arewexlibreyet.md

Are we XLibre yet?

X11 has been, and still is, a vital piece of technology at the core of professional Unix-like workstations since decades. It has a proven track record of supporting enterprise-grade applications with long-term protocol stability and platform compatibility. It has matured over decades. XLibre is an actively developed fork of the X.Org X11 server, initiated by the most active X.Org developer and supported by the open source community.

An incompatible alternative, Wayland, is being aggressively pushed by IBM = Red Hat = Gnome = Fedora = freedesktop.org. However, it is not ready to succeed X11 as it its governance model leads to never-ending discussions and prevents even the most essential functionality from existing. Think twice before abandoning Xorg. Wayland breaks everything!

It is time that the open source community reclaims what was ours to begin with. This page lists distributions supporting XLibre so that you can make an informed choice.

--> Table has moved to https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/wiki/Are-We-XLibre-Yet%3F <--

They were never going to seriously consider it in the first place. The package(s) aren't in the Fedora repo, and they just wanted to outright replace X11. It never had a snowball's chance in hell of getting accepted for the change considering it was never accepted into the main repo. Because they skipped a bunch of steps in the first place, the change proposal was, in essence, designed to fail. If the users weren't so hostile to it, and they would have "allowed" the change, they could have still rejected the change since the packages weren't accepted by Fesco in the first place. They were counting on the vocal user disapproval so they wouldn't have to pull the trump card. Now they can say exactly as you just did: that "the users don't want it" and fesco doesn't have to take a bad rap. Seems to me like it worked, did it not?

What "bunch of steps" did they skip exactly? If it didn't have a snowall's chance in hell of getting accepted, that may have been because they don't plan on keeping X11 for long anyway, not because they are hostile towards Xlibre. Granted, there are some users who didn't like it for political reasons, but as explained others had a problem with how the Xlibre developer conducted himself (allegedly) and for some technical reasons. This categorisation that Fedora is hostile is baseless and, at worst, unfair and misleading. If there is proof that Fedora is actively against Xlibre for political reasons then sure, mark it as hostile I suppose.
At least now they are marked as "Not supportive" which is a fairer category than "hostile" is. That said, the Alpine situation sounds like a candidate for the "hostile" category given the admin threatening everyone blanketly with a "coc violation" if they put forth a merge to include Xlibre. That reeks of abusive tactics.

Literally who cares if the upstream developer (XLibre) violates the CoC of a distribution (Alpine)?

A package should be welcome in a distribution as long as the package maintainers follow the CoC. There's literally no harm done in obtaining free software source code from someone you don't like and compiling & packaging it for your users.

Literally who cares if the upstream developer (XLibre) violates the CoC of a distribution (Alpine)?

A package should be welcome in a distribution as long as the package maintainers follow the CoC. There's literally no harm done in obtaining free software source code from someone you don't like and compiling & packaging it for your users.

Bingo. I mean, if you're going to be a jerk and issue CoC violations for a package's inclusion and suggestion then why bother having contributions in the first place?

All of this drama highlights a serious issue with Linux' application distribution model: it is all centralized. The repo is the gatekeeper, the repo is the mighty holy source. Any outside sources are forbidden and bad.
Windows and Apple got this right by allowing people to run installer packages or executables. Even where you can download Linux packages, they are only available for a specific release version.

Counterpoint: Flakes, AUR, PPA, Flatpak, AppImage, .deb and .rpm files.

But of course, packaging is a craft and an art, it requires skill and time and dedication.

Which rather shows that a lot of this drama is not about "freedom" or "centralization" or whatever, it is about bullying some distro volunteers into doing work nobody else wants to do while feeling righteous about it.

All of this drama highlights a serious issue with Linux' application distribution model: it is all centralized. The repo is the gatekeeper, the repo is the mighty holy source. Any outside sources are forbidden and bad. Windows and Apple got this right by allowing people to run installer packages or executables. Even where you can download Linux packages, they are only available for a specific release version.

UNIX has never been that simple. Distributions have always made their own packaging decisions. That’s why applications are distributed from upstream, so they can be built locally to conform to however that local install needs to be done.

That’s why applications being said, that is also the reason there are solutions like flatpak and app images; to reduce fragmentation and provide a just works solution. However, app images and don’t work for those solutions, as you already know. While it would be best to get the down stream, there are ways around this with PPAS, Copr, AUR, SuSE obs, and others. We don’t need to be in the distro to be in the distro. If they don’t want officially be in, fine. There are ways around it, while still being able to have a presence in the distro. It just means we’d have to find volunteers that would be willing to package it.

If manpower or skills issue are the only reasons of not including xlibre into a distro, and distro maintainers really want it, they can just ask for help (donation?) or seek for other maintainers, maybe someone are willing to take that role. If that still not work out, or because of some technical issues that cannot be solved (xlibre beta?), or other reason, I think it would better explain it in detail, and most people will understand.

But if they just filtering and only focus on the badmouth on the internet, use it to victimize themselves in the first place, I think it is clear that they just don't want it to be included in the first place. Maybe they already made their decision for whatever reason but don't want to talk about the true reason because of the current situation and political concern. Maybe not including it because of BigTech pressure (cut funding/support?) or other reason? I don't know.

We don’t need to be in the distro to be in the distro. If they don’t want officially be in, fine. There are ways around it, while still being able to have a presence in the distro. It just means we’d have to find volunteers that would be willing to package it.

There are ways around it until the Xorg and X11 (the protocol) related code / dependent packages are completely deprecated and removed in the distro. Just like init system, some distro switched into systemd long time ago and there is no way to switch back to anything else.

Interesting...

https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1942269768192737511

Representatives from Canonical, Debian, & GNOME have begun defacing an XLibre (Xorg fork) wiki page

...guess WHICH page...

while that’s true, and we may lose Gnome, for example, we’re not going to lose KDE and many other desktops for a good long while.

…

________________________________ From: affhp ***@***.***> Sent: Monday, July 7, 2025 11:37:11 AM To: affhp ***@***.***> Cc: Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: probonopd/arewexlibreyet.md @affhp commented on this gist.

________________________________ We don’t need to be in the distro to be in the distro. If they don’t want officially be in, fine. There are ways around it, while still being able to have a presence in the distro. It just means we’d have to find volunteers that would be willing to package it. There are ways around it until the Xorg and X11 (the protocol) related code / dependent packages are completely deprecated and removed in the distro. Just like init system, some distro switched into systemd long time ago and there is no way to switch back to anything else. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<https://gist.github.com/probonopd/301319568a554abe7426c02eb5e19b5a#gistcomment-5666440> or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZDUTM5TXSCUEMZF4D7FJSD3HK45RBFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDUOJ2WLJDOMFWWLO3UNBZGKYLEL5YGC4TUNFRWS4DBNZ2F6YLDORUXM2LUPGBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVEYTGOJQGIZTGOBSU52HE2LHM5SXFJTDOJSWC5DF>. You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS<https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

I saw it.

…

________________________________ From: probonopd ***@***.***> Sent: Monday, July 7, 2025 11:40:10 AM To: probonopd ***@***.***> Cc: Comment ***@***.***> Subject: Re: probonopd/arewexlibreyet.md @probonopd commented on this gist.

________________________________ Interesting... https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1942269768192737511 Representatives from Canonical, Debian, & GNOME have begun defacing an XLibre (Xorg fork) wiki page ...guess WHICH page... — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<https://gist.github.com/probonopd/301319568a554abe7426c02eb5e19b5a#gistcomment-5666447> or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AZDUTM2WG3MKYAJDTRYTIWT3HK5IXBFKMF2HI4TJMJ2XIZLTSKBKK5TBNR2WLJDUOJ2WLJDOMFWWLO3UNBZGKYLEL5YGC4TUNFRWS4DBNZ2F6YLDORUXM2LUPGBKK5TBNR2WLJDHNFZXJJDOMFWWLK3UNBZGKYLEL52HS4DFVRZXKYTKMVRXIX3UPFYGLK2HNFZXIQ3PNVWWK3TUUZ2G64DJMNZZDAVEOR4XAZNEM5UXG5FFOZQWY5LFVEYTGOJQGIZTGOBSU52HE2LHM5SXFJTDOJSWC5DF>. You are receiving this email because you commented on the thread. Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS<https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android<https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>.

Interesting...

https://x.com/LundukeJournal/status/1942269768192737511

Representatives from Canonical, Debian, & GNOME have begun defacing an XLibre (Xorg fork) wiki page

...guess WHICH page...

now this is hostile and dangerous and defamatory territory
and are you (@probonopd) the creator of AppImage ?

Yes

that cool !

It is sad to see some distro maintainers are trying hard to bring politics into the non political xlibre for its exclusion.

It is sad to see some distro maintainers are trying hard to bring politics into the non political xlibre for its exclusion.

I'm glad they got publicly outted for this, and the damage rolled back. These types of people are why FOSS is in the state it's in and why we will never achieve "the year of the Linux desktop" if they keep getting their way.

This is effectively why people avoid GNU/Linux. Between the fractured projects, the egotists, and the non-standardized software that seems to always be trying to replace everything, who would want to use GNU/Linux?