XLibre Xserver: Banned by Red Hat Developer Plans Revival of X11

X11 is in its twilight years, with most Linux distributions and desktop environments already moving on to Wayland. Still, there’s a fresh attempt to breathe new life into the project. That said, this revival hasn’t come without its share of drama, and right now, it’s being driven by a single developer. Here’s what it’s all about.

In a dramatic turn of events, Red Hat employees banned developer Enrico Weigelt from the freedesktop.org infrastructure. Weigelt’s account, repositories, tickets, and merge requests (more than 140) associated with the Xorg project were also abruptly deleted. As a result of these actions, in a message titled “History repeats: Redhat censored me on freedesktop.org,” Weigelt released a statement saying:

This morning, Redhat employees banned me from the freedesktop.org gitlab infrastructure – so censored all my work (not just on Xorg). They killed my account, my git repos, my tickets in Xorg and closed all my merge requests. And then making fun on social media about it.

It’s now clear that freedesktop.org is the Redskirts, and they want to kill X. By the way, the same corporation that tied to proprietarize a lot of FOSS code, including the Linux kernel (and I’ve been one of those who warned them about terminating our license grants them).

Just to be clear, I didn’t want to fork, I tried my best to work together with the Xorg team. But I knew for long time, this day would come. Xorg has been captured by Redhat, in order to get rid of destroy competition. The necessary consequence is a fork, more competition.

Together we’ll make X great again!

In other words, according to Weigelt, the primary cause behind this action seems to be his decision to fork Xorg into a new project named Xlibre—an initiative aimed at revitalizing X11, an older but foundational windowing system for Linux, and making tangible progress where development had stagnated.

Interestingly, Weigelt noted a historical parallel—comparing his experience to Keith Packard, a respected figure in the FOSS community who faced similar exclusion nearly two decades ago. Packard’s departure eventually led to the creation of Xorg, marking the end of its predecessor, XFree86. Weigelt foresees a comparable trajectory for Xlibre.

So, he launched Xlibre’s new GitHub repository and established a mailing list to rally support and community involvement.

This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It’s explicitly free of any “DEI” or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who’s treating others nicely is welcomed.

Now, I wouldn’t go so far as to say Red Hat is afraid of X11 making a comeback. But let’s be honest—there’s no denying that some of the big names in the Linux world seem to be pushing their own agendas behind the scenes. And at times, those moves look a little out of step with the spirit of free and open-source software.

However, although it is off-topic, I’d also like to bring up something else related to the developer in question. About four years ago, during the COVID pandemic, Weigelt made a highly controversial comment on the Linux kernel mailing list that many saw as an attempt to politicize the discussion.

This ended up prompting a pretty sharp response from Linus Torvalds. And this isn’t the first time Weigelt has taken a stance that’s stirred up controversy.

Whether Xlibre — the new project aiming to revive X11 — will succeed is still up in the air. We’ll likely get a better sense of that in the coming months. I think it’s going to be incredibly difficult.

X11 is an enormous undertaking—far too much for any developer to handle alone. Without strong backing from the broader community, it’s hard to imagine the project gaining enough momentum to truly take off.

To be honest, I just don’t see it happening. Most of the major players in the Linux world — including leading distros and the big desktop environments — have already dropped X11 or are well on their way, shifting instead toward Wayland, which is widely seen as the better, more modern, and more secure solution.

Anyway, according to Weigelt, the debut version of XLibre Xserver will arrive soon, bringing “lots of code cleanups and enhanced functionality,” as mentioned in the project’s announcement. Once recompiled, most Xorg drivers should function seamlessly with Xlibre, though there are exceptions.

However, those using proprietary NVIDIA drivers may face further complications, as compatibility updates from NVIDIA lag significantly behind the current Xorg master branch. While Xlibre actively seeks workarounds, no guarantees can be offered at this stage.

As always, we will monitor the situation closely and keep you updated on any developments.