Another X11 revival for Linux has arrived, but what’s the point?
For decades, desktop Linux distributions have primarily used the X Window System (X11) for rendering displays and graphics, but Wayland is slowly taking over as a modern replacement. There are, however, some efforts to keep X alive, including a new project called Phoenix.
The X Window System (X11) dates back to the 1980s, when early Unix systems needed a way to render a graphical user interface, either from a remote server or entirely on a single machine. It remained the primary windowing system on Linux and other Unix-like systems for decades, with desktop environments like GNOME Shell and KDE Plasma built on top of it. The Wayland protocol was created as a replacement for and addresses many of X’s architectural issues, with better support for high resolutions, better security, and other improvements.
As the few remaining issues with Wayland are resolved, Linux distributions like Fedora, Elementary OS, and Debian are moving from X to Wayland as their default composer. Phoenix is a project that attempts to maintain the X protocol as an alternative to Wayland. It is not based on the X Windowing System: it is a completely new code base, written in the Zig programming language.
The project aims to “support modern hardware better than the Xorg server, such as proper support for multiple monitors (different refresh rates, VRR – not a single framebuffer for the entire display collection) and technologies like HDR.” Another goal is “no ripping by default and a built-in composer” and isolating apps from each other by default, similar to Wayland.
Phoenix is still in the early stages of development and is currently only capable of rendering simple applications using GLX, EGL or Vulkan graphics nested within an existing X server. When, or if, Phoenix evolves to a more comprehensive implementation of the X protocol, it should replace X11.
There is, however, a problem: the X protocol and the X Windowing system are already abandoned. The next major updates for GNOME and KDE Plasma will drop support for X11, and most other desktop environments either aim for the same goal, or never supported X11 in the first place (like COSMIC). Wayland is not a competitor to X11: it is the designated replacement, developed by the same core group (freedesktop.org) that runs X11. The XWayland compatibility layer allows older apps and games to continue working, and Wayback could also allow non-X11 desktop environments to work.
Phoenix may be a fun project for its developers, but it’s essentially building a new engine for a car that’s already on the scrapheap. By the time Phoenix becomes a potential replacement for X11, if it succeeds, mainstream desktop environments will no longer be able to use it.
“Wayback” keeps legacy Linux desktop environments alive on Wayland
No Wayland support in your preferred desktop environment? No problem.
The other project underway to revitalize X11 is XLibre, a fork of the existing X11 codebase. This project is supported by Enrico Weigelt, who created it largely because of political conflicts with the FOSS community at large, and not in an attempt to solve a problem that exists in reality. XLibre’s documentation states that it is “explicitly free from any ‘DEI’ or similar discriminatory policies” and “together we will make X great again” – a reference to the political slogan “make America great again.” In 2021, Linus Torvalds told Weigelt to “keep your insane and technically incorrect anti-vax comments to yourself” after comments he made in the Linux kernel mailing list.
Nor is the Phoenix Project entirely detached from political wrangling. The main developer is dec05eba, who also created the popular GPU Screen Recorder for Linux. They made some code contributions to XLibre, and in the thread asking for the “DEI” remarks to be removed, they said: “Looks like the anti DEI message in the README is working, it’s filtering out the worst people.”
We’ll have to wait and see if Phoenix achieves its goals, but the long-term viability of Phoenix and XLibre doesn’t look promising.
Source: Phoenix via Programming.dev
