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.