this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2025

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Something curious is going on surrounding X.Org and it's forks... (youtu.be)

submitted 2 days ago by fwygon@beehaw.org to c/foss@beehaw.org

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Video Title: Open Source People are Fighting to Kill Open Source Projects

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[–] HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org 1 points 6 hours ago

Can somebody summarize the issue? I was thinking that wayland and Xorg are different projects? So what is the incentive that people stop using X11? It is also not like Python2 where any effort to support it further would retract ressources from Python developers developing Python3. (And compare that to Perl6 developers renaming it "Raku" and continuing to support Perl 5, or SBCL developers just quietly adding support for Unicode -Python3's most consequential change - without breaking existing stuff?)

And one thing more, we saw companies taking influence in Web standards like HTTP 2.0. Yes, it is still open standard and supported by FLOSS software - but one cannot deny that many development in the modern web like advertising, tracking, data collection, and centralization are not in the interest of users, and this us why the interests behind specific standards matter. Technology is not free of interests and technological change is not automatically in the interests of users.

[–] luciole@beehaw.org 22 points 2 days ago

Who is this fear mongering creep?

Anyways this video goes into some detail instead of ominously saying jack shit and it sounds like this Enrico guy was mostly busy shuffling code around and breaking stuff, then pivoted into a crusade against DEI. Doesn't fit the persecuted savior story.

[–] pixelpop3@beehaw.org 10 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Can we just let X11 die with some dignity? I don't know who this guy on the video is? Is he important? My impression is he seems like a generic popcorn feeder.

Go fork X11 or whatever, nobody is stopping you! Feel free to try and solve the puzzle of making X11 not suck while subject to the constraints of having to satisfy specifically those users who will not allow you to make any changes that inconvenience their rickety 40yo software that nobody cares enough to update to fix whatever is keeping it from running in Wayland (pro tip we're not talking about open source software here, the things that break are closed source blobs). It's well worth the effort rather than spinning up a container or kvm to run that proprietary binary.

[–] Powderhorn@beehaw.org 8 points 2 days ago

If you think the forks are bad, wait until you see the spoons! (Tip your waitress; try the veal.)

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 5 points 2 days ago (2 children)

I'm oblivious to what is going on. I was under the impression that xorg was obsolete because it had fundamental flaws that moving forward to Wayland would fix.

I'm on xorg still using Mint, and have not moved forward yet because I believe I was going to lose some sort of functionality. I can't comment on things being better over there or what.

Can anyone explain why this video is just being quietly down voted? It lends credibility to his argument.

[–] pixelpop3@beehaw.org 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

You are correct but don't forget that somebody's swing app broke and they're real salty about it.

Also I can't speak for whatever you're worried about but when I moved to Wayland the only thing that broke was java shit like Matlab and those closed software companies are not going to fix their shit for Wayland unless they have to. Oracle certainly isn't going to do shit unless forced. It's not open source anything holding anything back.

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 9 points 2 days ago

Reading up about the reporter and supposedly he has become a Q conspiracy theorist. I'm wondering if he hasn't burnt too many bridges to get a call back.

[–] SpikesOtherDog@ani.social 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I think I was eyeballing it about a year ago and seeing that it was still experimental, but what isn't. Also, I think I saw that some people had issues with yuzu on Wayland.

[–] pixelpop3@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Things have changed in the last year or so. This is about the next releases of distros, nobody's going to go back and retrospectively remove X11 and Xwayland will continue to exist when needed.

All the hubbub is because Gnome recently decided to drop support for launching X11 sessions from the login manager. Gnome's login manager is Wayland based and Wayland handles handing off graphics to different users properly. With X11 you have to have ugly things like killing the login X server and then spawning a new X server as the new user among other things is ugly and unfixable without serious security issues.

Wayland wasn't stuck with design decisions that made sense almost 50 years ago in the '80s and does things far more sanely and with less complex code.

Anyway at some point someone has to pull the plug and Gnome has done that. Many distros are built on Gnome so that's that.

[–] rodneyck@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

KDE is working to do it also. They are untangling X11 from Kwin, rumor is it should be dropped in KDE7.

[–] jherazob@beehaw.org 1 points 2 days ago

I'm also on Mint and X11, and intended to stay there for the moment specially since reading the latest David Revoy fully Linux FOSS guide for artists, which showed that many things are still behind in development, this may have changed since then but at least back then i decided to let it cook more before trying it out. I hope development has advanced enough that you can switch to it full time already but honestly i have no idea if it's there yet.

[–] Geodad@beehaw.org 3 points 2 days ago

It's my understanding that X.org has some fundamental security issues that can't be fixed. Is that correct?

[+] fwygon@beehaw.org -9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

This is some strange stuff.

I thought it was odd that there were distros pushing forth into Wayland-Only territory; given that Wayland isn't yet mature.

Now it seems like something more odd and sinister is going on...

Feel free to discuss and reply civilly.

[–] dark_arc@pie.packetloss.gg 15 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Wayland is plenty mature and for most main stream use cases works better than X at this point.

There's nothing sinister, the people working on X11 didn't want to work on it anymore because it has a lot of issues in a modern stack.

[–] fwygon@beehaw.org 0 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

When comparing it to X11; it absolutely isn't. That isn't me being unfair; just objectively comparing the two to each other. Literally nothing else exists that are quite like X11 and Wayland...so it makes sense to grade one against the other.

That isn't saying it does not work as well or even better than X11 does; it just hasn't existed for long enough yet to be nearly as widely adopted as X11 is. Gnome's decision to adopt a Wayland only stance is fairly new and I'm waiting to see how that goes for them. With luck it will go well and increase the adoption of Wayland. I'm aware that plenty of Distros do include Wayland; and plenty have taken the plunge similar to Gnome; which is why they probably felt it was wise to follow suit, after observing Wayland succeeding in those Distros fairly well.

I don't really have a horse in the argument per-se; I think both X11 and Wayland are both great; if you're using them like the developers intended you to use them.

I do think the video makes a pretty good point about how people who attack others for continuing X11 is very much violating the ethos of FOSS communities in general; and I have no doubts that if the claims made in the video are true; I think folks like Stallman would be kind of upset with people behaving that way because it only harms the FOSS community as a whole.

You may not agree with people who want to use X11 for their very niche use cases. That's fine. But I do question any motives behind any kind of behavior that is not only ceasing all development on X11, but actively blocking and sabotaging others who want to work on X11 from doing so.

[–] dark_arc@pie.packetloss.gg 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I'll be honest ... maybe you're right but it's not really my concern. I've got a billion other things to care about that are more important; you probably do too.

Seems to me like the video author is just trying to make more drama ...

This sort of thing always happens anyways, some new thing comes along (systemd), some people want to use the old thing (sysvinit). Some people are like ... "god why would you use that, you're so dumb" ignoring any valid use case. Some other people fought very hard to convince people the new thing is great, so they've got a personal stake. (etc... etc..)

It's not sinister, it's at worst just people being annoyed that others are trying to hold onto the flame when we have light bulbs; my two cents.