The X server just got forked (announcing XLibre)
Posted by mortuary-dreams@reddit | linux | View on Reddit | 102 comments
Well known Enrico Weigelt just forked the X server from freedesktop.org after getting the boot.
It does look like things are starting to be set up on the new fork but this is exciting news.
bigon@reddit
"Non-DEI Fork of Xorg"
We see where the priorities are, that will go well
L.O.L
-p-e-w-@reddit
Is there an explanation for what happened that isn’t a YouTube video?
drathvedro@reddit
Yeah. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797
EchoBladeMC@reddit
Damn, they tried to crucify him because it took 16 hours to fix a regression? Wild.
Xelynega@reddit
No, they "crucified" him because he seems to cause a lot of regressions for changes that are "cleaning up the codebase" and doesn't seem to test them before asking for them to be merged.
The fact that he then didn't fix the regression that his meddling caused with a revert(because use his ego couldn't handle his changes being bad) was the cherry on top.
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Nobody ever added similar bugs to the X server, only metux did this...
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Here's something I don't understand, if freedesktop is all about diversity and inclusion, how come someone like this who wants to improve X isn't welcome?
NostalgicKitsune@reddit
That's not the point, apart from his very questionable attitude, he is wasting maintainers' time for his efforts in improving Xorg, with rather poor merge requests (there are 168 open MRs, of which still contain several unfixed problems, and moreover they are not tested as stated by the maintainers).
His attempt is not like TDE, MATE and the like where they resurrect something because they appreciate the project and try to keep it alive, his attempt is purely "out of spite" which I personally don't appreciate.
It's not "resurrecting Xorg" the problem, the problem is the quality of the MRs and it keeps flooding the xserver repo with poor and untested MRs.
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Some people want X because Wayland does not work for them. Why is this so difficult for those pushing the Wayland narrative to understand?
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
As far as I am aware, there is no malicious intent here on this person's part, otherwise they would not have considered the commits they already accepted, and it's not like other maintainers are perfect either or that they don't make any mistakes. There are clearly political motivations here at play, and it's not painting freedesktop.org in good light.
NostalgicKitsune@reddit
It's not a matter of "malicious attempt", but if you flood MRs continuously, with untested code, wasting maintainers' time, they ask themselves two questions.
There are ways to operate in repos and make MRs, and how he did it, personally speaking, is not optimal.
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
I get why his method might have rubbed people the wrong way, but an outright ban seems excessive. I think talking it through and offering other solutions would have been a better path.
mrlinkwii@reddit
nope , you get banned in most repos for doing this
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Only on those managed by deranged people such as Karol Herbst.
mrlinkwii@reddit
so 99% of projects
bigon@reddit
Because projects have rules, goals, deadlines, standards, available man power or budget and so on...
And if you want to contribute to that project you need to follow them?
So yeah, fork is the way to go if you don't want to adhere to them
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
I understand but the mentality is just so backwards: "Here's someone who wants to contribute with the manpower that we already lack, but we are removing him from the project. Instead, we are going to be spending the money we already don't have on projects that don't benefit the development of the projects at all".
bigon@reddit
The goal of the historic Xorg maintainers is to develop the wayland protocol and in the long run, kill Xorg (that seems pretty obvious for anybody following what's happening in the last 15 years..)
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
I use Wayland and I'm fine with it. However, it's worth remembering that the developers working on Wayland today aren't the same people who worked on X decades ago, or even X10.
Sure, many older X developers have moved to Wayland, and that's their choice. But so what if some still want to work on X? This is open source. If we had all stuck with XFree86 back then and never forked to X.Org, X.Org wouldn't exist.
Let's embrace forking, it's what makes open source thrive.
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Why am I getting downvoted here? Is my way of thinking not aligned with woke mentality?
mrlinkwii@reddit
their no such thing as " woke"
bigon@reddit
You just got a downvote from me for using the word "woke" if you are asking
AIO_Youtuber_TV@reddit
Seriously. Take a handful of programmers, and chances are the only thing binary about them would be the code they write. (They're non binary.)
adamkex@reddit
Can someone tldr this?
MatchingTurret@reddit
There are always a few "They will have to rip xyz from my cold, dead hands" misfits. That gave us projects like
... Now there is a X fork and a few holdouts will use it.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
What exactly is wrong with that projects? Each of them is a reaction to the regressions happening upstream.
jamieylh@reddit
Exactly. This is how open source works, everyone gets what they want. If you want authoritative control over your project than just make it close source
realguy2300000@reddit
The difference is these projects actually provide some value, MATE is lightweight and useful, having multiple init options is never a bad thing, but this new X fork is a waste of time, for legacy or desktop use normal X will work fine, why fork it? plus the developer is known to have said some ‘interesting’ things in the past about vaccines and the like
Pretend_Fly_1319@reddit
We’re getting X12, essentially. People are blaming Red Hat for X11’s demise, and saying that no DEI and anti-wokeness is going to push XLibre into the future.
Krunch007@reddit
You're not getting X12. This is exactly the kind of "gives false hope for no reason" stuff the Xorg maintainers were talking about in relation to Enrico's work. This guy's just unhinged and thinks he alone can solve what a team of people who have worked on that project for years and years can't. And he's literally just breaking things in the process, as explained by the Xorg maintainers that it's a fragile codebase and you can't just easily rework code, and that's why it's better to start fresh. And because of his stubborn and reckless approach he's caused a major regression which would have affected Xwayland too, which is the maintained side of the project. So, he had to take his toys and go elsewhere.
Xorg's demise has nothing to do with RedHat and everything to do with the fact that it's a buggy mess held together by hopes and dreams, built on an antiquated design pattern. It could have modern features, if only it had a completely different codebase, and nobody wanted to go through the extremely excruciating and lengthy process of rewriting the xorg codebase just to end up still preserving the antiquated design pattern it's based on.
Like that's it. Anything else is not just opinion, it's delusion. New standards emerge all the time for any piece of software, and sometimes it's just time to move on. Depending on how the project is handled, in 2-3 decades Wayland too might start to show its age, might be unable to handle new design paradigms and feature expectations and might end up being phased out, and that's alright. It's just how the lifecycle of software goes.
Pretend_Fly_1319@reddit
I never said that it was going to happen and I don’t care if it does or not. I summarized the video like the comment asked.
C0rn3j@reddit
Some random antivax idiot did the equivalent of pressing the fork button on GitLab.
TL;DR Nothing happened
bigon@reddit
Well https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/commit/204639c7d09ef1acdf999d822660c33c56a337ba
SeeMonkeyDoMonkey@reddit
Short version: This developer (Weigelt) thinks Wayland is rubbish, and wants to continue improving X11 (whilst most people with experience developing X11 are choosing Wayland).
Analogy version: This developer is like the anti-systemd people, but for Wayland.
Long version: This developer wants to continue using and developing X11, believing that Wayland creates more problems than it solves.
They have written a load of code cleanup patches for X11, and claim to have new features in the works.
The cleanups feel like they might just be moving stuff around for the sake of inconsequential code preferences, but I don't know the code well enough to be sure.
I had a little look for the new features, but wasn't able to find any code or even reasonable descriptions/plans for them - though I've only done some cursory searching, and they might have private guy branches with more work.
IMO, the developer is combative (with a tendency to resurrect years-old threads to argue about how X11's problems can all be fixed & Wayland is a waste of time), and has a conspriricist mindset (where the reported problems of X11 are hand-waved away) that makes it hard to take them seriously.
Naturally they're free to think what they want and spend their time as they wish - good luck to them in their coding!
nadeko_chan@reddit
rip wayland
hueheuheuheueh@reddit
Will people of the new hamnoid race be allowed to use it?
DividedContinuity@reddit
Oh good, a nut job.
I'm still using X, maybe it's time to give wayland another go.
ilikenwf@reddit
Sometimes the people with a loose screw or two turn out to be the best devs though - Terry Davis was a flipping brilliant dev...just also really schizophrenic.
Zestyclose-Shift710@reddit
Dude wayland's been ready for your another go for like 4 years now wtf
I thought for a second this comment was from 2019 or something
DividedContinuity@reddit
Yes and I'm sure it works brilliantly in a majority of use cases. However 8 months ago, when i last tried it, and at least on KDE, there were problems with ICC profiles.
The average person will never use an ICC profile because you need a hardware calibrator to produce one.
Its a niche issue.
Like i said, I'll give it another go because I've heard there have been recent changes to colour management in wayland.
mina86ng@reddit
You can continue to use X.org. Besides, I can guarantee you that any large free software project has some nut job contributors.
DividedContinuity@reddit
You're probably right.
I do give wayland a go occasionally, I'm willing to move over, its just caused problems for me in the past.
I've heard they've done some work on colour management recently, so that might address some of the problems I've had with ICC profiles.
tasdin@reddit
Are the victims that were killed by blood cloths caused by Oxford-Astrazeneca also nut jobs you stupid idiot? I have a close acquaintance, a dentist by profession, who by the age of 36, got his life and marriage ruined after getting the whole body covered in boils following a single dose of Pfizer... and his doctors already admitted he was the unlucky one in the roulette...
How about you STFU and stop being a big pharma bootlicker?
bigon@reddit
Well you are more of the type: "It happened to me or my familly so it's an universal truth"
Nobody is telling that a few people had negative reactions to the COVID-19 vacine, people are telling that the number of these reactions are way lower than the the harm caused by the sickness itself...
You known how statistics are working right?
PS: BTW aren't these blood cloths caused by the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2? Meaning that getting the infection could actually cause the same outcome (and probably worst since a living virus can replicate and thus having more of these proteins?)
DividedContinuity@reddit
Oh look, another nut job.
Every medicine has a balance of benefit and harm. Every day someone takes a medicine, probably even some that you've taken yourself, and dies as a direct result.
The question is which is the lesser evil? Where is the greater harm? How many people die as a result of not getting the medicine vs getting it?
The real world is messy and complex and full of grey decisions. Nothing is perfect.
MatyeusA@reddit
What has a to do with b? If he is doing a good job or not has nothing to do with his mental stability.
However if he is doing a good job, maybe someone should security fork his fork; because that is concerning.
Krunch007@reddit
Is he doing a good job? The other maintainers certainly are kinda fed up with it, and have been for a while.
felipec@reddit
What part of "everyone is welcome" was not clear to you?
bigon@reddit
To quote Linus: "Please keep your insane and technically incorrect anti-vax comments to yourself."
Ok-Anywhere-9416@reddit
You don't know what you are talking about, you don't know what mRNA
is, and you're spreading idiotic lies. Maybe you do so unwittingly,
because of bad education. Maybe you do so because you've talked to
"experts" or watched youtube videos by charlatans that don't know what
they are talking about.
But dammit, regardless of where you have gotten your mis-information
from, any Linux kernel discussion list isn't going to have your
idiotic drivel pass uncontested from me
L O L I want to use this every time I hear bullcrap at family dinners.
lefl28@reddit
What does a "non-DEI" fork even mean lmao.
You're forking software that's on life-support and it's build by who you call """ woke""" people anyway.
D3PyroGS@reddit
lmao an anti-woke X server. these can't be serious people
lefl28@reddit
Same thing happened with the godot game engine. They changed the logo to red and included some addons which for most people will just bloat up their builds.
But hey no more woke people in the game engine. Except they're pulling in all changes from upstream...
MatchingTurret@reddit
I think it was kind of the other way around: A "woke" godot forum manager started to ban "hateful" people...
Just-Literature-2183@reddit
Dont tell them the truth. They dont like the truth. It hurts their feelies.
spec_3@reddit
Thanks I was thinking maybe this was something exciting, but your comment saved the disappointment.
keremimo@reddit
When will people ever learn not to mix politics into open source projects lol
Krunch007@reddit
I would be easy if only open source projects weren't inherently political as they are part of an ideological wave. Like, what are you talking about? Of course it's political! The whole movement is.
keremimo@reddit
Ideologies do not equal politics. They contain politics as a part of them but aren’t identified as politics. If you ask that DEI or lgbt folks should not use your software or contribute to them (therefore being anti-woke) which is the picture here, it’s going to result in a shitstorm.
Krunch007@reddit
Ideologies absolutely equal politics. Especially when that ideology is advocating for change in society. If politics is part of it, it's political. I don't know what you base this distinction on. Politics doesn't mean political party, and it doesn't mean DEI or LGBT. It doesn't mean left or right. Anything that advocates for a societal prescription is simply political. In this case, the belief that software should be free for the betterment of mankind and the support and advocacy for such compliant software are absolutely political things.
You seem to believe that only culture war stuff is political, it's not. Almost every type of organization out there is political in one way or another, even those that don't necessarily try to effect change, but especially those who do.
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
Everything is political.
keremimo@reddit
I definitely cannot taste oppression in my Turkish breakfast but believe what you want
GoldenX86@reddit
Yet more wasted time and effort in keeping the old skeleton alive.
When is someone forking SurfaceFlinger to desktop Linux to finally have something usable and not tied to the mental stability of the Wayland devs?
Business_Reindeer910@reddit
guess it's up to you.
GoldenX86@reddit
And deal with the harassment of the neckbeards about using code from the Android, or having to tolerate the Wayland devs? Pass.
Guess why progress on Linux desktop projects takes decades to mature.
If it wasn't for Valve, Linux would still be trying to catch up to goddamn Windows Vista.
C0rn3j@reddit
Seems only fair, since you're calling mental stability of people into question one comment up.
GoldenX86@reddit
Of the people that harasses DE developers for not doing things the way they demand.
Wayland developers don't deserve a pass, they are the main contributors for the development rot of the Linux desktop, you know it, and you prefer to be a fanatical neckbeard about it, like the rest.
tutami@reddit
I'm sure it's not going to go anywhere but someone has to do something about Wayland. 15 years later and we still can't share a screen with audio.
Krunch007@reddit
I don't know what you're talking about because that works, and has been working for a while. Maybe you should update your distro and discord client.
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Rlzibizi@reddit
Good. Wayland is too restricted. Everyone just wants X with some extra features anyway. And it's gonna be without virtue signaling which is cool.
Express_Theory_191@reddit
Where is the git repo for the fork?
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/tree/xlibre/prepare
Looks like they have actual code that they are developing, see the Xnamespace extension.
EchoBladeMC@reddit
Apparently it's been deleted, not sure why
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/metux/xserver
felipec@reddit
We all know why.
bigon@reddit
Because he's using FDO infrastructure for his project without really asking them?
felipec@reddit
Do you understand how personal repositories work? Any fdo user can create their own personal repository without anyone's permission.
Here, I just created a personal repo: felipec/foo.
bigon@reddit
Still the infrastructure of FDO and their rules ¯\(ツ)/¯
felipec@reddit
Show me the "rule" he violated.
bigon@reddit
This page explains how to create a new project on FDO: https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/NewProject/
mortuary-dreams@reddit (OP)
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver
MatchingTurret@reddit
It's not. It's doubtful major distros will pick this up (they are dropping the standalone X server) and the toolkits are moving away from X. There is more to the ecosystem than just the X server...
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Literally only Red Hat does. Which is surprisingly ignorant. Some implementation of X11 will remain useful for decades on specialized devices.
MatchingTurret@reddit
For now. But once the toolkits drop X support, there isn't much point in keeping X around.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
The only one is GTK5, and adaptation to it isn't going to be quick anyway, if happen at all. GTK4 is problematic already (much more functionality moved to libadwaita when compared to linhandy). It's not like project maintainers are blind to the regressions. Qt, fltk, X-Apps and whatever else have no such plans. You assume that X11 is certain to die quicker because of the planned future of GTK, but I expect it to be a clash instead, concerning for both sides.
Beyond that, I expect more new projects to use vulkan directly for desktop apps, or just focus on electron guis, or even use wine as gui dependency - it's happening already. The classical toolkits are losing significance.
MatchingTurret@reddit
KWin is moving to drop X support. While Qt might still support it, without a WM it's not actually useful (You could theoretically run a different WM, but that chimera wouldn't be KDE).
kansetsupanikku@reddit
Um, no? KWin is getting a cleanup that will make Wayland and X11 separate. Of course it's going to mean less frequent commits to X11 implementation. But it's not like it is going to be dropped or excluded from testing of the future versions. I can see how it could have been read like this, but this extrapolation has nothing to do with official announcements.
MatchingTurret@reddit
Directly from the horse's mouth
That's basically the same policy as GNOME: X11 is deprectaed and will be removed in the next major release.
kansetsupanikku@reddit
The difference is that "Plasma 7" mentioned here is a speculation with no roadmap or date assigned, unlike GTK5.
felipec@reddit
Good thing I don't use "major distros".
RoomyRoots@reddit
That's good news as they killed X11 too early to push Wayland. But it's questionable how much work the code need and how many people will be there for it
Time-Worker9846@reddit
I mean almost 40 years of legacy code is not "too early"
RoomyRoots@reddit
They have been clamming the death of X11 before Wayland was usable by most everything. Hell, only last year Wayland became available as a STABLE default in most DEs and we are "killing" X for a decade.
felipec@reddit
TIL 40 years have passed since 2004.
Time-Worker9846@reddit
X11 is what I am talking about
felipec@reddit
There's no such thing as X11 code.
harrywwc@reddit
COBOL has entered the chat
rabbit_in_a_bun@reddit
"Stop starting, start finishing" should have been the motto for everyone working on wayland...
creamcolouredDog@reddit
Not Lunduke bro
Adriannho@reddit
The only things this does is feed the anti-Wayland trolls and maybe slow down the adoption rate for Wayland. X is dead, it's a legacy technology with lots of security holes that nobody should be using in 2025.
elijuicyjones@reddit
lol what a colossal waste of effort from a colossal douche.
flower-power-123@reddit
Give us the latest gossip!