Xorg forked to XLibre

[jesnow]

There appears to be a civil war going on in the Linux community: An X11 fork.

X11 is dying: We all know that "somebody" really really wants a Wayland-only world. Not me. I don't care for Wayland. Now it looks like someone has decided to fork X11 in order to save it.

For some of the latest developments see here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujJCyXfWpOo
And here:
https://linuxiac.com/xlibre-xserver-pro ... al-of-x11/
And here:
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver

That fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from BigTech, are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to elimitate (sic) competition of their own products. Classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics.

It reminds me a lot of the accusations of stagnation, conflicts of interest and corporate sabotage that led to the fork of Xorg from XFree86 20 years ago. Or the formation of OpenRC in response to everybody adopting systemd at once. Gentoo sure was the middle of that! I'm oversimplifying those things, but it does seem similar.

I hope we'll get XLibre into portage or at least into an overlay in due course.

Cheers,
Jon.

[Kaidezee]

(https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver)

small furry creature from Alpha Centauri

I already like this project.
Shame it will probably die soon
Also, had this guy not learned anything at all? Why would anyone use Github after that happened? To me, something like Codeberg sounds much more reasonable.

edit: Oh, and why hate Wayland? (I have never used it).

[Hu]

This is not about hating Wayland. This is about how certain use cases for X11 are not supported well or at all in Wayland, and such shortcomings have been discussed extensively. At this point, there is no reason to believe that those shortcomings will be addressed in the near future, so staying with X11 is easier than adapting one's workflow and tooling to cope with Wayland.

[Zucca]

I know some of the goals is to clean up the code.
I think this is the most important target of the project. Without clean code base a single person, or few more, can't have any change to keep the project of this scale updated. Also bugs are easier to catch when the code is clean.

However I'm not sure if just extending (forking) tinyX would be more feasible...

Also OpenBSD folks have Xenocara. Although they being very strict about security, I think they'll eventually abandon it. In fact, I'm surprised they haven't already.

[krumpf]

I found a bit earlier today that one of the X11Libre dev proposed a lot of patches to official X11 repo, and pretty much all of them have been rejected, because they were largely untested.

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xse ... items/1822

So I think it's better to stay away from that fork, at least until it has been thoroughly and properly tested.

Edit : more in that reddit thread https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments ... t/mwwhzmp/

[Anon-E-moose]

removed original content as I'm tired of casting pearls .... ~le sigh~

[GDH-gentoo]

No civil war going on.

Just one guy that wants to fix X, but has very poor performance in this respect, which is why he got banned from the Xorg git and had to fork it.

After spending some time reading issue 1797 (a.k.a. "dealing with the apparently untested commit that broke RandR"), that's my interpretation of the events as well. Contrary to my own expectations before doing that, there are quite a few things in there that, in my opinion, actually make Weigelt's handling of Xorg's code look bad.

[jesnow]

Exactly:

This is not about hating Wayland. This is about how certain use cases for X11 are not supported well or at all in Wayland, and such shortcomings have been discussed extensively. At this point, there is no reason to believe that those shortcomings will be addressed in the near future, so staying with X11 is easier than adapting one's workflow and tooling to cope with Wayland.

But then you have people saying:

Makes much less sense when it's all on one machine.

As if their use case is the only one that makes any sense to them, so we can ditch all the others.

But it does seem like Xorg itself doesn't like X any more. It seems like having them be responsible for both X and Wayland is a COI.

Cheers,
Jon

[Zucca]

As if their use case is the only one that makes any sense to them, so we can ditch all the others.

As if there isn't effort to bring the missing functionality from X11 to wayland side as separate programs? (Adhering to certain philosophy.)

We're still at the uncomfortable transition gap. Meanwhile if you need the functions of X11 that aren't possible on wayland side... this is Gentoo. You have the choice.

[szatox]

This thing reeks of a protest-fork, but it does also look like the devs of original project don't want to maintain it anymore. At the very least, both sides have different ideas regarding how the project should be run, and both have good reasons behind them, so it does actually make sense to fork and possibly take over.
For now I'm gonna be rooting for the underdog. I don't know his plans, but I want to see the results.

[saellaven]

At the end of the day, I just want my systems to work. Wayland isn't a feature compatible replacement for X, and while waypipe might be able to fix my biggest hurdle, I use my computer(s) and I need them to be reliable and just work. I don't have time to endlessly tinker and tweak these in the hope that it'll work.

That goes for Wayland and that goes for whatever is happening with X.

If the old devs want to hold X back, it's great that it forked. If the new forked version breaks all the time because of a lack of testing (I'm staring at you mate-terminal that was broken for Wayland without testing X, hasn't been fixed in 1.5 years, that I reverted in my own repo), I'll just keep using what does work even if the current devs abandon it.

I'm not a luddite, but I am someone that *NEEDS* stability since my entire business stack, both onsite and offsite, depend on it. I'm not 17 and installing Slackware for the first time to tinker with this new Linux thing anymore.

[Gentookh]

No civil war going on.

Well, it is started... https://youtu.be/nIvUUfM_5HI

The Lunduke Journal: Ubuntu & GNOME Drop Xorg Following Xorg Fork Announcement

[Gentookh]

I really like this comment:

@takingthescenicroute1610 8 hours ago

Because Wayland wants to backdoor proprietary digital restrictions management (DRM) with the help of hooks in the proprietary GPU blobs and for that they must kill open implementations or force them out of the market (by making stuff =cough= GNOME =cough= incompatible).

What are your thoughts of it?


t. i'm using wayland on newer machines and more or less satisfied

[asturm]

Well, it is started... https://youtu.be/nIvUUfM_5HI

The Lunduke Journal: Ubuntu & GNOME Drop Xorg Following Xorg Fork Announcement

To *think* that this decision is in any way triggered by a random Xorg fork is really stupid; making an entire video about it, targeting a gullible confirmation biased audience, shows at least some business-mindedness, but it is news "story telling" of the worst kind.

[NeddySeagoon]

asturm,

but ... but ... It's on the internet, it must be true. :)

[pietinger]

but ... but ... It's on the internet, it must be true.

No, Neddy, no, please see: https://xkcd.com/386/

[yaslam]

I hope we'll get XLibre into portage or at least into an overlay in due course.

Indeed

[Gentookh]

a random Xorg fork

Except that it is not.

But hey, I'm just stupid and gullible
...so guess I will wait for someone else to start an overlay

[rab0171610]

a random Xorg fork

Except that it is not.

But hey, I'm just stupid and gullible
...so guess I will wait for someone else to start an overlay

I don't think asturm was calling this particular fork of Xorg a random fork. asturm's statement, I believe, is in direct response to the phrase "Ubuntu & GNOME Drop Xorg Following Xorg Fork Announcement".

"To *think* that this decision is in any way triggered by a random Xorg fork is really stupid"

I understand this to mean that asturm doesn't think Ubuntu and Gnome's decision to drop support for Xorg is a direct response to someone "randomly" creating a fork of Xorg. In other words, the two incidents are random -- not directly correlated and are not cause and effect. The move to drop support for Xorg has been in the works for a long time by many projects, not just Gnome and Ubuntu. Many more may eventually follow suit in the years to come, such as KDE for example.

I will not disagree with your last two statements. You know yourself better than anyone else.

[b11n]

I note this discussion was sparked by one of Bryan Lunduke's videos, and humbly suggest such discussion best take place in his own comment sections. In recent years, he's honed his commentary to a style that's flamey and divisive, half of it would run afoul of Gentoo's code of conduct if posted here, and the less said about him (and in response to him) the better, IMO.

As far as an Xorg split pertains to Gentoo:

Someone's forked Xorg. For better or worse, this happens all the time in the free software community. If certain groups are allegedly 'destroying' Xorg, it seems the natural place for people who don't want that to happen is this, or some other fork. If that fork turns out to be any good, you can bet it's going to wind up in Guru and eventually the main repo. That's how Xorg got there in the first place.

But let's not get distracted by outrage merchants and clickbaity titles on YouTube videos. If you want to, that's fine, but the place for it is the comments section under the video.

[canar]

I hope we'll get XLibre into portage or at least into an overlay in due course.

Came here to express my interest in such. Don't have the spare cycles to take it on myself right now, but I'm very much down to test and report.

[Zucca]

I would like to repeat the following:

But let's not get distracted by outrage merchants and clickbaity titles on YouTube videos. If you want to, that's fine, but the place for it is the comments section under the video.

[szatox]

I would like to repeat the following:

But let's not get distracted by outrage merchants and clickbaity titles on YouTube videos. If you want to, that's fine, but the place for it is the comments section under the video.

I was going to just ignore that post, but since you decided to second it: Why?
1) Distracted from what?
2) How DARE we have a conversation on a forum, er?
If he is not interested, that's fine. However, being mentioned by some rando YT commentator has nothing to do with either the fork or Gentoo CoC, so using it as a reason to basically tell everyone to shut up falls somewhere between a "strawman" (said YT video and its author are not the topic of this conversation), "personal attack" (on an absentee, to make it more ridiculous), and maybe "projection?" (you're doing X, and Y did X, and Y is bad for doing Z, therefore you're Z-bad for doing X - dunno, there could be a better term for that).
Nothing to see there though. For better or worse, this happens all the time on the internet.

To be fair, the fork itself is not in Gentoo, but it there are "unsupported software" and "other open source" sections too, and xorg is still pretty popular.

[Zucca]

I was merely expressing my opinion, not enforcing an unwritten forum rule.
I'm just tired of reading all the theories how IBM/RH and Microsoft are destroying our freedom to "foss".
Not that it's not true… or false.

Last time I listened to Lunduke, I had a strong gut feeling he's a good storyteller.

[b11n]

1) Distracted from what?

A calm and reasoned discussion on the XLibre fork, as opposed one built on hand-waving and hyperbole, talk of "civil war", "X11 dying", unnamed "somebodies" with their finger on the scales. Crafty use of the word "following" to make it appear Ubuntu and GNOME are reacting, when the reality is far more boring, that GNOME has been planning the deprecation for over a year and Ubuntu is merely swimming with the current.

2) How DARE we have a conversation on a forum, er?

Considering just a sentence later you're complaining of strawmen, along with a scattering of other fallacies while not being so bold as to commit any one in particular, I'm not sure my time will be well spent trying, but here goes:

It's valid to criticise BL's blog and not a personal attack at all. Indeed, he dishes out far harsher criticism than anything I've said, and I suggest you don't get offended on his behalf. He might not have anything to do with the fork, but with around half the comments here containing or litigating hyperbole that's come from him, he's very much part of this thread, and that's what I'm saying is distracting actual useful discussion. The fact he's not here himself is immaterial.

GNOME and Ubuntu both have reputations for being quite opinionated in what they ship. That's actually what their users like, and sometimes that's easy to forget here in Gentoo, where Xorg will probably not go away any time soon, XLibra will join the party, and you'll have the choice for years to come.

If he is not interested, that's fine.

I'm saying this exactly because I am interested in the splits of major FOSS projects. It is both how it makes progress and how it holds itself back. There's much nuanced discussion to be had. There are also grifters trying to milk the drama for all it's worth to peddle their YouTube channels to credulous audiences. It's doesn't bother me that much when they keep to themselves, but I think we're better than that here.