Question about the future of Xorg

[Carsten Haitzler]

On Mon, 9 Jun 2025 19:23:02 -0600 Felipe Contreras <felipe.contreras at gmail.com>
said:

> On Mon, Jun 9, 2025 at 5:49 PM Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com> wrote:
> >
> > At Mon, 9 Jun 2025 17:13:09 -0600 Felipe Contreras
> > <felipe.contreras at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > > You can list a million reasons why Wayland is superior, but people
> > > still use Xorg, and my bet is that's going to continue to be the case
> > > for at least a decade, and possibly much more.
> >
> > The key part of what Lyude Paul wrote is "But it's also designed for an era
> > of computing that is much different than how most modern desktops work...".
> > There are some of "us" who have no use for "modern" desktop environments.
> > Maybe we actually prefer "old fashioned" desktop environments. So, we will
> > continue to use Xorg (X11).
> 
> Of course, but the issue is who is "us". Clearly there's many _users_
> that will stick with Xorg, but some _developers_ need to ensure that
> it keeps working. Who is going to do that in the years to come?
> 
> That's what I'm trying to find out.

well the way it used to work back in the 80's and 90's is ... this is where you
stop waiting for someone else to do it and get up and do it yourself.

"i can't program?" - too bad. learn. that's what people used to do. sitting
around waiting for someone else to do something for you will result in you
being very disappointed.

if maintaining x and everything built on top so it keeps working is important
to you... then get cracking.

while in my other mails here i'm explaining how wayland works.. i'm doing it
because i also have fingers in that pie a bit and i know how it works and there
is a lot of misunderstanding and spreading of misinformation. there is bad AND
good about wayland. anyone preaching all "bad" is almost likely wrong. there is
much it improves and does better - sometimes a lot better.

could this be done with x11 and evolve it slowly over time? yes. it would
ultimately break some x11 functionality - or it'd change the basic assumptions
as to where it's accessible to clients.

you could isolate all the core 2d rendering in xorg into a "legacy" module to
keep it "out of sight". most of the rest of x's problems are the protocol and
what is assumed to be allowed by clients or not (like being able to send fake
input to any app or read input events on any window anywhere - even not your
own etc.). rendering model can evolve too with a wayland-like explicit buffer
"send" model to the compositor in x. etc. etc. - the result int he end would
not be dissimilar over time - some apps/tools break and cease to work over time
or are highly restricted in use. some issues like latency will always be an
issue as long as you have to bounce messages through many processes.

anyway - my point is... if xorg just goes into maintenance only mode - at
best, you're going to just keep a system that needs work on life support. if
you want to truly keep it alive it has to not just be maintained but moved
forward. new extensions, re-jigging of old extensions and even core protocol
with the understanding that you WILL break some things as you go and you are
judicious about how you do that, then x has a chance to really survive.

-- 
------------- Codito, ergo sum - "I code, therefore I am" --------------
Carsten Haitzler - raster at rasterman.com