After the dramatic fork of Xorg into a new project called XLibre Xserver, the open-source community briefly felt a spark of hope — maybe, just maybe, the beloved X11 would get a fresh shot at life. That hope came after major announcements from several leading (and mostly corporate-backed) Linux distributions that they were moving away from X11 altogether.
But as you’ll see below, that glimmer of hope probably won’t last. Two big issues stand in the way: the controversial reputation of the developer behind the project and the growing sense that some of the major players simply don’t want X11 anymore. Instead, they’re putting their weight behind Wayland—a project they’re heavily involved in, even though it’s technically community-maintained.
So, back to the topic. A few days ago, Kevin Kofler proposed (here’s our article on the subject) adding XLibre Xserver to Fedora as a replacement for X11. And boy, what followed… Things escalated quickly. Just 24 hours later, he personally withdrew the proposal, saying:
I have always argued that Changes that are overwhelmingly rejected by the community should not be approved by FESCo. So it would be very hypocritical if I attempted to push this through over the almost entirely negative feedback. I stand by my positions and also apply them to myself.
There are already a few hundred comments piling up, which you can check out here and here. As you’ll see, many of them aren’t really about the technical details at all—instead, they express open hostility toward the developer, known for being a vocal critic of Red Hat. Some even go as far as saying things like, “If this gets approved, I’m leaving the project.” Wow.
Please don’t get me wrong—this article isn’t meant to defend Enrico Weigelt, the person behind XLibre. I agree that many of his statements cross the line and veer away from technical discussion into politics and conspiracy theories, which just isn’t acceptable.
That said, it’s also disheartening to see people digging for technical flaws just to discredit a project because they don’t like its developer. In this situation, the line between personal feelings and technical criticism has pretty much disappeared—everything’s tangled up into one big mess.
However, I totally agree with one of the points: software without a solid track record of stability and functionality simply shouldn’t be accepted. I’m 100% on board with that.
But come on, calling it unreliable? Really? We’re talking about X11—the software powering the Linux desktop for the past 30 years. And now, after being forked, suddenly overnight, it becomes unreliable? That doesn’t add up. It’s literally the exact same codebase, right? Plus, the whole point of the fork is to improve it and fix many shortcomings in its aging design.
Let’s not forget that when it comes to XLibre, the project is trying to breathe new life into X11, and Red Hat is right in the middle of it. Yes, the same Red Hat is a major backer of Wayland. The company has a track record of pushing its vision hard—just think of what happened with the GNOME desktop, systemd, and now Wayland.
It’s a bit ironic, too. The same company that proudly waves the open-source flag is the one that took down CentOS, its biggest rival at the time, in a move that felt like a slap in the face to everything open-source stands for. And since then, it seems like Red Hat has gone out of its way to make things harder for the newcomers—Rocky and Alma included.
So, while I wouldn’t go as far as Weigelt does, I agree with one simple truth: X11 clearly isn’t a priority for the big players anymore, and now the focus is entirely on Wayland, and that’s fine. But why are you picking fights with anyone who dares to question your push for one specific technology?
Even if you’re new to Linux, it doesn’t take long—just a few days—to realize that Wayland (the project started by Red Hat, btw) still isn’t the fully polished, reliable replacement some people make it out to be. Oh, and this “new” thing called Wayland? It’s been in development for over 15 years. And yet, it still doesn’t feel quite ready for prime time.
The truth is, most users don’t care what it’s called—they just want their system to work. And in that sense, X11 still gets the job done. XLibre is trying to take things further, building on everything that’s come before to improve the experience. But for that to happen, the project needs to be given a fair shot. That’s hard to do when it’s dismissed outright because you don’t like the person behind it or because it doesn’t align with your company’s goals.
Right now, most other distributions are taking a wait-and-see approach, unlike Fedora (and, by extension, Red Hat), whose position is clear. So far, none of the others have made any firm statements about whether they plan to adopt XLibre. Of course, for that to happen, the project first needs to release a fully stable version (we already have a beta available).
Honestly, the open-source community has nothing to lose by trying to bring back something as fundamental as X11. If anything, there’s a lot to gain. That said, I’ve got to be honest—the drama surrounding Weigelt isn’t doing the effort any favors. And when you add in the obvious hesitation from big players to give X11 another shot, it makes the whole thing even harder.
The XLibre case is unusual—and in many ways, unprecedented—in the Linux world. That’s because it’s not just about technical merit. Instead, it involves people turning something down because of the reputation its developer has built, along with the refusal of certain “trendsetters” in the Linux space to bring back something they’ve already labeled as obsolete.
Linux is supposed to be all about choice and freedom, right? Or are those just nice-sounding slogans that don’t quite hold up in practice?
One must understand that majority of prominent FOSS devs get top hardware donated from hardware manufacturers. And corporations don’t do anything for free. Those who will undermine Keynesian economy will be mercilessly suppressed.
ya, not supporting a nazi apologist anti vaccine twit.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20181010.191925.ee1331b6.en.html
Either you did not read those posts or you willfully misinterpret them. Critizing someone’s opponents is not endorsing those people. Being hesitant about an unknown entity is not being “anti vaccine”.
You’re supporting those that commit crimes against women and children because that’s who’s against xlibre. I guess that’s your thing
I wish success to this project, and I don’t care about the political views of that guy — the problem is that, as I understand, that guy is the ONLY developer behind the project. I have huge doubts that a single person can manage a project of that complexity. If he can, great, but I’ll believe when I see it.
He’s not and the developers have already fixed a lot of bad code in xorg. If you want the better version, xorg is the one you want to drop.
If the discussion was really about code quality then someone would have done a direct comparison of Xorg and XLibre.
I haven’t seen a single technical comparison with benchmarks and compatibility notes. Not even from Phoronix. So sad.
There are many out there that need a better X11.
Well, I don’t understand why we don’t address the main issue here. Corporate-corked projects are all “permissive” and the money goes only into these projects. The GPL requires responsibility to the community and corporate world is here only to plunder the said community. The only project that will always be GPL and that corporate sharks will have to support is Linux itself. Too much work has gone into it. Don’t you see that this is an ongoing theme? Call me conspiracy theorist, tin-foil hatter, call me whatever… Look at replacing GNU coreutils with rust whatever, trying to replace the same functionality but different license. Doesn’t Wayland thingamajig falls into the same category? Why would anyone block so many pull-requests? Sure, way way faster… but is it? Way way better… but is it really? Sure if you disqualify X11 by blocking all the work that goes into it. And why the corporate love “permissive” so much and hate freedom so much? Well, at certain point when you squash the “opposition” (as they see it), you fork the project and change the license to proprietary, you buy the whole dev team (they’re usually small enough), put your squires to lead the newly forked project, and then you charge arm and leg and control the code, steal private data and do what ever the heck you want. Because it’s “permissive”! “Permissive” in their language means “can steal with impunity”. I’m sorry if you don’t see it, but it’s happening right in front of your eyes.
Linux will be replaced at certain point as well when AI is capable of writing 99% of the new “permissive” kernel. By then “freedom software” will be history. The tools they use are permissive licenses, far left ideologies, cancel culture and money (always money). Zoom out people, see the big picture.
This is hated by a couple of people on reddit (most likely redhat employees). We are all excited for it.
“If this gets in I’m leaving the project.” Is that really a threat, or another positive? The proper response to such a thing is “don’t let the door hit your a** on the way out!”
actually, relative to the spirit of linux, I don’t quite understand the reason for the hatred towards this new project. it doesn’t make any sense. it’s an extra freedom.
Thats what I’m saying. I’m excited for it. Places like Ubuntu try and act high and mighty while their employees are convicted of sex crimes. They’re in no position to speak about the quality of people.
It seems nobody can have a different opinion in the current world… imagine these same policies would have been applied at the beginning of the Linux development days, we would not have Linux today. I will fully support any distro that does what is suppose to do, as with any other fork, test and try if it works and lets people decide based on that. I still remember when Libreoffice was forked from Openoffice, and Xorg was forked from Xfree86, it is not the first time and should not be the last.
Linus was a complete control freak in early days just like he is today and did this kind stuff even back then. He gets mad and just completely removes something or kicks people to the curb and he has not changed much at all over the years but I do appreciate all the work he has done regardless even if I do not always agree with his actions. He may have to much power just like the big distros do on various things.
I really agree and Thank you for this article. This is a watershed moment for Linux in general. If X11 can’t be supported then there really is no difference between Linux and proprietary alternatives.
The distros are ignoring all of the people who want and will benefit from X11 going forward, putting up artificial barriers and specious arguments to cover their own agendas.
p.s. The leader issue is red herring.
Applications still running on X11 protocol are supported through Xwayland. Xserver reached the level its fondation is unsustainable in modern environment due to its flawed design without security in mind. Practically all Xorg developers refuse to further develop xserver on X11 other than security fix because of massive spaghetti codes leading to breakage thus incompatibility to X11 protocol hence the existence of Wayland protocol. The XLibre showed that merging an untested changes causing breaking is a bad idea meaning the code should stay in the very fork i.e. XLibre. Let remind that X11 protocol itself saw different versions of Xserver thorough the time including XFree86.
The display management of Linux ecosystem using the much needed Wayland protocol outweighs the dimming support of Xserver. The real question for those defending the use of the long outdated X11 Xserver is of they are afraid to adapt and learn new stuff helping the Linux ecosystem to organically grow
No they’re not supported through xwayland, simply because there are key features that wayland does not support which in turn makes it impossible for xwayland to support those features.
There are several core protocols that wayland has actively refused to support, some of which have been implemented in different incompatible ways in various desktops. Dropping X means a significant drop in accessibility functionality on Linux, meaning Linux immedietly becomes a non-option for public institutions in all of the EU. Several applications also cannot use Wayland due to lacking features and performance issues.
XWayland is not a suitable subsitution for native X. Ironically, it would not be hard to implement a Wayland compatibility layer to work on X.
Red hat won’t give you a special reward or mention for cupping them so hard.
Drinking Red Hat kool aid much?
na I’m just trying to explain things so retards like you who never want anything to move forward can understand
“I agree that many of his statements cross the line and veer away from technical discussion into politics and conspiracy theories.”
That’s what Red Hat wants you to believe, so they can fudge the issue by leading you on a non-related ground, and that’s really rich coming from a company who literally makes everything political.
Nobody’s perfect, and the freedesktop and Red Hat guys have a history of making things political and toxic if any developer wouldn’t adhere to their leanings. So this point is moot considering the ones that are trying to make use of it.
Exactly!
The problem is Blackrock and Vanguard. They control:
– IBM (which has supported Hitler Germany with Hollerith machines which made the Holocaust possible and nowadays they are being sued for racism.)
– Red Hat (another company sued for racism known for attacking FSF/RMS as well as hiring lots of mentally challenged and narcisstic people like Poettering, Sievers, Paul etc.)
– Microsoft which is well known for its EEE tactics, controlling Github, sitting in the Linux Foundation and financing AI slop against Linux.
I’m really amazed by Theo de Raadt’s and Stallman’s foresight. They have warned people decades ago.
Unfortunately, (Western) people nowadays are so busy with their virtue signalling, enacting control via CoCs and identity politics that they don’t notice or don’t care about these things. Sad!
By the way, it’s scientifically proven with peer reviews studies from PubMed that modRNA is highly harmful. In that case, Weigelt was correct and Linus a victim of big pharma’s propaganda.
are you on drugs??? you sound like a whacked out retard that thinks they know what they are talking about but instead just provide a bunch of meaningless blabber.
no
Americans are a large and varied lot. It is impossible to paint them all with the same brush. To do so is ‘considered cookoo’.
One thing in the article I agree with is to keep politics OUT OF tech. We don’t want to offend people and turn them off to Linux by an unkind comment from either side, and I see it all to often even in the forums. Talk tech, not politics. There are plenty of political forums if you need to leave some steam off.
if your trying to avoid politics you want to avoid debian
Americans may be varied, but, to be fair, the majority present the worrisome behavior mentioned in the other comment.
So, it’s worrisome if they disagree with you? How very liberal and tolerant of alternative views of you.
It’s worrisome that someone’s work is judged by the person’s opinions and not on it’s own merits.
Americans are weird. For some reason, they believe that if someone does something wrong, everything they do or did is automatically tainted. In most of the rest of the world, someone with these kind of view would be considered cookoo…
Americans are a very large and diverse group that agree on almost nothing. There is nothing weird about that, it is called freedom. What i weird is stereotyping and group and applying YOUR preconceived attributes to that group. That is certainly not critical thinking.
Americans talking about critical thinking. That’s rich 😀
Leftists. Not all Americans are that way.
Is not only doing something wrong, also saying something wrong.