Forked-off Xlibre tells Wayland display protocol to DEI in a fire
- Reference: 1749574810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/10/xlibre_new_xorg_fork/
- Source link:
The [1]XLibre Xserver is a fork of the X.org X server, started by long-term X.org maintainer [2]Enrico Weigelt . The project aims to develop and improve the X.org display server, as an alternative to the newer and more fashionable Wayland display protocol.
We last mentioned Weigelt's work on [3]improving X.org multimonitor support about a year ago. However, this was not his first appearance in the pages of The Register – back in 2021, [4]Linus Torvalds rebuked him for spreading pseudo-scientific, anti-vaccination claims.
[5]
We suspect that such views will in fact appeal to some people, even if they are on the fringe of the FOSS world.
[6]
[7]
It is fair to say that Weigelt is no stranger to controversy, and this announcement is no different. The Reg FOSS desk has witnessed some remarkable levels of anti-X11 sentiment from Wayland proponents since the announcement… especially given that the subject under discussion is something as superficially trivial as the protocols that handle displaying Unix computers' graphical user interfaces. But, as we [8]noted last month , ferociously passionate advocacy is a sad but inevitable aspect of software development.
We are confident this won't bother Weigelt a bit. In fact, the README file for X11Libre positively invites it, as it contains this:
It's explicitly free of any "DEI" [diversity, equity, and inclusion] or similar discriminatory policies.
Oh dear.
That statement, though, has received praise and approval in some places.
[9]
The same README states that the fork is a result of systematic attempts to suppress further development and improvement of the default FOSS X11 server:
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.
Right after first journalists began covering the planned fork Xlibre, on June 6th 2025, Redhat [sic] employees started a purge on the Xlibre founder's gitlab account on freedesktop.org: deleted the git repo, tickets, merge requests, etc, and so fired the shot that the whole world heared [sic].
Weigelt amplified these claims in an [10]email to the xorg-devel mailing list . As far as we are able to see, the statement that his GitLab accounts have been deleted is true – for instance, [11]this merge request says: "The source project of this merge request has been removed." His [12]Freedesktop GitLab account now just says "This user is blocked" and most of his [13]long list of merge requests have been summarily marked "closed."
His direct code contributions have faced pushback before as well. For instance, some of the comments on [14]this change .
[15]OpenMamba: Eat your greens, they're good for you
[16]Thunderbird is go: 139 follows closely on Firefox's heels
[17]Sardina throws bait toward SUSE Enterprise Storage users
[18]Firefox 139 arrives for non-Chromium browser fans
This vulture is conflicted. We deplore anti-vaxxer and other anti-science disinformation. Vaccines don't cause autism; they cause adults. Climate change is real, social justice is a good thing, and we are enthusiastically in favor of [19]diversity, equity, and inclusion .
Thus we find it deeply ironic that at present, X11 is considerably better from an accessibility point of view than Wayland, which has a markedly poor track record here. As we have [20]said recently , accessibility matters. Even if you're not disabled yet, you will be one day. Today, the desktops and apps that are most controllable by stodgy old-fashioned keyboard-centric user interfaces are ones like MATE and Xfce – which also means that it is the less-cool, older-style desktops that are more accessible. The environments driving Wayland adoption, such as GNOME and KDE Plasma, are still relatively weak in this area.
Wayland and the environments that natively support it boast some snazzy features such as [21]adaptive sync and variable refresh rate support and [22]High Dynamic Range displays , which we are sure are wonderful if you're a keen-eyed gamer in your 20s or 30s. This author is not, and despite 20:20 vision with glasses, is [23]physically unable to perceive this sort of thing . That is one reason why we strongly prefer older desktops such as Xfce and Ubuntu's Unity, which also respects and follows the [24]industry-standard user interface shunned by recent versions of GNOME and KDE.
As we have said before, we suspect this disconnect between younger, keener developers who don't know or care about late 20th century user interface standards or accessibility concerns, but who strongly want to junk what they perceive as legacy baggage, are behind the [25]moves to deprecate and remove X11 – which is very much [26]still going ahead .
[27]
The X.org X11 server itself began as a fork of XFree86, as [28]The Register reported in 2004 . Perhaps it's time it happened again. ®
Get our [29]Tech Resources
[1] https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver
[2] https://github.com/metux
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/25/xorg_monitor_refresh_rates/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linus_torvalds_vaccine_smackdown/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aEj_S3BvLwUuhZItfMoNWgAAAcA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEj_S3BvLwUuhZItfMoNWgAAAcA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aEj_S3BvLwUuhZItfMoNWgAAAcA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/27/elusive_goal_of_simplicity/
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aEj_S3BvLwUuhZItfMoNWgAAAcA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-devel/2025-June/059396.html
[11] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/1977
[12] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/metux
[13] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/?sort=created_date&state=closed&first_page_size=20
[14] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/openmamba_green_is_good/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/29/thunderbird_139/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/29/sardina_entices_ses_users/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/firefox_139/
[19] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/13/diversity_equity_inclusion_tech/
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/18/apple_accessibility_features_2025/
[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/09/gnome_mutter_variable_refresh_rate/
[22] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/24/gnome_48/
[23] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/18/xfce_420_is_out/
[24] https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/24/rise_and_fall_of_cua/
[25] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/13/gnome_proposes_dropping_x11/
[26] https://blogs.gnome.org/alatiera/2025/06/08/the-x11-session-removal/
[27] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aEj_S3BvLwUuhZItfMoNWgAAAcA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[28] https://www.theregister.com/2004/04/15/x11_fork/
[29] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Code talks
Agreed that I don't like to see the politicisation of software. However, a large segment of the loony left have made that point rather moot.
Free software *is* explicitly political though so the horse is well and truly gone from the stable.
When people spend significant time and resources wondering if "master" is an inappropriate term for the primary branch of a git repo though, I do have to wonder if they don't perhaps have better, more useful things to do with their time. Idle hands and the devil and all that....
> Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project and ironically discourage participation.
I would have to disagree about that. Equity policies in the main are explicitly discriminatory. I'm all about outreach to encourage participation by any who are technically proficient enough to contribute. Your skin colour should not be a consideration.
Re: Code talks
Isn't the whole idea of giving away software for free, and having it as a public good, somewhat the complete opposite of capitalism anyway?
Re: Code talks
Yes. A pure capitalistic society would be truly awful. Capitalism has its flaws (corporatism, and doesn't help those that are physically disadvantaged) and we should be constantly vigilant against them.
I am against the worship in the US (particularly) of the capitalistic system. It brings great benefits and we know of no better economic system, but it is far from perfect and it can form only part of the way that we run societies. The most productive and prosperous societies understand the truth of that.
Re: Code talks
A pure capitalistic society would be truly awful.
SAVE THE LOWER-CASE LETTERS!
Re: Code talks
[turntechGodhead]: people with ironic all lowercase typing quirks matter
Re: Code talks
I always considered open source to be like "volunteer work" and I participate in development by reporting bugs along with research and a possible fix. Several have been implemented over the years, with submissions and fixes for FreeBSD, AVR C libs, gcc, and so on, even a forked library for Arduino for a specific processor series. It's like I win with the patches/fixes I'd do anyway, and everyone else wins too by participating, submitting, and having others continue after me.
Re: Code talks
"Equity policies in the main are explicitly discriminatory. I'm all about outreach to encourage participation by any who are technically proficient enough to contribute. Your skin colour should not be a consideration."
Agreed. If not enough Taos Indians (a pueblo tribe from S. New Mexico that I'm a descendant of, several generations back) are, for some reason, UNDER represented in the project, I see no reason NOT to ask them if they want jobs or project participation, provided that equal employment qualifications are met (experience, knowledge, proof of coding ability, a 'mentor' or 'supervised' period, whatever the project has for a standard).
That, I hope, is reasonable and fair.
Re: Code talks
Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project and ironically discourage participation.
Exactly the opposite, it will discourage politicsm and encourage participation of people who aren't obsessed with imposing codes of conduct on technical projects.
Re: Code talks
No, really, just go and look at openbsd.org and see if you can see what I'm on about.
Icon: outta here
Re: Code talks
"Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project and ironically discourage participation."
I gave you an UP vote for the first part. I give you a disgruntled SCOWL for this...
Re: Code talks
It seems like the DEI quote was perhap poorly worded, and is being taken out of context here. The *very next sentence* is: "Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed."
"Vaccines don't cause autism; they cause adults."
OK, stealing that.
I've been using Linux on my desktop since 1998, and switched over fully to XFCE in 2010. I don't get the whole push for Wayland, but whatever... if they make it better, it works, and it is stable I would consider using it. As long as I have a choice to NOT use it. Honestly, since IBMHat is one of the main contributors to Wayland I am somewhat skeptical given the whole systemd thing. I have been using Devuan for 7 years now and everything works fine. I don't get why there is a division and there isn't an option to have systemd or sysvinit or etc. etc. Give me Wayland, but don't require it.
I would expect that the main beneficiaries of Wayland/Weston would be gamers. The big issue about choice is they they work fundamentally differently.
A good analogue might be the difference between DirectX, OpenGL, Vulkan. They are all looking to do the same job and many game engines provide some kind of abstraction so you have less need to choose, but ultimately one platform will likely be more efficient for certain workloads. Honestly, I don't get the ire over this subject. X11 has some issues with the modern usage of video that Wayland/Weston hopes to address. I'm not qualified to judge the technical merits of either though.
Another parallel is Pipewire. It's still a bit buggy but hopes to take over from Pulseaudio, pure ALSA and Jack. I would welcome an implementation that is reliable and performant, but I haven't seen the same kind of controversy surrounding it.
Interestingly, I bought an external DAC/Amp last year and Pulesaudio started giving me some fits. My audio was always just fine before that. So I decided to check out Pipewire. Found some instructions that seemed reasonable - apt commands to uninstall Pulseaudio and install Pipewire.
Worked perfectly, and has been ever since. That is only 1 use case of course, but it's the most important one - mine. :) Again, there's a choice of things to use which is always good because there are many different use cases out there. Some may bemoan there are too many choices within the Linux ecosystem but that is what got Linux here and there is really zero reason to ruin that now.
Not ready at all.
I do pro audio work here on my workstation. Pipewire is not at all ready to take over from Jack .. or anything for that matter. The applications are not there , routing is not there , hardware recognition and use is not there .. if you got one soundcard it may work , but with external interfaces ( Focusrite 18i21) it just dosent work yet. Maybe in a few years it may be .. but for now PW is junk if you got serious audio work to do.
@cornetmam "I would expect that the main beneficiaries of Wayland/Weston would be gamers."
I suspect you're correct, since even semi-demanding applications like 3D CAD don't require particularly high frame rates or intricate ray-tracing.
Mr. Weigelt may also be right about big commercial sponsors being the main impetus for switching to Wayland... a lot of them already have mobile/media products that use non-X graphics stacks.
Wayland lacks many features by design that CAD and GIS software needs
https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/
I don't get why there is a division and there isn't an option to have systemd or sysvinit ...
Far too many people don't get it.
And that is because they cannot see the writing on the wall.
It has been there for ages.
.
ambiguity... Don't get WHAT exactly?
Far too many people don't get it.
Don't get WHAT exactly?
How does this explain why we do not have a choice of init systems when we install Linux?
I happen to LIKE the freedom to choose among the available options.
It was a HUGE mistake to (at onetime) drive userland (especially gnome stuff) into EXPECTING systemD to be there. It affects FreeBSD ports in MANY not-so-nice ways, for starters, and puts extra burden on Devuan devs and FreeBSD ports maintainers to test for compatibility and make patches to compensate.
"I don't get why there is a division"
Because in most cases, the alternatives work completely differently. There isn't a single standard that anything can implement and you just drop in the one you prefer. If you mix and match, you'll get things that break in places you don't expect because they were written for or integrated with only one of those. Therefore, almost everything chooses one of the options and makes everything work with that. In principle, you could integrate everything with everything and then let people choose what they wanted to run, but that's an inefficient process that most people don't want to bother with.
It all gets settled eventually; a bunch of projects start to try implementing some part of the system, many crash and burn, the remaining ones fight among themselves until the less popular ones start to lose users and be cannibalized for their useful code, and we find something that pretty much everyone uses. Then someone comes up with something the existing one handles badly and they start another version and this process starts over.
Give me Wayland, but don't require it.
Excellent point
[I also use Devuan for Linux when I can]
Personal view.
Wayland = shit. Used it once.
X11 = fine if not terrific. Used It for decades.
X11 wins.
Re: Personal view.
The biggest drawback to Wayland (or more properly Weston) is poor driver support by manufacturers. That's getting better, but I had similar experiences when I tried to use it some time ago. Things will improve. I believe that NVidia is onboard now so perhaps there is light at the end of the tunnel.
Re: Personal view.
You forgot the ONE THING that makes X11 superior to ALL OTHER GUIs: the DISPLAY environment variable!!
* It is possible to run multiple X servers on the same box - one Video, one VNC (for starters - I like TigerVNC)
* It is possible to run an application on an embedded system and use the GUI on your desktop to display and interact with it. (example, pluma to edit source files and a graphical GDB wrapper to debug things)
AND
* If you make standard X11 API calls AND statically link X libraries (not large) , your application load times are NEARLY INSTANTANEOUS.
* Extensions to XOrg include direct memory access and OpenGL and in SOME cases (NVidia) there can be a special OpenGL implementation that leverages particular hardware.
* lots of legacy support for old systems [this can become a dynamically loaded 'as needed' feature in future versions for performance reasons - probably should be already but that's what new modernization can give you]
* well tested code that is NOT a "rapidly moving target"
So, what does Wayland give you that's actually BETTER...?
Re: Personal view.
It strikes me there is a degree of almost desperation on the side of the Wayland developers here.
They've been trying to persuade the community for over a decade to move over to their project, and despite being backed by one of the big names in Linux, they are still getting pushback. This is actually because they are not listening to the very people they are trying to serve, and not implementing the features that people say they need in their display system.
So now they've crossed a line. Not only have they been refusing for a year to merge fixes back in to the main line and issue a new release of X.org, they're actively trying to sabotage the people who have felt it necessary to fork it to continue X11 as a viable system.
I have played with Wayland, with XWayland and waypipe. I can use it for what I need. But I would prefer to keep using X11 for the moment, as I am still working with Unix, and there is no hope that Wayland will ever be implemented on any legacy Unix platform.
I could not believe what they were doing when I found out. It's almost if they've forgotten the Open ethic of Open Source.
Re: Personal view.
agreed
In for a penny
EDI, aka woke, began as a Good Thing. Zealots overdid it. The zealots on the right rebelled and turned it into an insult. Elsewhere I see the backlash against the backlash rising. Such is social politics.
Xfree86, X.org, Xlibre and the denizens of the Wayland ecology (which is no less diverse) all have their value for different requirements, and we enjoy the choice. But, being dicks, we dicker and squabble. Occasionally some fsck-ing bustard gets to be first against the wall when the revolution comes. Damn! I've run out of popcorn. Anybody want a fight in the foyer?
"Modernize" - does that mean what we WANT it to, or what we FEAR it means?
"The recently released Xlibre server aims to modernize the X.org X11 server and improve both its security and performance."
GOOD NEWS! ... I hope.
When I hear 'modernize" I *HOPE* it means tweeking what's there for performance and hardware compatibility, and improving performance overall for video and gaming. BUT, we unfortunately see OTHER precedence, in both open AND closed source.
I fear what Gnome did for Gnome3 and GTK/GDK 3 and later... 'Adwaita can DIE to DEATH by BURNING with FIRE... for example.
I fear what GOOGLE has done to Chrome... and what Firefox did to THEIR UI, following them OVER THE SAME CLIFF!!!
I fear what MICROS~1 did with Windows 8 and later, and ESPECIALLY 10 - abandoning 3D skeuomorphic and Control Panel for 2D FLATTY FLATSO FLATASS FLUGLY "minimalist" (allegedly) UI design, TIFKAM, and STRONG-ARMING a CLOUD LOGON, a STORE, and ADS IN **YOUR** COMPUTER!!!
CHANGE is NOT ALWAYS for the better. You see it happen with an egg. It's called "Going bad" (something Prince Caspian of Narnia noted...). Let us hope the new "Xlibre" project for X11 provides us with a stable development and maintenance path forward, NOT the changes that we FEAR the most!!!
I am not a fan of Wayland but I am also not a fan of people who deny facts and proven science.
Hey remember when people tried to keep politics and religion away from FOSS protects? Or that actually never happened and I am suffering from the Mandela Effect?
Code talks
"The recently released Xlibre server aims to modernize the X.org X11 server and improve both its security and performance."
This is good, depending on the nature of the modernisations. It could provide more choice, and provides a demonstration of the freedoms that oss/libre software is supposed to provide.
"It's explicitly free of any "DEI" [diversity, equity, and inclusion] or similar discriminatory policies."
Not so good as it will small-p politicise what should be a straight forward technical project and ironically discourage participation. The OpenBSD approach strikes me as a good model to follow in this situation.