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X11 Fork XLibre Released For Testing On Systemd-Free Artix Linux (webpronews.com) 101

Posted by EditorDavid from the what's-init-for-me dept.
An anonymous reader shared this report from WebProNews: The Linux world is abuzz with news of XLibre, a fork of the venerable X11 window display system, which aims to be an alternative to X11's successor, Wayland.

Much of the Linux world is working to adopt Wayland, the successor to X11. Wayland has been touted as being a superior option, providing better security and performance. Despite Fedora and Ubuntu both going Wayland-only, the newer display protocol still lags behind X11, in terms of functionality, especially in the realm of accessibility, screen recording, session restore, and more. In addition, despite the promise of improved performance, many users report performance regressions compared to X11.

While progress is being made, it has been slow going, especially for a project that is more than 17 years old. To make matters worse, Wayland is largely being improved by committee, with the various desktop environment teams trying to work together to further the protocol. Progress is further hampered by the fact that the GNOME developers often object to the implementation of some functionality that doesn't fit with their vision of what a desktop should be — despite those features being present and needed in every other environment.

In response, developer Enrico Weigelt has forked Xll into the XLibre project. Weigelt was already one of the most prolific X11 contributors at a time when little to no improvements or new features are being added to the aging window system... Weigelt has wasted no time releasing the inaugural version of XLibre, XLibre 25.0. The release includes a slew of improvements.
MrBrklyn (Slashdot reader #4,775) adds that Artix Linux, a rolling-release distro based on Arch Linux which does not use systemd, now offers XLibre ISO images and packages for testing and use. They're all non-systemd based, and "Its a decent undertaking by the Artix development team. The iso is considered to be testing but it is quickly moving to the regular repos for broad public use."

X11 Fork XLibre Released For Testing On Systemd-Free Artix Linux More | Reply

X11 Fork XLibre Released For Testing On Systemd-Free Artix Linux

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  • including screen recording. TFA is incorrect on that one.

    What it really, REALLY lacks is proper remoting. The best option available at the moment is wayvnc - i.e. VNC over a headless Wayland session. It works, but VNC sucks ass. There's no RDP support and there's no remote session greeter.

    Fortunately, my only Wayland machine is a laptop, so it's not like I need to remote it a lot, if at all.

    • that's by design my dude (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Wayland was designed around "Anything Windows can do that X cannot is a flaw, anything X can do Windows cannot is unnecessary." There's also the fact that in software engineering you get WAY more recognition for developing a new package that gets adopted than for patching old stuff. So even though a lot of perceived issues around security or multimonitor support or whatever could have been fixed in X with some effort, there was a lot of institutional pressure at RedHat etc. to make sure X died so Wayland wo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )

        There's also the fact that in software engineering you get WAY more recognition for developing a new package that gets adopted than for patching old stuff. So even though a lot of perceived issues around security or multimonitor support or whatever could have been fixed in X with some effort, there was a lot of institutional pressure at RedHat etc. to make sure X died so Wayland would succeed.

        Another way of putting it is justifying your job because you have a mature product.

    • You can have RDP in kde with KRDP and Gnome also has a built-in option. But the reality,is that doing remote desktop is cumbersome, and unless you do it over a local network the lag is rarely comfortable. Outside of niche applications like thin clients for classrooms, the Linux hacker would rather use ssh all the time.

      • RDP works fine over broadband and VPNs. Since 2021 I've been working 100% remote, using Remmina to RDP to a Windows VM running on my local server, connect to a customer VPN with their software (it's easier to sandbox it in a VM), and then RDP to the customer's server or servers I'm working on. Two RDP hops, no problems. RDWeb is awful, though. And if you start adding VNC to the mix, it goes downhill fast.

        The most convoluted setup I've used so far is VNC to PIKVM on a laptop, RDWeb to a jump host, RDP to an

      • Sadly I run Sway.

        As for RDP, if your internet is speedy enough, it's fine. I work remotely regularly and I RDP into my Linux box at work no problem.

      • I use RDP constantly from work (from home, over VPN)

        Labeling this bullshit.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by keltor ( 99721 ) *
        We have >60k users using remote access. They all seem fine with it.

        I've never noticed any real latency difference between ssh, RDP, VNC, or the like unless my OWN local Internet connection is starved for bandwidth. Compressed RDP and VNC are relatively small, like 1-3Mbps with a 4k-ish display. It can sometimes peak up to 6-12Mbps because there's some stupid full screen video.

    • waypipe (Score:1)

      by ejr ( 2998 )

      It requires support on both sides (ahem about the latest ffmpeg kerfuffle), and really x11 forwarding should have required such support if there were any alternatives at the time.

      The balances between X11-style generic rendering pieces v. frame buffers v. application-specific rendering agents is an ongoing work of discovery. The network trade-offs are quite different now. We could gripe about ADSL, but that also modeled (in a gross, disgusting way) a server trying to deal with a zillion clients. The server c

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      The only remoting I've ever needed to do was X11 forwarding over SSH which works transparently if you have XWayland running, which is automatic on most distributions these days. So it really doesn't matter to me if wayland has remoting of wayland native apps, provided the apps I'm trying to remote still support an X11 backend, which they all do. That will change in the near future, though, as GTK plans to drop their X11 backend entirely soon. So you'll be out of luck if you need to remote a GTK app.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kriston ( 7886 )

      Came here to say this, too. Without proper remote desktop support, Wayland is a dead platform.

      It's unbelievable that after 17 years there's still nothing viable there.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        On any major wayland desktop on a modern distro, ssh -X works as it always has, because of XWayland. So you can remote apps like you always have.

        As for a full remote desktop, both gnome and KDE offer RDP support (which is quite a bit more efficient and faster than remote X11 or forwarded X11). But I don't believe either offer headless RDP sessions like you can do with Xvnc or Xrdp, or X2Go. That is a glaring omission.

        Fortunately KDE will run on X11 for years yet.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

      including screen recording. TFA is incorrect on that one.

      What it really, REALLY lacks is proper remoting. The best option available at the moment is wayvnc - i.e. VNC over a headless Wayland session. It works, but VNC sucks ass. There's no RDP support and there's no remote session greeter.

      Fortunately, my only Wayland machine is a laptop, so it's not like I need to remote it a lot, if at all.

      If your on a laptop, X11's remote capabilities is even MORE useful than normal users. Whether you know it or not, or use it or not, that can't be helped.

      When I look at modern users I often find, even with Windows, they have so many remote desktops open they fail to know which is there local system.

      So it is useful, and with X is it built in and secure.

    • You're wrong about "no RDP support. Both main desktops support RDP.

      KDE has a builtin RDP server, just enable it in "settings" .
      RDP session greeters on KDE are a problem, yes.

      Gnome AFAIK supports the whole stack : https://jamesnorth.net/post/gr... [jamesnorth.net]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

        Actually - NO. Those features in desktop managers are just client programs that have Remote access.

        Wayland does not do this.

        And X has it without the need for helper programs. It is just built in. And it works for ANY application, not just KDE or Gnome.... neither of which I consider very usable, but you can use that bloatware if you want.

        So - please don't peddle soft lies by confusing facts.

  • So do many of my colleagues, and the ability to do this is integral to a good bit of my organization's electronics design workflow.

    • Re:I use ssh -CY every fucking day at work (Score:4, Informative)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @01:46PM (#65482488)
      There appear to be a lot of Wayland evangelists out there that would like to detain you into a Wayland-re-education camp, where everyone is forced to worship Wayland every day. That camp is right beside the "systemd" and the "pulseaudio" camp, though the inmates of the latter have recently been freed by a guerilla group named "pipewire".

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by caseih ( 160668 )

        Is setting the record straight "re-education?" ssh -CY works great on my KDE wayland desktop. Gnome is the same I understand. $DISPLAY is set an everything. Works the same as it always has as far as the user is concerned. Apps that have wayland backends use wayland directly. Those that don't use rootless windows with XWayland. Shrug. It works.

      • Re sound - I've never yet seen a good explanation of wtf is wrong with just using Alsa direct instead of using Poeterings extra layer of crapfest on top. Alsa has good tools and the C API is pretty simple too IMO.

        • Because automated setup of soft mixing in ALSA is a pain in the ass. It's that simple.
          ALSA, otherwise, does work just fine.

          Pulse, being a non-kernel software mixer, requires much less setup To Just Work.
          Of course, in standard Poettering fashion, bolted onto this simple thing that we needed is about 45lbs of cancer.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

            Because automated setup of soft mixing in ALSA is a pain in the ass. It's that simple.

            ALSA, otherwise, does work just fine.

            Pulse, being a non-kernel software mixer, requires much less setup To Just Work.

            Of course, in standard Poettering fashion, bolted onto this simple thing that we needed is about 45lbs of cancer.

            No - if anything it is the other way around

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

          there is no reason for anything besides alsa. All user space aps can use ALSA. The assualt on ALSA is bizarre.

        • ALSA out of the box only allows one program to access a sound card at the time. Adding mixing degrades sound quality.

          There is no way to dynamically add something like a bluetooth headset and have it automatically appear to applications, and automatically switch them to that input and output.

          There is no way to dynamically pipe audio through plugins like equalizers using only ALSA. Nor can it be routed into multiple applications and re-routed at will.

          And if you want to use ALSA, Pipewire will give you an ALSA

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      That's what XWayland is for, and it works well. It's automatic and transparent on modern distros and Gnome or KDE, and probably others. Did you actually try it before you complain about Wayland? In fact even local X11 apps are supported transparently as well. I have a mix of X11 and wayland native apps running right now. Except for a few minor differences in how the windows are managed (roll-up is not available on native wayland windows, sadly), I cannot tell which is which.

      • Except for a few minor differences in how the windows are managed (roll-up is not available on native wayland windows, sadly), I cannot tell which is which.

        By that, do you mean minimizing to just a title bar? That's a weird thing to not work, given that it's basically just not drawing a window.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          Yes. Window shade, whatever you want to call it. KWin is responsible for it, and it can do it for X11 windows, but not Wayland windows. It kind of tries. Not sure if this is a wayland bug or a kwin bug, or both. Also focus-follows-mouse is a bit weird. Sometimes I have to leave the window and re-enter it to get it to focus (or click), and on wayland kwin will not focus the window if I just hover over the titlebar. I have to enter the body of the window itself. I assume this is a kwin bug, since kwin

          • If the titlebar is drawn by KWin and not the application, it will not be considered part of the application screen area. Wayland only lets the application know where the mouse is if it's inside the application screeen area. That also means not allowing the application to be in focus unless the mouse is in its area. This is by protocol design, and expected behaviour.

  • It doesn't matter if you like X11 or not, this is the correct way to improve an open-source project that refuses additions: fork it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z80a ( 971949 )

      Or an open-source project being pressured to stop as well.
      Hopefully they won't try to do terrible things to Enrico.

  • Wayland is the IPv6 of display protocols (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ffkom ( 3519199 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @01:40PM (#65482474)
    Wayland may be "newer" (albeit that is a hard sell after 17 years) than X11 and may have some theoretical advantages, but to Joe User, it provides little obvious benefit, just like IPv6 provides little obvious benefit to the many IPv4 users. And Wayland comes with incompatibilities and a history of stability issues that clearly showed that its development priorities were not stability or user experience.

    The priorities of the Gnome and KDE developers (which from my point of view are people interested in colorful pixels rather than a solid design of a display server protocol) appear to have shifted to smear the competition with ad-hominem "arguments", and journalists who write propaganda-articles like this one [heise.de] are foaming from their mouth while introducing politics into entirely unrelated topics.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by sjames ( 1099 )

      Wayland is much much worse. IPV6 actually can do anything IPV4 can do. Wayland is still lacking, it's just that the Wayland boosters will try their best to gaslight you into thinking X can't do those things either, even as you watch it do them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ffkom ( 3519199 )

        Wayland is much much worse. IPV6 actually can do anything IPV4 can do.

        I would agree that IPv6 can do all the important stuff that IPv4 can do, but there are exceptions like DVMRP (Distance Vector Multicast Routing Protocol) that AFAIK did not make it into IPv6 yet. That is of course way less relevant than the beloved features that the Wayland makers opted to not implement.

      • Oh where have you seen that gaslighting? I would wager you're remembering any arguments you've had incorrectly since most Wayland boosters will actually argue that the feature you need shouldn't exist on a protocol level in the first place and it's up to the client to implement.

        That was the whole point of Wayland, specifically to do less. Wayland isn't "still" lacking. It always will be lacking because people are demanding things that is out of the scope of the project and simply will never be implemented.

        T

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by sjames ( 1099 )

          In the early days right here on /. and on wayland's project blogs.

          The claim was that X11 doesn't support remote display. Then when the foolishness of that claim was loudly called out, it was "Well that isn't REALLY remote support". Then that was called out and the claim was "it'll be implemented any day now..."

          That was enlarged that it would be through an external proxy. Then that external proxy would be 3rd party. Then it would be started any day now.

          Lie after lie after lie. Not a good look for open softwa

    • but to Joe User, it provides little obvious benefit, just like IPv6 provides little obvious benefit to the many IPv4 users

      It's not a bad analogy because of just how broken some things are and how transparent sometimes the solution is. Many IPv4 users don't see a benefit as they are stuck behind CGNAT and work around their problems by using cloud based systems to gain connectivity. Then one simple solution is to ping a machine directly with IPv6.

      Wayland is similar. The user doesn't give a fuck what display protocol they use, they just care if it works. I switched to Wayland because I have two monitors with two different refresh

    • Supposedly wayland makes it easier to have different displays with different dpi settings but whenever I try pick Wayland to login with on Devuan it just gives me a black screen.

  • Oh, is that what I've been hearing? I thought my tinnitus was acting up again...

  • Relief (Score:3)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @02:06PM (#65482530) Homepage Journal

    I have to support Ubuntu for commercial reasons. I am relieved to note that Ubuntu is NOT Wayland only. It's just that the latest Gnome only supports Wayland. So all I have to do to keep X11 available is not use the desktop environment that I despise anyway.

    Wayland and Gnome are now so far up their own backsides, they will disappear into a singularity any day now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Wayland and Gnome are now so far up their own backsides, they will disappear into a singularity any day now.

      Yep. That is why I use X.org with fvwm2 (and no systemd crap). If it is not broken, do not fix it.

    • I needed to use an Ubuntu workstation recently. It was set up with Wayland and Ubuntu's gnome respin. The default you know? I decided to not be an old fart and really have it a go. Wayland was unfortunately still buggy even slightly off the beaten path (meshlab didn't run which is a bit of a deal breaker for me), and gnome... It's odd to be sure. Some is ok, some is annoying and some of the choices are absolutely barking mad and deeply user hostile. They're also obsessed with featureless grey in grey icons

  • OMG thank you (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pz ( 113803 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @03:38PM (#65482788) Journal

    I hate Wayland. Still so frelling buggy. So many unfulfilled promises. So many things that just worked, and worked well, under X have been broken for so very, very long. I hope the teenagers who repllied "pffft" to the graybeards when they said "windowing is hard, secure remote windowing is really hard," have learned their lesson, who replied "X is just too complicated" have now recognized that they have something worse, who opined "the API is too obscure" have been brought to awareness.

    Just because something is new does not mean it is better. Keep repeating that. If an old, working system appears to be complex, there just might be good reasons for it.

    I used to be able to run remote windows on kinda slow cable with reasonable responsiveness, back in the day, under X. I could even run a browser. I haven't been able to do any of that under Wayland; opening a remote browser window now takes *minutes*, if it works at all, and I've got fat pipes now, compared to back in the day. Wayland, from the user's perspective, has been and remains an unmitigated disaster.

    I'm all for bringing back X. Maybe those guys at MIT knew what they were doing.

    • Still so frelling buggy.

      How is that any different from Linux desktops in general? Wayland has bugs, I've come across some myself. But then so has X11, countless of them.

      Just because something is new does not mean it is better. Keep repeating that. If an old, working system appears to be complex, there just might be good reasons for it.

      Lack of understanding is a good reason. Just because something is working doesn't mean it couldn't be better. The complexity of X11 is not by design, it's explicitly by the lack of design. It's worth remembering the people who were looking to replace it are the very people who built it in the first place. I think they probably know far more about this than you or I

      • It's worth remembering the people who were looking to replace it are the very people who built it in the first place.

        This is utterly false. X was designed in the 1980s at MIT. Is it perfect? No, but it does the job.

        Wayland was built by Kristian Hogsberg, who definitely did not go to MIT, and has the design skills of a typical RedHat employee.

  • Listen, upfront, I don't give so much as a rat's ass what you use, if it works for you. I personally use X11 since that's what works for me, but I personally have no objection to Wayland.
    That said, I'm excited for a potential resurgence in X11's development, but I feel XLibre isn't quite the way to go. In the 3 or so weeks it's been out, Enrico Weigelt (the lead dev) has made it clear that he doesn't really care to test for bugs or keep the project compatible with Xorg. Couple that with the over-politicizat

  • The developer would better spend their time working on Wayland. X11 needs to die already. Any attempts to "save it," are just delaying Wayland. For all intets and purposed Wayland is X12, since almost all the X11 developers are working on Wayland.

    • Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Saturday June 28, 2025 @05:23PM (#65482978) Journal

      This mindless "x needs to die" is why Wayland has the problems it has, still after 16 years.

      The reason Wayland is having so much trouble replacing X is because it's not doing what people want to do. It'll probably replace X eventually, but berating people into abandoning workflows which work in favor of the rather middle aged shiny thing also won't speed up Wayland.

      • The reason Wayland is having so much trouble replacing X is because it's not doing what people want to do.

        No, the reason it's having trouble is because it introduced incompatibilities by design which required a lot of work to incorporate it into a system. A project shouldn't be restricted in "what people want it to do". Because the answer to that question is: "Everything, and the same way as previously."

        If we heed that line of thinking we'd not have the internet because IPX/SPX was a networking standard that didn't scale well to connect multiple networks. Someone looked at that, threw it out and created somethi

        • Saying "incompatibility by design" doesn't mean it's a good idea. Wayland decided to break compatibility with every extant windowing system, which means it's lower than the lowest common denominator, so otherwise portable programs break.

          And again telling people they should abandon things that not only work but work everywhere else is why Wayland has taken so long and will remain so slow at getting adoption. You're not giving people a better alternative you are telling them they suck and need to get with the

  • It's sad to see Xii decay the way it has. Back in 1998 when I joined Red Hat, I helped organise the porting of X11 to Linux. I hope Xlibre succeeds in bringing X11 up to date.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MrBrklyn ( 4775 )

      What was really crazy was when Novell brought SuSE they saw X as not an opportunity, but a threat to their Xen business.

    • I have a copy of slackware c. 1993 on old 5 in floppies that was my 1st install of Linux. The kernel hadn't even reached 1.0 at that point. It included X so I'm not sure what you mean by the "porting of X11 to Linux."

  • https://wiki.artixlinux.org/Si... [artixlinux.org]

    Xlibre on Artix Linux
    Current Status

    Available for testing.
    Reporting Issues

    Please check this Artix forum topic
    ISOs

    Some Artix Xlibre ISOs are available for download. More information is available in this forum post.
    Packages

    The following packages are available in the [galaxy-gremlins] repository:

    xlibre-xserver
    xlibre-xserver-common
    xlibre-xserver-devel
    xlibre-xserver-

  • Never have used wayland, everytime I get a distro that has it, the video doesn't work. Latest was Rocky10 in a VM. Couldn't startx or gdm when wayland failed, ended up using the previous rocky9 mate version. I like X, it's old, I kind of know how it works now, and I've never had a problem with it. Wayland seems to be a solution in search of a problem, but is really just a problem itself.

  • I have two ancient video cards in my main computer. One connects to the two monitors in my office. The second connects to the TV in the living room. I run two instances of X and two of pulseaudio using an /etc/X11/xorg.conf that defines the two seats and one instance of xdm that handles logins. xdm has give/take console scripts that provide permissions to the /dev/snd devices associated with each seat. Required some work to setup the alsa /etc/sound and some udev rules to name things, but it works very nice

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