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Well-known developer Enrico Weigelt just forked the X server from freedesktop.org after getting the boot [0]. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-

Well-known developer Enrico Weigelt just forked the X server from freedesktop.org after getting the boot [0]. [0] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/?sort=created_date&state=closed&first_page_size=20 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests... [1] https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/commits/xlibre/prepare/ https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/commits/xlibre/prepare/

chrismorgan 1y ago
“Getting the boot” is rather vague. Is there any more information anywhere, background, &c.? My general impression (quite possibly incorrect) was that X.Org Server is largely treated as “done”, making only bugfixes and such these days.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JimDabell 1y ago
  From the readme: > That fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to elimitate competition of their own products. (classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics) > This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed.
  - hello_computer 1y ago
    > moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project That's what I've always thought. The "X11 developers" pushing for Wayland weren't original developers so much as RedHat "maintainers," who (understandably) wanted a frontier to explore rather than janitorial work. All I know for certain is that X11 (even as of 15 years ago) mostly worked, while Wayland of 2025 is still full of headaches & breakages.
    - dralley 1y ago
      X did not "just work" for me 10 years ago, and neither is Wayland "still full of headaches and breakages" I've had no substantial problems because of Wayland in the last, like, 5 years.
      - blueflow 1y ago
        Nvidia, vmxgfx. I would run wayland if i could.
        mariusor 1y ago
        > I would run wayland if i could. You can if you stop buying nvidia. The problem with missing drivers is principally the fault of the hardware vendor not of the kernel community.
        blueflow 1y ago
        You know what runs on these platforms? Xorg.
        mariusor 1y ago
        Perfectly true. What I was getting at is that you should direct your frustration to the correct place: not with the efforts of wayland and kernel devs but with the stubbornness of the hardware vendors that don't want to make their code public, and in the case of nvidia, (or) use the same driver building blocks that the kernel community recommended.
        e844dbe8fb 1y ago
        We normal people buy NVidia specifically because it DOES NOT support filthy Poettringware like Wayland.
        blueflow 1y ago
  - jeroenhd 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - znpy 1y ago
      You missed the part "Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed." (conveniently).
      - larrled 1y ago
        [flagged]
        blueflow 1y ago
        DEI is not the same as the people behind it. Criticizing DEI is not personal disrespect.
        gfhopper 1y ago
        L take, DEI and the people pushing gender and race based preferential treatment can go take a long walk off a short dock. ETA: You don't deserve respect for the color of your skin or what's between your legs, you earn it tbrough your actions. Anyone who disagrees is an intellectually dishonest wannabe tyrant.
    - blueflow 1y ago
      I'm not going to pretend judging people by their skin color (or any other bogus criteria like those outlined by the hacker ethics) is not discriminatory. Whatever DEI was meant for, due to its unagreeable practices its unrecoverably burned into the ground.
      - jeroenhd 1y ago
        I, for one, am in favour of DEI pillars such as pregnancy leave and accessibility to the disabled. Especially the latter seems pretty important when it comes to developing a core component of a computer interface.
  - metta2uall 1y ago
    Doesn't "DEI" basically mean treating others nicely?
    - tommica 1y ago
      Pretty sure it did, unfortunately it got swung to an extreme extent in some circles :(
      - krautsauce 1y ago
        [flagged]
    - msgodel 1y ago
      No and it never has. The default position on the internet, the one technologists working on open source always took, is that only the ideas matter and if your ideas are good you'll be included. DEI became popular because that wasn't good enough for certain groups of people who consistently failed to produce good ideas and wanted to wedge themselves in anyway.
      - toastercat 1y ago
        Any policy can be abused, including DEI. But as a whole, I think DEI has done enormous good.
      - MrArthegor 1y ago
        Yeah, from a non-US citizen views, this type of policy feel like target discrimination against certain groups of individuals. And the message sent is disastrous. Personally I am part of people who have big advantages with actual DEI policy, but I am firmly against that, because I want to be employed for my skills, not because I fit a quota or anything like that.
        dragonwriter 1y ago
        > this type of policy feel like target discrimination against certain groups of individuals. Every policy is targeted discrimination for or against certain groups of individuals (and you can invert the group and make the same policy switch from "for" to "against".) The question is what group of individuals.
- ZekeSulastin 1y ago
  The project readme has some thoughts about why X.Org is treated as done and why the dev forked; I think I get why the OP didn’t link that instead. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/tree/xlibre/master https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/tree/xlibre/master
- moron4hire 1y ago
  I don't understand why the link is to the commit list for a branch and not to the repo home page, unless OP was intentionally trying to have people avoid reading the README. The README contains a minor political rant that primarily complains about corporate influence but also takes a shot at DEI. The CoC page was intentionally left up with just the content "404". Reading between the lines, it sounds like toxicity all around.
- krautsauce 1y ago
  [flagged]
- bitwize 1y ago
  It's abandonware. None of the grown-ups in the Linux graphics space are interested in maintaining it beyond the minimum necessary. I suppose new features could be added to Xorg, but anyone who actually knows something about the graphics pipeline is 100% committed to Wayland, so it won't be done. And Enrico's code was apparently so shitty and disruptive he's earned himself a ban from Freedesktop.org. Or is that because he associated himself with Lunduke?
mrweasel 1y ago
That dude had a crazy amount of patches ready to go. I don't have the technical skills to judge if the patches are any good, but that's an impressive amount of work. I'd be a little concerned that this is just one person doing the work, but we'll see if others join in.
- toenail 1y ago
  I hope so. I've tried to use wayland more than a decade ago, it was unable to replace xorg. Again last year, same story, and we get told that it's our fault because we need to adapt our workflows to wayland. I chose Linux because I get to choose how I work.
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    Exactly. I came to Linux because Microsoft keeps changing; correct way to do things, configuration files/locations all while deciding to shove ads and tracking down our throats.
  - ranger_danger 1y ago
    Nobody is forcing you to use wayland, though
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  The MR that caused the drama that caused the fork to happen complained about this author doing tons of work to tons of legacy code with no direct user-facing benefit without testing his changes properly. From the sentiment of the discussion I gather this isn't the first time either. I think trying to improve the quality of such old code bases is good and "don't touch it in case something breaks" has caused more problems than it solved, but in this case the lack of testing caused X to die when someone runs xrandr. Not exactly a vague use case. Large restructuring work and taking care of tech debt is good, but it should go along with diligent testing. Until all the work is done, I don't think this will be a very stable alternative to X.org. I also don't think many people will follow this guy to the new project because the comments on the MR seems very "this guy versus everyone else". Even if the fork stabilizes, that's just where the journey begins. The X.org system interacts with tons of other systems (the kernel and GPU drivers, among others), so that work need to be kept up with. At the same time, developing all of the new features the dev wants to add will be pretty useless unless applications start making use of them, and they're not going to if the project remains small. If the anti-Wayland people unite behind this project and maintain their own X fork, there may be promise in this fork. But looking at the history, this is more likely to become another X12/Y11, or maybe a Mir if he can get a distro to back him.
sspiff 1y ago
Is there any discussion about him being removed from the project on a mailing list or some other channel? I can't find a "why" in the handful of PRs I opened.
- ck45 1y ago
  There’s some drama in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797
  - cwillu 1y ago
    Wow: “xrandr doesn't work anymore on xorg-git” “I do not think this should be specifically on you, it is not unreasonable to expect that the author of a change tries their change before even submitting it upstream.” does not give a warm fuzzy feeling about the author of the at-fault patch leading a fork.
    - DarkmSparks 1y ago
      It happens. No one writes bug free code. e.g. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/2008 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
    - micw 1y ago
      I think it's not the one to blame who broke this but those who implemented everything all the time without adding any tests. Xorg has quite a large codebase but almost no automated tests.
      - cwillu 1y ago
        So we agree that the maintainer is at fault: he wanted to change things and not have to thoroughly test his changes by doing the boring work of adding test coverage to the modified area.
        1y ago
Tomte 1y ago
Oh, it’s the vaccines are a "human experiment that basically creates a new humanoid race“ guy from LKML!
- cosnenc 1y ago
  Yup. https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linus_torvalds_vaccine_smackdown/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linus_torvalds_vaccin...
AHTERIX5000 1y ago
The more I read MR discussions regarding this the less I want to use the forked version. Not that anyone is going to ship it anyway.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
ibotty 1y ago
Well-known as in notorious, right?
- jubalfh 1y ago
  precisely.
felipec 1y ago
Wrong. The fork was planned since a long time ago.
jubalfh 1y ago
just to be sure, the “well-known developer enrico weigelt” here means “a well-known bona fide german fascist enrico weigelt”.
- msgodel 1y ago
  Keep calling normal things people like or need fascism and you'll find yourself surrounded by legitimate fascists.
  - jubalfh 1y ago
    well, some time ago i had a deeper look at his social media activity (including such niche things like devuan mailing lists or facebook), and that's my conclusion; and it's really not just because of the extremely stupid anti-vaxxer views he pushes.

chrismorgan 1y ago

“Getting the boot” is rather vague. Is there any more information anywhere, background, &c.? My general impression (quite possibly incorrect) was that X.Org Server is largely treated as “done”, making only bugfixes and such these days.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
JimDabell 1y ago
From the readme: > That fork was necessary since toxic elements within Xorg projects, moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project, to elimitate competition of their own products. (classic "embrace, extend, extinguish" tactics) > This is an independent project, not at all affiliated with BigTech or any of their subsidiaries or tax evasion tools, nor any political activists groups, state actors, etc. It's explicitly free of any "DEI" or similar discriminatory policies. Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed.
- hello_computer 1y ago
  > moles from certian big corp are boycotting any substantial work on Xorg, in order to destroy the project That's what I've always thought. The "X11 developers" pushing for Wayland weren't original developers so much as RedHat "maintainers," who (understandably) wanted a frontier to explore rather than janitorial work. All I know for certain is that X11 (even as of 15 years ago) mostly worked, while Wayland of 2025 is still full of headaches & breakages.
  - dralley 1y ago
    X did not "just work" for me 10 years ago, and neither is Wayland "still full of headaches and breakages" I've had no substantial problems because of Wayland in the last, like, 5 years.
    - blueflow 1y ago
      Nvidia, vmxgfx. I would run wayland if i could.
      - mariusor 1y ago
        > I would run wayland if i could. You can if you stop buying nvidia. The problem with missing drivers is principally the fault of the hardware vendor not of the kernel community.
        blueflow 1y ago
        You know what runs on these platforms? Xorg.
        mariusor 1y ago
        Perfectly true. What I was getting at is that you should direct your frustration to the correct place: not with the efforts of wayland and kernel devs but with the stubbornness of the hardware vendors that don't want to make their code public, and in the case of nvidia, (or) use the same driver building blocks that the kernel community recommended.
        e844dbe8fb 1y ago
        We normal people buy NVidia specifically because it DOES NOT support filthy Poettringware like Wayland.
        blueflow 1y ago
- jeroenhd 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - znpy 1y ago
    You missed the part "Anybody who's treating others nicely is welcomed." (conveniently).
    - larrled 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - blueflow 1y ago
        DEI is not the same as the people behind it. Criticizing DEI is not personal disrespect.
      - gfhopper 1y ago
        L take, DEI and the people pushing gender and race based preferential treatment can go take a long walk off a short dock. ETA: You don't deserve respect for the color of your skin or what's between your legs, you earn it tbrough your actions. Anyone who disagrees is an intellectually dishonest wannabe tyrant.
  - blueflow 1y ago
    I'm not going to pretend judging people by their skin color (or any other bogus criteria like those outlined by the hacker ethics) is not discriminatory. Whatever DEI was meant for, due to its unagreeable practices its unrecoverably burned into the ground.
    - jeroenhd 1y ago
      I, for one, am in favour of DEI pillars such as pregnancy leave and accessibility to the disabled. Especially the latter seems pretty important when it comes to developing a core component of a computer interface.
- metta2uall 1y ago
  Doesn't "DEI" basically mean treating others nicely?
  - tommica 1y ago
    Pretty sure it did, unfortunately it got swung to an extreme extent in some circles :(
    - krautsauce 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - msgodel 1y ago
    No and it never has. The default position on the internet, the one technologists working on open source always took, is that only the ideas matter and if your ideas are good you'll be included. DEI became popular because that wasn't good enough for certain groups of people who consistently failed to produce good ideas and wanted to wedge themselves in anyway.
    - toastercat 1y ago
      Any policy can be abused, including DEI. But as a whole, I think DEI has done enormous good.
    - MrArthegor 1y ago
      Yeah, from a non-US citizen views, this type of policy feel like target discrimination against certain groups of individuals. And the message sent is disastrous. Personally I am part of people who have big advantages with actual DEI policy, but I am firmly against that, because I want to be employed for my skills, not because I fit a quota or anything like that.
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > this type of policy feel like target discrimination against certain groups of individuals. Every policy is targeted discrimination for or against certain groups of individuals (and you can invert the group and make the same policy switch from "for" to "against".) The question is what group of individuals.
ZekeSulastin 1y ago
The project readme has some thoughts about why X.Org is treated as done and why the dev forked; I think I get why the OP didn’t link that instead. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/tree/xlibre/master https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/tree/xlibre/master
moron4hire 1y ago
I don't understand why the link is to the commit list for a branch and not to the repo home page, unless OP was intentionally trying to have people avoid reading the README. The README contains a minor political rant that primarily complains about corporate influence but also takes a shot at DEI. The CoC page was intentionally left up with just the content "404". Reading between the lines, it sounds like toxicity all around.
krautsauce 1y ago
[flagged]
bitwize 1y ago
It's abandonware. None of the grown-ups in the Linux graphics space are interested in maintaining it beyond the minimum necessary. I suppose new features could be added to Xorg, but anyone who actually knows something about the graphics pipeline is 100% committed to Wayland, so it won't be done. And Enrico's code was apparently so shitty and disruptive he's earned himself a ban from Freedesktop.org. Or is that because he associated himself with Lunduke?

mrweasel 1y ago

That dude had a crazy amount of patches ready to go. I don't have the technical skills to judge if the patches are any good, but that's an impressive amount of work. I'd be a little concerned that this is just one person doing the work, but we'll see if others join in.

toenail 1y ago
I hope so. I've tried to use wayland more than a decade ago, it was unable to replace xorg. Again last year, same story, and we get told that it's our fault because we need to adapt our workflows to wayland. I chose Linux because I get to choose how I work.
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  Exactly. I came to Linux because Microsoft keeps changing; correct way to do things, configuration files/locations all while deciding to shove ads and tracking down our throats.
- ranger_danger 1y ago
  Nobody is forcing you to use wayland, though
jeroenhd 1y ago
The MR that caused the drama that caused the fork to happen complained about this author doing tons of work to tons of legacy code with no direct user-facing benefit without testing his changes properly. From the sentiment of the discussion I gather this isn't the first time either. I think trying to improve the quality of such old code bases is good and "don't touch it in case something breaks" has caused more problems than it solved, but in this case the lack of testing caused X to die when someone runs xrandr. Not exactly a vague use case. Large restructuring work and taking care of tech debt is good, but it should go along with diligent testing. Until all the work is done, I don't think this will be a very stable alternative to X.org. I also don't think many people will follow this guy to the new project because the comments on the MR seems very "this guy versus everyone else". Even if the fork stabilizes, that's just where the journey begins. The X.org system interacts with tons of other systems (the kernel and GPU drivers, among others), so that work need to be kept up with. At the same time, developing all of the new features the dev wants to add will be pretty useless unless applications start making use of them, and they're not going to if the project remains small. If the anti-Wayland people unite behind this project and maintain their own X fork, there may be promise in this fork. But looking at the history, this is more likely to become another X12/Y11, or maybe a Mir if he can get a distro to back him.

sspiff 1y ago

Is there any discussion about him being removed from the project on a mailing list or some other channel? I can't find a "why" in the handful of PRs I opened.

ck45 1y ago
There’s some drama in https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/issues/1797
- cwillu 1y ago
  Wow: “xrandr doesn't work anymore on xorg-git” “I do not think this should be specifically on you, it is not unreasonable to expect that the author of a change tries their change before even submitting it upstream.” does not give a warm fuzzy feeling about the author of the at-fault patch leading a fork.
  - DarkmSparks 1y ago
    It happens. No one writes bug free code. e.g. https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests/2008 https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
  - micw 1y ago
    I think it's not the one to blame who broke this but those who implemented everything all the time without adding any tests. Xorg has quite a large codebase but almost no automated tests.
    - cwillu 1y ago
      So we agree that the maintainer is at fault: he wanted to change things and not have to thoroughly test his changes by doing the boring work of adding test coverage to the modified area.
      - 1y ago

Tomte 1y ago

Oh, it’s the vaccines are a "human experiment that basically creates a new humanoid race“ guy from LKML!

cosnenc 1y ago
Yup. https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linus_torvalds_vaccine_smackdown/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/11/linus_torvalds_vaccin...

AHTERIX5000 1y ago

The more I read MR discussions regarding this the less I want to use the forked version. Not that anyone is going to ship it anyway.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

ibotty 1y ago

Well-known as in notorious, right?

jubalfh 1y ago
precisely.

felipec 1y ago

Wrong. The fork was planned since a long time ago.

jubalfh 1y ago

just to be sure, the “well-known developer enrico weigelt” here means “a well-known bona fide german fascist enrico weigelt”.

msgodel 1y ago
Keep calling normal things people like or need fascism and you'll find yourself surrounded by legitimate fascists.
- jubalfh 1y ago
  well, some time ago i had a deeper look at his social media activity (including such niche things like devuan mailing lists or facebook), and that's my conclusion; and it's really not just because of the extremely stupid anti-vaxxer views he pushes.