right-wing or left-wing, male or female, cis or trans, gay or straight. As long as we have a choice in things - like we do with systemd or runit or sysvinit and whatever else.

I don't care either, I do care though about the morality and behavior of the lead dev and considering the mess he left at Xorg that people had to scramble to revert his changes doesn't create confidence that the guy will do a good job with his new pet project. I doubt you will ever have the choice to select XLibre on the MX ISO, if it will be available on Debian you'll be able to install it manually and deal with the issues of your making by yourself.

Visit Brian Lunduke YouTube channel, he has a couple of videos on this same subject, they are very interesting and very revealing on some stuff that's being happening with Open Source projects!

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:08 pm Visit Brian Lunduke YouTube channel, he has a couple of videos on this same subject, they are very interesting and very revealing on some stuff that's being happening with Open Source projects!

No, thank you. While I said I don't mind what political color developers have, I don't go as far as subjecting myself to idiocy and conspiracy theories. People who listen to this kind of dudes have no standing to express any kind of opinion that is worth listening to.

Artim wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 6:52 pm I don't care if the lead dev is right-wing or left-wing, male or female, cis or trans, gay or straight.

Which is exactly the point. Making a pull request on Github does not require you to disclose any of the above, so the readme diatribe is either nonsensical or is there for some other purpose. We wouldn't know Mr. Twisted-Knickers beliefs if he didn't insist on telling us...

Artim wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 6:52 pm As long as we have a choice in things - like we do with systemd or runit or sysvinit and whatever else.

You get to choose between the options that distro devs are willing and able to offer.

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:08 pm Visit Brian Lunduke YouTube channel, he has a couple of videos on this same subject, they are very interesting and very revealing on some stuff that's being happening with Open Source projects!

...aaand we have the reason why the readme diatribe is there. Traction, clicks, normalisation.

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:15 pm

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:08 pm Visit Brian Lunduke YouTube channel, he has a couple of videos on this same subject, they are very interesting and very revealing on some stuff that's being happening with Open Source projects!

No, thank you. While I said I don't mind what political color developers have, I don't go as far as subjecting myself to idiocy and conspiracy theories. People who listen to this kind of dudes have no standing to express any kind of opinion that is worth listening to.

Whoa! dude! IMHO, You starting to sound like a "Tolerant" extreme leftist!

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:25 pm

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:15 pm

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:08 pm Visit Brian Lunduke YouTube channel, he has a couple of videos on this same subject, they are very interesting and very revealing on some stuff that's being happening with Open Source projects!

No, thank you. While I said I don't mind what political color developers have, I don't go as far as subjecting myself to idiocy and conspiracy theories. People who listen to this kind of dudes have no standing to express any kind of opinion that is worth listening to.

Whoa! dude! IMHO, You starting to sound like a "Tolerant" extreme leftist!

You sound like a brain-dead person. Not sure how you can type.

Let's all pull back and take a breather before the thread is locked, shall we?

Frankly I don't think now is the time to pass judgment (either way) on the viability and quality of the fork.

Maybe the fork will be great despite the dev's personal beliefs. Maybe it won't. We'll have to wait and see.

But for now, Xorg is still needed for xfce and fluxbox (and from what I've read, quite a lot of other use cases) and I doubt it's going to be removed from Debian in the near future.

MX focuses on stable, not experimental, stuff, and XLibre relates to such a core part of an operating system that I don't see MX as a focal point of development for this.

Let's see how things stand in a year.

asqwerth wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:54 pm Frankly I don't think now is the time to pass judgment (either way) on the viability and quality of the fork.

Maybe the fork will be great despite the dev's personal beliefs. Maybe it won't. We'll have to wait and see.

But for now, Xorg is still needed for xfce and fluxbox (and from what I've read, quite a lot of other use cases) and I doubt it's going to be removed from Debian in the near future.

MX focuses on stable, not experimental, stuff, and XLibre relates to such a core part of an operating system that I don't see MX as a focal point of development for this.

Let's see how things stand in a year.

Well said. +1

asqwerth wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:52 pm Let's all pull back and take a breather before the thread is locked, shall we?

I say let him cook.

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:47 pm

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:25 pm

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 7:15 pm

No, thank you. While I said I don't mind what political color developers have, I don't go as far as subjecting myself to idiocy and conspiracy theories. People who listen to this kind of dudes have no standing to express any kind of opinion that is worth listening to.

Whoa! dude! IMHO, You starting to sound like a "Tolerant" extreme leftist!

You sound like a brain-dead person. Not sure how you can type.

You played yourself bruh! Now everybody knows the political side you lean to, insulting and calling names to people you don't even know, wow! very telling, thank you for that! Very "inclusive and tolerant" on your part, yeah!

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 9:07 pm

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:47 pm

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 8:25 pm
Whoa! dude! IMHO, You starting to sound like a "Tolerant" extreme leftist!

You sound like a brain-dead person. Not sure how you can type.

You played yourself bruh! Now everybody knows the political side you lean to, insulting and calling names to people you don't even know, wow! very telling, thank you for that! Very "inclusive and tolerant" on your part, yeah!

Oh, guilty as charged, I'm against imbeciles.

Could we please dial it down and get back on topic.

I hope you lived near me to teach you a lesson or two

Oh, a terrorist, what a surprise. Thank you for teaching me "tolerance".

Adrian wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 10:20 pm

I hope you lived near me to teach you a lesson or two

Oh, a terrorist, what a surprise. Thank you for teaching me "tolerance".

You were the first one calling names and insulting people you don't even know, so I don't think you even know what tolerance is in the first place! It is so bad your parents didn't do a good job of raising a good citizen for the world, I don't have time to be loosing on people like you, the hell, maybe your parents tought the same way as i do now!

heavy metal wrote: Sat Jun 21, 2025 11:27 pm I don't have time to be loosing on people like you, the hell, maybe your parents tought the same way as i do now!

Normally I don't get involved in little spats like this, but I feel that whomever tought you English should be loosing their license right about now.

Topic Locked - out of control