XLibre 25.0 was just released as the first tagged release of this recent X.Org Server fork.
XLibre 25.0 comes with various code clean-ups, some of which were reverted from upstream xorg-server code due to various issues, as well as work on some new functionality. Noted changes with XLibre 25.0 include:
a) Xnamespace extension: a novel approach for isolating clients from different security domains (eg. containers) into separate X11 namespaces, where they can’t hurt each other (for cases where Xsecurity from 1996 isn’t sufficient)
b) Xnest ported to xcb – no more dependency on old Xlib anymore
c) per-ABI driver directories (allows distros installing multiple ABIs
at the same time, eg. for smoother upgrades)
d) lots of small fixes and cleanups – too many to list them all here.
e) several CVE fixes
Enrico Weigelt further added in the inaugural XLibe release announcement:
“This fork became necessary, because it’s the expressed wish of the current Xorg group’s majority (IBM/Redhat) to abandon the project, let it rot forever, and block any substantial contributions, let alone new features. The sudden banning and censorship of all my work on freedesktop.org by IBM/Redhat employees, right after first news on a planned fork came out, should have cleared all doubt about that. They seem to believe that nobody’s supposed to fork any of “their” projects, that’s why we’re doing exactly that.
For quite a year, I’ve put a tremendous amount of work for backporting a hundred of MRs back for across 1k commits onto xorg master, but finally it’s not worth at all spending any more time with that, if nothing substantial getting merged ever. If Xorg wants to die, so be it. But Xlibre will live on.
Since this is the first major release of the Xserver since years (with about 3k commits in between), there might be some yet unnoticed bugs. So this .0.0.0 release is considered beta. Feel free to play around and give feedback ☺. I’m especially inviting people from all distros/ operating systems to check it out and let me know what you need in order to make it work smoothly. And all of those having their own forks, extra modules, etc – let’s come together and collaborate.
The X development – whether Xfree86 or Xorg – quite always has been elitist circle, not actually warmly welcoming new contributors. Today, Xorg suffers from similar problems as Xfree86 did – it’s in similar situation that’s been the reaons for forking Xorg from Xfree86.
Xlibre is going to change that: this project is inclusive to anybody who’s willing to make good contributions. It doesn’t matter which country you’re coming from, your politicial views, your race, your sex, your age, your food menu, whether you wear boots or heels, whether you’re furry or fairy, Conan or McKay, comic character, a small furry creature from Alpha Centauri, or just an boring average person. Anybody’s welcomed, who’s interested in bringing X forward.”
We’ll see how it goes beyond the initial wave of expressed user interest at a time when many Linux distributions are already preparing for Wayland-only desktops. Those interested can find the announcement in full on xorg-devel.
