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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

674 points by snvzz 10mo ago

superb_dev 10mo ago
> The compositor will get disabled … if the client runs a fullscreen application and disabled vsync in the application. This is interesting to me, why would vsync being enabled mean that the desktop compositor needs to stick around for a full screen app?
- amiga-workbench 10mo ago
  I imagine because vsync and triple buffering introduce latency. There are cases like games where you don't want all that lag.
  - superb_dev 10mo ago
    If the goal was to reduce latency, wouldn’t you want the desktop compositor out of the way when vsync is on?
    - amiga-workbench 10mo ago
      That's very true, and I believe Wayland has a DRM leasing extension just for this use case. SteamVR uses it to punch through the compositor and draw straight to the screen.
sergiotapia 10mo ago
This is a really really bad name. There's already a Phoenix that is well known in tech. https://phoenixframework.org/ https://phoenixframework.org/ OP if you're the author I suggest you rename to avoid confusion. Don't name it Rails either haha!
- manytimesaway 10mo ago
  This is a really really bad comment. I've never heard of the framework you're talking about and I thought you were talking about the Firefox prototype.
  - viccis 10mo ago
    Phoenix is a well known web app framework regardless of your ignorance of it.
    - sho_hn 10mo ago
      It's still a silly comment. The Phoenix web framework is a little over a decade old, and there are many other tech things named Phoenix that pre-date it, even just within the web application space. I assume Apache Phoenix and the web framework have a lot more to be annoyed at each other for.
  - killthebuddha 10mo ago
    I don't have an opinion on the matter, but it's pretty popular. According to [1], Phoenix "was used extensively over the past year" by 2.4% of responders. [1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology
  - cpursley 10mo ago
    If you’re in software dev or frequent hn, how have you not heard of Phoenix? It is consistently voted as most loved web framework.
    - MobiusHorizons 10mo ago
      I’ve been on hn for almost 10 years, and have been doing mostly frontend development for the whole time. As far as I know I have never seen it mentioned. But then I have no interest in elixir, so I might just not have remembered the name even if I saw it.
  - mhd 10mo ago
    I'm also pretty sure that there was an "Elixir" in IT before there was the language said framework is written in… I mean, given that the letter "X" is in both Unix and X11, I'm pretty sure most words containing it have already been used once or twice. (I still think they should've stuck with "Firebird", little danger of confusing a browser with a database system mostly used by Delphi devs)
- hu3 10mo ago
  Your link is about a nice web framework written in Elixir. But I don't see how a X server implementation should avoid name collision with web frameworks.
kombine 10mo ago
Are different DPIs for different monitors supported too?
snvzz 10mo ago
Complements XLibre[0], an active fork of the X11 server from Xorg. XLibre is trying to advance the existing implementation which Xorg abandoned, whereas Phoenix is writing a new, compatible server from scratch. 0. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver
- wizzwizz4 10mo ago
  XLibre is a joke. They're making changes for the sake of changes: for example, commit aefde9 strips out vendoring in an ad-hoc, incomplete fashion (introducing a minor spacing bug in the process); and commit aafd986 replaces `int` with `unsigned int` (instead of `size_t`), failing to properly fix the bug that the compiler warnings identified (albeit, also removing an unrelated C footgun along the way, so this does look like a bug fix). The main author has a history of cowboy commits: 533c45e (which made it into mainline Xorg before he got kicked out) straight-up prevents ‎hw/xfree86/os-support/bsd/arm_video.c from compiling, so it's clear there's no actual testing taking place. I doubt the XLibre authors understand the X security model, either – they never do, in forks like this – and they've alienated most of the security researchers who might otherwise clean up after them. Phoenix and Wayback are much more interesting projects, in my book. Wayback's designed to actually work, and I expect it to be production-ready much sooner; but I expect Phoenix to be the more technically interesting project, since it's deliberately breaking from the X11 spec.
  - nixosbestos 10mo ago
    [flagged]
    - msla 10mo ago
      OK, you can't have your preferred environment because someone else has a different use-case. Moreover, people will condescend to you and insist your setup never worked, nobody ever used it, and nobody cares that it's going away. Plus, they state that you are just being difficult, if not delusional, when you say that you are quite happy with how things are. I mean, your way never worked, so how could it have been your way at all? You must be a troll, troll. Stop trolling.
s08148692 10mo ago
First my mind went to Phoenix (elixir framework), then to X (twitter) before it clicked what this was actually about. Some very overloaded names
- gldrk 10mo ago
  The meaning of 'X server' has been well-established for 30+ years.
  - quesera 10mo ago
    (tangent) This is true, although entertainingly, the "server" part has always been easily confused. In X11, the "server" runs on your local machine, and the "client" frequently runs on a remote system.
    - mananaysiempre 10mo ago
      Yes, it’s simultaneously logical if you look at how it works and immensely strange if you don’t understand the architecture. (As has been noted all the way back to the UNIX-HATERS Handbook[1], although, pace 'DonHopkins, the NeWS Book uses the same terminology—possibly because it was written late enough to contain promises of X11/NeWS.) [1] https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-haters/x-window...
      - the_why_of_y 10mo ago
        There is nothing at all strange about the terminology. Go run ps on macOS and marvel at the "WindowServer" process. The generic architectural term is "display server". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system#Display_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system#Display_serve...
    - hitex 10mo ago
      The server runs on the machine that allows clients to connect to it. What is the confusing part about this?
gldrk 10mo ago
If you are not going to implement X11 drawing ops and XRender (which I, and many others, still use heavily), what's even the point? Any 'modern' program that only does client-side rendering already supports Wayland. AFAIK GTK 3 doesn't even support DRI on X11 unless you somehow trick it into using the abandoned OpenGL Cairo backend, but that's not modern enough apparently.
- drpixie 10mo ago
  Where do they say they're omitting drawing and xrender?
  - gldrk 10mo ago
    It talks about trimming 'legacy' features and specifically says they are omitting 'font-related' operations. That obviously means no useful core X11 application will work (unless you count xlogo and xeyes). Whether the XRender glyph cache mechanism is included is unclear. It also says only DRI is *currently* supported, but maybe that's incidental?
    - gooberman 10mo ago
      XRender isn't part of the core protocol so it should be implemented in the future. There is already some xrender code in there. Almost no applications use x11 core protocol font, except for cursor. Since the x11 core protocol font (on xorg server at least) is rendered without anti aliasing and doesn't really support unicode.
      - gsnedders 10mo ago
        Is there anything at a protocol level that prevents using a modern font rendering stack for it?
      - gldrk 10mo ago
        Core fonts absolutely support Unicode. My (non-Xft) xterm windows are full of Unicode characters right now. It is true that anti-aliasing is not supported by the X.Org server, although scalable fonts have been for a while (https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/fonts/fonts.html#AEN497 https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/fonts/fonts.html#AEN49...). But you don't need anti-aliasing on a high-DPI display, and on a low-DPI display you can use any of the many beautiful bitmap fonts, unlike a lot of ‘modern apps’ these days.
sho_hn 10mo ago
Pretty interesting approach to make an X server that is essentially "Wayland-like" (merging display server/compositor by default, isolated apps by default, no remoting of GLX, dropping legacy protocol features to the point of breaking compat with the core protocol, etc.). Not sure who this is for, but by itself it looks like a fairly reasonable set of choices.
- wmf 10mo ago
  For people who absolutely have to have X11 this looks like a better plan than XLibre.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    It depends on whether their reasons for "absolutely having to have X11" hinge on actual compatibility with e.g. old binaries or wanting full remoting without streaming pixels. This project would satisfy people who really actually want Wayland, but were upset by transitional pains or interactions they had around it and want to stick with X11 just-cause while getting some similar benefits. This arguably does describe some people but not sure it's a whole lot in the long run. But who knows, maybe this could also make an easier to maintain XWayland some day, or a nice basis for implementing more esoteric X11 bits down the road vs. the older Xorg codebase.
    - vidarh 10mo ago
      I don't "actually want Wayland" because I want the simplicity of X and the ability to run my own wm, but I have no need for legacy X11 requests, for some values of "legacy". Whether this will become viable for me remains to be seen, but I need very little from my X11 server.
      - sho_hn 10mo ago
        Fair! Though I'm actually not sure I understand what you mean with simplicity. X11 is so vastly more complicated than Wayland.
ccakes 10mo ago
This is a great project! I like and use Wayland but the portal protocols and extension mechanism does leave a lot to be desired. Wayland is still quite a way behind Windows and macOS in terms of what productivity users need An X11 rewrite with some security baked in is an awesome approach. Will be watching!
- drpixie 10mo ago
  I thought for a long time that rather than move to Wayland, we could come up with a tidied-up version of X. Sounds like a good and useful project, I hope it progresses.
  - reactordev 10mo ago
    I thought this too and originally thought that’s what Wayland was going to do but it went off and did its own thing. I’m all for an X12.
    - sho_hn 10mo ago
      An X12 was briefly considered by the community before adopting Wayland: https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/ https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/ If you take the time to read through that (very partial) list of cruft and footguns in X11 it probably makes it a little easier to understand why a clean-slate approach was able to attract momentum and why many hands-on involved developers were relatively tired of X11. Critics would of course respond that backwards compatibility is worth the effort and rewrites are often the wrong call, etc. It's the Python 2/3 debate and many others.
      - glzone1 10mo ago
        Python 3 was actively antagonistic to Python 2 code for no reason other than to lecture us about how we were doing things wrong, writing code to support 2 and 3 to help transition was dumb etc etc. For example, in python 2 you could explicitly mark unicode text with u"...". That was actively BLOCKED with python 3.0 which supposedly was about unicode support! The irony was insane, they could of just no-oped the u"". I got totally sick of the "expert" language designers with no real world code shipping responsibilities lecturing me. Every post about this stuff was met by comments from pedantic idiots. So every string had to have a helper function around it. Total and absolute garbage. They still haven't explained to my satisifaction why not support u"..." to allow a transition more easily to 3. Luckily sanity started prevailing around 3.5 and we started to see a progression - whoever was behind this should be thanked. The clueless unicode everything was walked back and we got % for bytes so you could work with network protocols again (where unicode would be STUPID to force given the installed base). We got u"" back. By 3.6 we got back to reasonable path handling on windows and the 3 benefits started to come without antagonistic approaches / regressions from 2. But that was about 8 years? So that burnt a lot of the initial excitement.
vzaliva 10mo ago
Multiple screens support is listed as non-goal. Would that prevent its usage with window managers which support virtiaul desktops? I am i3 user and it is a critical feature for me.
- sho_hn 10mo ago
  In short: No. In X11 "screen" has a particular meaning, and only supporting a single screen doesn't preclude multi-monitor support or virtual desktops.
  - ddtaylor 10mo ago
    Is this why back in the day sometimes a Linux distro would have a multi-monitor setup where each monitor was an actual different desktop cube for example. There was a time when each window for an Nvidia graphics card in that type of configuration could not be moved from one screen to another, etc.
    - sho_hn 10mo ago
      Yep!
  - ndiddy 10mo ago
    Given that they're fine with adding breaking changes to the protocol, I think it's a shame that they're not supporting multi-screen. This will lead to the same problem with Xrandr based multi-monitor where you get screen tearing with mixed refresh rate displays. I would prefer to see "traditional X11 multihead but you can move programs between screens" as the solution for multiple monitors. Even if it worked like Mac OS X where you can't have a single window span across multiple monitors, it would still be better than the current state of X11.
- esjeon 10mo ago
  As others have already mentioned, the continuous multi-monitor(Xinerama) was an afterthought. A good news is that, by design, it’s actually pretty easy to add in the later steps.
vitalnodo 10mo ago
Another potentially interesting project is zigx, an X11 client library for Zig applications: https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPWFLkHRIAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPWFLkHRIAQ Compared to libX11, it avoids dynamic dependencies, uses less memory, and provides better error messages.
iamnothere 10mo ago
This is the kind of initiative I’d prefer to see from X preservationists. Great job, I hope it succeeds. I prefer Wayland, but there’s still a place in the world for X; it just needs new dev teams to shoulder the burden.
- grim_io 10mo ago
  I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.
  - nish__ 10mo ago
    This is the worst argument ever. The choices in the Linux community is what's made it the best OS in the world today.
    - grim_io 10mo ago
      Linux on the desktop only took of because Ubuntu, with mixed results and a lot of controversy, decided to standardize and polish the experience for "normies". The distribution sprawl I largely see as a detriment to the ecosystem.
      - kesor 10mo ago
        I would argue that Desktop Linux finally took off because of Steam Proton, and because of Windows 10/11 and macOS starting version fartascular or whatever their versions are named.
      - uecker 10mo ago
        I remember seeing Linux gaining some traction 15 year ago, and Ubuntu focusing on polishing the user experience (with initiatives such as fixing "One hundred paper cuts"), but then this changed instead of keeping this stable the great rewriting began. Seeing Wayland (which is just one example) users having a problem with screen sharing just convinces me how much of a self-own this was from the Linux community.
bnolsen 10mo ago
It's christmas and not april fools!
- nine_k 10mo ago
  But this is a treat, not a silly joke!
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
AndyKelley 10mo ago
As the application author you can set the release mode in the build script so that the release flag looks like `zig build --release` instead, and the user doesn't choose the optimization mode. As a user you can pass `--release` to `zig build` to request release mode. If the application doesn't want to pick for you, you'll get an error and then you can pick for yourself. In this case, it looks like the author of Phoenix wants to choose ReleaseSafe as the official release mode of the application. Phoenix is the name of my hometown, btw.
smj-edison 10mo ago
Bit of an observation, but I've noticed that there's been quite a few pragmatic projects started in Zig. Bun vs Deno comes to mind (one focused on DX, the other on security), and now this vs Wayland. Not to say that designing something properly is wrong, just that it tends to throw away a lot of important interoperability.
grumps 10mo ago
I finally caved and switched to Wayland 6 months ago or so. Things just work so much more smoothly.
- ilvez 10mo ago
  Some things do but for some details I'm amazed what I need to do to make it work, like going to sleep with multiple displays. Maybe it's a sway thing and I'm not complaining at all, crafting a solid minimal configuration has its charms. I'm just thinking why did it take me so long to do the switch. I still keep X around, but not sure how long. Like keeping vim around after switching to nvim few years back..
- gooberman 10mo ago
  What are the things specifically that work better? because most of the case people dont have issues because of the x11 (the protocol), but because of how the xorg server works
shmerl 10mo ago
So this can be an interesting option for XWayland?
- PeakKS 10mo ago
  Well no because it's not actually compatible with X11
- gooberman 10mo ago
  The README mentions xwayland so maybe it could be in the future
Levitating 10mo ago
No active development in the last 4 months?
dismalaf 10mo ago
Cool project I guess, don't see the point but technically interesting. Will be cool to have another modern display protocol/server. I personally would have rewritten Wlroots in Zig or something, but I guess this is more interesting.
__d 10mo ago
So … does xterm work? emacs? xfig? ghostview? xload? xev? oclock? xmodmap? xpilot?
- esjeon 10mo ago
  It’s possible that most of old X11 toys would not work properly, because many of them rely on X11 drawing APIs, but they are pretty simple to implement anyway.
- donio 10mo ago
  I gave it a quick go and very few things work at the moment. None of the programs you listed do. From the README: At the moment it can render simple applications that do GLX, EGL or Vulkan graphics (fully hardware accelerated) nested in an existing X server. And that sounds about right. As far as I can tell it doesn't yet have a lot of the core X11 stuff that "normal" clients expect. For example xterm doesn't start because requests like X_AllocColor, X_OpenFont, X_PutImage (a few picked at random from the error output) are not implemented yet. glxgears on the other hand does work :)
- CerryuDu 10mo ago
  motif apps? xmag? xfontsel? forwarding over ssh? ~/.XCompose? "links2 -g"?
shevy-java 10mo ago
I have no idea how well this one works, but I am all up for more projects that can compete against the singularization that corporations currently try (see paid developers for wayland, GNOME and now also KDE). I wonder how much money would be needed to make the xorg server adapt to the modern era; I don't even know the featureset that is missing for this either. But I also know that wayland, after 20 years (!!!), will never cover those requests users had over tohse 20 years, simply because it tries to cater to a narrow specification wanted by corporations rather than the people - so much is now clear (wayland protocol was released in 2008, so it is soon 20 years actually; in a few days we have 2026, so it will be 18 years).
immibis 10mo ago
Nice! We do need more X servers, since Wayland refuses to incorporate essential protocol elements due to religion.
- esjeon 10mo ago
  Yeah, we should introduce competition. It doesn’t feel like Wayland is improving these days. Missing features force me to hit X11 regularly, and I still get Wayland session crashes etc, while X11 could happily run over a year without crash and run all applications I need without issues.
  - TingPing 10mo ago
    “Wayland” cannot crash, its a protocol. Your complaints are to your compositor.
    - immibis 10mo ago
      Wayland is a display system design, and is responsible for problems arising from the system design.
socketcluster 10mo ago
The name Phoenix is overused. There is an Elixir framework called Phoenix. I think I also heard of other projects with that same name before. It's a bit like the name 'Apollo'; besides the moon landing project, I know like 2 dev projects called that and also there is a sales SaaS platform with that name. Surely people should run a search first before choosing a name...
- wewewedxfgdf 10mo ago
  From the ashes of some previous project is born some new project. It's symbolic. I remember people naming new software projects this back in the 1980s for the same reason.
  - socketcluster 10mo ago
    It's a great name but way overused. I guess everything these days rose from ashes of past failures. Sector is highly competitive.
  - bloppe 10mo ago
    Ya, and that's the same reason all those other projects picked this name too
    - sodapopcan 10mo ago
      Not in the case of Elixir. It’s a play on BEAM processes being revived.
  - thiht 10mo ago
    We get the symbolic reason. It’s still overused and lazy because it doesn’t even relate to the project itself except for its origin in the most generic way. They could at least use PhoenX or FenX to link it with X
- wakawaka28 10mo ago
  Firefox tried to use it and was sued for trademark infringement. wxPython also has a Phoenix project. It's definitely a catchy, but overused, name.
PixelForg 10mo ago
Same author behind https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about/ https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about/ , the best screen recorder for wayland imo (I had tried other alternatives but none of them helped in recording at 4k 60fps, this worked out of the box).
ori_b 10mo ago
Seems interesting that they're not using the XML protocol specs for code gen, the way the Xorg server does.
fithisux 10mo ago
This is very good. We can see innovation in this space. Next I suppose is porting Motif to Windows.
uecker 10mo ago
This is cool. What X is really missing though is a little bit of love from the toolkit side, e.g. proper latency hiding using XCB, support for dis- and reconnect or support for moving windows to display on different devices.
nialv7 10mo ago
the xserver implementation itself is only part of the problem. the other part is the X11 protocol is just bad, and IMHO can't be solved by subsetting. this might make a good alternative to Xwayland though, which can be exciting.
isopede 10mo ago
Look, my setup works for me. Just add an option to reenable spacebar heating.
Shekelphile 10mo ago
Does this mean we can finally be done with the farce of pretending that Wayland is a serious contender for replacing X11?
- paulryanrogers 10mo ago
  Why is it not? I get the impression Wayland has been built by former X devs
  - liampulles 10mo ago
    The issue (to my understanding) is that it is a very different protocol, which makes it quite onerous for application and desktop environment developers to transition to. Also, since some desktop environments have really grown opposed to Wayland (e.g. XFCE) it puts the application developer in the position of having to wait.
fleroviumna 10mo ago
[dead]
webprofusion 10mo ago
Nice but 2008 called and want their git web UI back. I can't take anything "modern" seriously if it seems firmly archaic, my problem I get it.
- lloydatkinson 10mo ago
  Very much your problem.
  - deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
- Zambyte 10mo ago
  https://git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org
cardanome 10mo ago
Please prioritize to keep accessibility features working. This is really the main issue with wayland. Yes, it might be more stable these days and work fine for you. We can talk how how it makes writing you own WM needlessly complicated and all that but the one thing that makes wayland unacceptable is its lacking accessibility story. After so many years. Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later. It is the first thing you should think about when designing new software.
- hambes 10mo ago
  As someone who is not deep into linux desktop history: Can you please elaborate on the missing accessibility features in wayland or direct me to resources on that? I've been using wayland for a while now and am very happy with it, but my accessibility needs are pretty basic.
  - cardanome 10mo ago
    See this comment for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075#46381858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075#46381858 Here is a slightly-hopeful article: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
    - hambes 10mo ago
      thank you!
- bigyabai 10mo ago
  > Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later. I don't think there's any concrete proof of this. Ideally I think people want accessibility handled by their WM/DE; you're not getting Windows or macOS-quality a11y "for free" unless your desktop embraces it. At which point you might as well make it a separate, aftermarket protocol and slap it into d-bus. If the Linux ecosystem is going to be fragmented and move past single-point-of-failure, polishing Xorg's accessibility works against the goal of standardized a11y.
maximgeorge 10mo ago
[dead]
coretx 10mo ago
[flagged]
mkoubaa 10mo ago
The Wayland people were right about everything
morshu9001 10mo ago
Funny that this shows up now. I just started trying to write an entire window server + DE combined in Rust, for educational purposes.
HolyFenrir 10mo ago
Between this and zigx zig can become the whole x11 stack https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://github.com/marler8997/zigx

674 points by snvzz 10mo ago

> The compositor will get disabled … if the client runs a fullscreen application and disabled vsync in the application. This is interesting to me, why would vsync being enabled mean that the desktop compositor needs to stick around for a full screen app?

amiga-workbench 10mo ago
I imagine because vsync and triple buffering introduce latency. There are cases like games where you don't want all that lag.
- superb_dev 10mo ago
  If the goal was to reduce latency, wouldn’t you want the desktop compositor out of the way when vsync is on?
  - amiga-workbench 10mo ago
    That's very true, and I believe Wayland has a DRM leasing extension just for this use case. SteamVR uses it to punch through the compositor and draw straight to the screen.

sergiotapia 10mo ago

This is a really really bad name. There's already a Phoenix that is well known in tech. https://phoenixframework.org/ https://phoenixframework.org/ OP if you're the author I suggest you rename to avoid confusion. Don't name it Rails either haha!

manytimesaway 10mo ago
This is a really really bad comment. I've never heard of the framework you're talking about and I thought you were talking about the Firefox prototype.
- viccis 10mo ago
  Phoenix is a well known web app framework regardless of your ignorance of it.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    It's still a silly comment. The Phoenix web framework is a little over a decade old, and there are many other tech things named Phoenix that pre-date it, even just within the web application space. I assume Apache Phoenix and the web framework have a lot more to be annoyed at each other for.
- killthebuddha 10mo ago
  I don't have an opinion on the matter, but it's pretty popular. According to [1], Phoenix "was used extensively over the past year" by 2.4% of responders. [1] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/technology
- cpursley 10mo ago
  If you’re in software dev or frequent hn, how have you not heard of Phoenix? It is consistently voted as most loved web framework.
  - MobiusHorizons 10mo ago
    I’ve been on hn for almost 10 years, and have been doing mostly frontend development for the whole time. As far as I know I have never seen it mentioned. But then I have no interest in elixir, so I might just not have remembered the name even if I saw it.
- mhd 10mo ago
  I'm also pretty sure that there was an "Elixir" in IT before there was the language said framework is written in… I mean, given that the letter "X" is in both Unix and X11, I'm pretty sure most words containing it have already been used once or twice. (I still think they should've stuck with "Firebird", little danger of confusing a browser with a database system mostly used by Delphi devs)
hu3 10mo ago
Your link is about a nice web framework written in Elixir. But I don't see how a X server implementation should avoid name collision with web frameworks.

kombine 10mo ago

Are different DPIs for different monitors supported too?

snvzz 10mo ago

Complements XLibre[0], an active fork of the X11 server from Xorg. XLibre is trying to advance the existing implementation which Xorg abandoned, whereas Phoenix is writing a new, compatible server from scratch. 0. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver

wizzwizz4 10mo ago
XLibre is a joke. They're making changes for the sake of changes: for example, commit aefde9 strips out vendoring in an ad-hoc, incomplete fashion (introducing a minor spacing bug in the process); and commit aafd986 replaces `int` with `unsigned int` (instead of `size_t`), failing to properly fix the bug that the compiler warnings identified (albeit, also removing an unrelated C footgun along the way, so this does look like a bug fix). The main author has a history of cowboy commits: 533c45e (which made it into mainline Xorg before he got kicked out) straight-up prevents ‎hw/xfree86/os-support/bsd/arm_video.c from compiling, so it's clear there's no actual testing taking place. I doubt the XLibre authors understand the X security model, either – they never do, in forks like this – and they've alienated most of the security researchers who might otherwise clean up after them. Phoenix and Wayback are much more interesting projects, in my book. Wayback's designed to actually work, and I expect it to be production-ready much sooner; but I expect Phoenix to be the more technically interesting project, since it's deliberately breaking from the X11 spec.
- nixosbestos 10mo ago
  [flagged]
  - msla 10mo ago
    OK, you can't have your preferred environment because someone else has a different use-case. Moreover, people will condescend to you and insist your setup never worked, nobody ever used it, and nobody cares that it's going away. Plus, they state that you are just being difficult, if not delusional, when you say that you are quite happy with how things are. I mean, your way never worked, so how could it have been your way at all? You must be a troll, troll. Stop trolling.

s08148692 10mo ago

First my mind went to Phoenix (elixir framework), then to X (twitter) before it clicked what this was actually about. Some very overloaded names

gldrk 10mo ago
The meaning of 'X server' has been well-established for 30+ years.
- quesera 10mo ago
  (tangent) This is true, although entertainingly, the "server" part has always been easily confused. In X11, the "server" runs on your local machine, and the "client" frequently runs on a remote system.
  - mananaysiempre 10mo ago
    Yes, it’s simultaneously logical if you look at how it works and immensely strange if you don’t understand the architecture. (As has been noted all the way back to the UNIX-HATERS Handbook[1], although, pace 'DonHopkins, the NeWS Book uses the same terminology—possibly because it was written late enough to contain promises of X11/NeWS.) [1] https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-haters/x-windows/disaster.html https://www.donhopkins.com/home/catalog/unix-haters/x-window...
    - the_why_of_y 10mo ago
      There is nothing at all strange about the terminology. Go run ps on macOS and marvel at the "WindowServer" process. The generic architectural term is "display server". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system#Display_server https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windowing_system#Display_serve...
  - hitex 10mo ago
    The server runs on the machine that allows clients to connect to it. What is the confusing part about this?

gldrk 10mo ago

If you are not going to implement X11 drawing ops and XRender (which I, and many others, still use heavily), what's even the point? Any 'modern' program that only does client-side rendering already supports Wayland. AFAIK GTK 3 doesn't even support DRI on X11 unless you somehow trick it into using the abandoned OpenGL Cairo backend, but that's not modern enough apparently.

drpixie 10mo ago
Where do they say they're omitting drawing and xrender?
- gldrk 10mo ago
  It talks about trimming 'legacy' features and specifically says they are omitting 'font-related' operations. That obviously means no useful core X11 application will work (unless you count xlogo and xeyes). Whether the XRender glyph cache mechanism is included is unclear. It also says only DRI is *currently* supported, but maybe that's incidental?
  - gooberman 10mo ago
    XRender isn't part of the core protocol so it should be implemented in the future. There is already some xrender code in there. Almost no applications use x11 core protocol font, except for cursor. Since the x11 core protocol font (on xorg server at least) is rendered without anti aliasing and doesn't really support unicode.
    - gsnedders 10mo ago
      Is there anything at a protocol level that prevents using a modern font rendering stack for it?
    - gldrk 10mo ago
      Core fonts absolutely support Unicode. My (non-Xft) xterm windows are full of Unicode characters right now. It is true that anti-aliasing is not supported by the X.Org server, although scalable fonts have been for a while (https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/fonts/fonts.html#AEN497 https://www.x.org/archive/X11R7.5/doc/fonts/fonts.html#AEN49...). But you don't need anti-aliasing on a high-DPI display, and on a low-DPI display you can use any of the many beautiful bitmap fonts, unlike a lot of ‘modern apps’ these days.

sho_hn 10mo ago

Pretty interesting approach to make an X server that is essentially "Wayland-like" (merging display server/compositor by default, isolated apps by default, no remoting of GLX, dropping legacy protocol features to the point of breaking compat with the core protocol, etc.). Not sure who this is for, but by itself it looks like a fairly reasonable set of choices.

wmf 10mo ago
For people who absolutely have to have X11 this looks like a better plan than XLibre.
- sho_hn 10mo ago
  It depends on whether their reasons for "absolutely having to have X11" hinge on actual compatibility with e.g. old binaries or wanting full remoting without streaming pixels. This project would satisfy people who really actually want Wayland, but were upset by transitional pains or interactions they had around it and want to stick with X11 just-cause while getting some similar benefits. This arguably does describe some people but not sure it's a whole lot in the long run. But who knows, maybe this could also make an easier to maintain XWayland some day, or a nice basis for implementing more esoteric X11 bits down the road vs. the older Xorg codebase.
  - vidarh 10mo ago
    I don't "actually want Wayland" because I want the simplicity of X and the ability to run my own wm, but I have no need for legacy X11 requests, for some values of "legacy". Whether this will become viable for me remains to be seen, but I need very little from my X11 server.
    - sho_hn 10mo ago
      Fair! Though I'm actually not sure I understand what you mean with simplicity. X11 is so vastly more complicated than Wayland.

ccakes 10mo ago

This is a great project! I like and use Wayland but the portal protocols and extension mechanism does leave a lot to be desired. Wayland is still quite a way behind Windows and macOS in terms of what productivity users need An X11 rewrite with some security baked in is an awesome approach. Will be watching!

drpixie 10mo ago
I thought for a long time that rather than move to Wayland, we could come up with a tidied-up version of X. Sounds like a good and useful project, I hope it progresses.
- reactordev 10mo ago
  I thought this too and originally thought that’s what Wayland was going to do but it went off and did its own thing. I’m all for an X12.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    An X12 was briefly considered by the community before adopting Wayland: https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/ https://www.x.org/wiki/Development/X12/ If you take the time to read through that (very partial) list of cruft and footguns in X11 it probably makes it a little easier to understand why a clean-slate approach was able to attract momentum and why many hands-on involved developers were relatively tired of X11. Critics would of course respond that backwards compatibility is worth the effort and rewrites are often the wrong call, etc. It's the Python 2/3 debate and many others.
    - glzone1 10mo ago
      Python 3 was actively antagonistic to Python 2 code for no reason other than to lecture us about how we were doing things wrong, writing code to support 2 and 3 to help transition was dumb etc etc. For example, in python 2 you could explicitly mark unicode text with u"...". That was actively BLOCKED with python 3.0 which supposedly was about unicode support! The irony was insane, they could of just no-oped the u"". I got totally sick of the "expert" language designers with no real world code shipping responsibilities lecturing me. Every post about this stuff was met by comments from pedantic idiots. So every string had to have a helper function around it. Total and absolute garbage. They still haven't explained to my satisifaction why not support u"..." to allow a transition more easily to 3. Luckily sanity started prevailing around 3.5 and we started to see a progression - whoever was behind this should be thanked. The clueless unicode everything was walked back and we got % for bytes so you could work with network protocols again (where unicode would be STUPID to force given the installed base). We got u"" back. By 3.6 we got back to reasonable path handling on windows and the 3 benefits started to come without antagonistic approaches / regressions from 2. But that was about 8 years? So that burnt a lot of the initial excitement.

vzaliva 10mo ago

Multiple screens support is listed as non-goal. Would that prevent its usage with window managers which support virtiaul desktops? I am i3 user and it is a critical feature for me.

sho_hn 10mo ago
In short: No. In X11 "screen" has a particular meaning, and only supporting a single screen doesn't preclude multi-monitor support or virtual desktops.
- ddtaylor 10mo ago
  Is this why back in the day sometimes a Linux distro would have a multi-monitor setup where each monitor was an actual different desktop cube for example. There was a time when each window for an Nvidia graphics card in that type of configuration could not be moved from one screen to another, etc.
  - sho_hn 10mo ago
    Yep!
- ndiddy 10mo ago
  Given that they're fine with adding breaking changes to the protocol, I think it's a shame that they're not supporting multi-screen. This will lead to the same problem with Xrandr based multi-monitor where you get screen tearing with mixed refresh rate displays. I would prefer to see "traditional X11 multihead but you can move programs between screens" as the solution for multiple monitors. Even if it worked like Mac OS X where you can't have a single window span across multiple monitors, it would still be better than the current state of X11.
esjeon 10mo ago
As others have already mentioned, the continuous multi-monitor(Xinerama) was an afterthought. A good news is that, by design, it’s actually pretty easy to add in the later steps.

vitalnodo 10mo ago

Another potentially interesting project is zigx, an X11 client library for Zig applications: https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPWFLkHRIAQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPWFLkHRIAQ Compared to libX11, it avoids dynamic dependencies, uses less memory, and provides better error messages.

iamnothere 10mo ago

This is the kind of initiative I’d prefer to see from X preservationists. Great job, I hope it succeeds. I prefer Wayland, but there’s still a place in the world for X; it just needs new dev teams to shoulder the burden.

grim_io 10mo ago
I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.
- nish__ 10mo ago
  This is the worst argument ever. The choices in the Linux community is what's made it the best OS in the world today.
  - grim_io 10mo ago
    Linux on the desktop only took of because Ubuntu, with mixed results and a lot of controversy, decided to standardize and polish the experience for "normies". The distribution sprawl I largely see as a detriment to the ecosystem.
    - kesor 10mo ago
      I would argue that Desktop Linux finally took off because of Steam Proton, and because of Windows 10/11 and macOS starting version fartascular or whatever their versions are named.
    - uecker 10mo ago
      I remember seeing Linux gaining some traction 15 year ago, and Ubuntu focusing on polishing the user experience (with initiatives such as fixing "One hundred paper cuts"), but then this changed instead of keeping this stable the great rewriting began. Seeing Wayland (which is just one example) users having a problem with screen sharing just convinces me how much of a self-own this was from the Linux community.

bnolsen 10mo ago

It's christmas and not april fools!

nine_k 10mo ago
But this is a treat, not a silly joke!

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

AndyKelley 10mo ago

As the application author you can set the release mode in the build script so that the release flag looks like `zig build --release` instead, and the user doesn't choose the optimization mode. As a user you can pass `--release` to `zig build` to request release mode. If the application doesn't want to pick for you, you'll get an error and then you can pick for yourself. In this case, it looks like the author of Phoenix wants to choose ReleaseSafe as the official release mode of the application. Phoenix is the name of my hometown, btw.

smj-edison 10mo ago

Bit of an observation, but I've noticed that there's been quite a few pragmatic projects started in Zig. Bun vs Deno comes to mind (one focused on DX, the other on security), and now this vs Wayland. Not to say that designing something properly is wrong, just that it tends to throw away a lot of important interoperability.

grumps 10mo ago

I finally caved and switched to Wayland 6 months ago or so. Things just work so much more smoothly.

ilvez 10mo ago
Some things do but for some details I'm amazed what I need to do to make it work, like going to sleep with multiple displays. Maybe it's a sway thing and I'm not complaining at all, crafting a solid minimal configuration has its charms. I'm just thinking why did it take me so long to do the switch. I still keep X around, but not sure how long. Like keeping vim around after switching to nvim few years back..
gooberman 10mo ago
What are the things specifically that work better? because most of the case people dont have issues because of the x11 (the protocol), but because of how the xorg server works

shmerl 10mo ago

So this can be an interesting option for XWayland?

PeakKS 10mo ago
Well no because it's not actually compatible with X11
gooberman 10mo ago
The README mentions xwayland so maybe it could be in the future

Levitating 10mo ago

No active development in the last 4 months?

dismalaf 10mo ago

Cool project I guess, don't see the point but technically interesting. Will be cool to have another modern display protocol/server. I personally would have rewritten Wlroots in Zig or something, but I guess this is more interesting.

__d 10mo ago

So … does xterm work? emacs? xfig? ghostview? xload? xev? oclock? xmodmap? xpilot?

esjeon 10mo ago
It’s possible that most of old X11 toys would not work properly, because many of them rely on X11 drawing APIs, but they are pretty simple to implement anyway.
donio 10mo ago
I gave it a quick go and very few things work at the moment. None of the programs you listed do. From the README: At the moment it can render simple applications that do GLX, EGL or Vulkan graphics (fully hardware accelerated) nested in an existing X server. And that sounds about right. As far as I can tell it doesn't yet have a lot of the core X11 stuff that "normal" clients expect. For example xterm doesn't start because requests like X_AllocColor, X_OpenFont, X_PutImage (a few picked at random from the error output) are not implemented yet. glxgears on the other hand does work :)
CerryuDu 10mo ago
motif apps? xmag? xfontsel? forwarding over ssh? ~/.XCompose? "links2 -g"?

shevy-java 10mo ago

I have no idea how well this one works, but I am all up for more projects that can compete against the singularization that corporations currently try (see paid developers for wayland, GNOME and now also KDE). I wonder how much money would be needed to make the xorg server adapt to the modern era; I don't even know the featureset that is missing for this either. But I also know that wayland, after 20 years (!!!), will never cover those requests users had over tohse 20 years, simply because it tries to cater to a narrow specification wanted by corporations rather than the people - so much is now clear (wayland protocol was released in 2008, so it is soon 20 years actually; in a few days we have 2026, so it will be 18 years).

immibis 10mo ago

Nice! We do need more X servers, since Wayland refuses to incorporate essential protocol elements due to religion.

esjeon 10mo ago
Yeah, we should introduce competition. It doesn’t feel like Wayland is improving these days. Missing features force me to hit X11 regularly, and I still get Wayland session crashes etc, while X11 could happily run over a year without crash and run all applications I need without issues.
- TingPing 10mo ago
  “Wayland” cannot crash, its a protocol. Your complaints are to your compositor.
  - immibis 10mo ago
    Wayland is a display system design, and is responsible for problems arising from the system design.

socketcluster 10mo ago

The name Phoenix is overused. There is an Elixir framework called Phoenix. I think I also heard of other projects with that same name before. It's a bit like the name 'Apollo'; besides the moon landing project, I know like 2 dev projects called that and also there is a sales SaaS platform with that name. Surely people should run a search first before choosing a name...

wewewedxfgdf 10mo ago
From the ashes of some previous project is born some new project. It's symbolic. I remember people naming new software projects this back in the 1980s for the same reason.
- socketcluster 10mo ago
  It's a great name but way overused. I guess everything these days rose from ashes of past failures. Sector is highly competitive.
- bloppe 10mo ago
  Ya, and that's the same reason all those other projects picked this name too
  - sodapopcan 10mo ago
    Not in the case of Elixir. It’s a play on BEAM processes being revived.
- thiht 10mo ago
  We get the symbolic reason. It’s still overused and lazy because it doesn’t even relate to the project itself except for its origin in the most generic way. They could at least use PhoenX or FenX to link it with X
wakawaka28 10mo ago
Firefox tried to use it and was sued for trademark infringement. wxPython also has a Phoenix project. It's definitely a catchy, but overused, name.

PixelForg 10mo ago

Same author behind https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about/ https://git.dec05eba.com/gpu-screen-recorder/about/ , the best screen recorder for wayland imo (I had tried other alternatives but none of them helped in recording at 4k 60fps, this worked out of the box).

ori_b 10mo ago

Seems interesting that they're not using the XML protocol specs for code gen, the way the Xorg server does.

fithisux 10mo ago

This is very good. We can see innovation in this space. Next I suppose is porting Motif to Windows.

uecker 10mo ago

This is cool. What X is really missing though is a little bit of love from the toolkit side, e.g. proper latency hiding using XCB, support for dis- and reconnect or support for moving windows to display on different devices.

nialv7 10mo ago

the xserver implementation itself is only part of the problem. the other part is the X11 protocol is just bad, and IMHO can't be solved by subsetting. this might make a good alternative to Xwayland though, which can be exciting.

isopede 10mo ago

Look, my setup works for me. Just add an option to reenable spacebar heating.

Shekelphile 10mo ago

Does this mean we can finally be done with the farce of pretending that Wayland is a serious contender for replacing X11?

paulryanrogers 10mo ago
Why is it not? I get the impression Wayland has been built by former X devs
- liampulles 10mo ago
  The issue (to my understanding) is that it is a very different protocol, which makes it quite onerous for application and desktop environment developers to transition to. Also, since some desktop environments have really grown opposed to Wayland (e.g. XFCE) it puts the application developer in the position of having to wait.

fleroviumna 10mo ago

[dead]

webprofusion 10mo ago

Nice but 2008 called and want their git web UI back. I can't take anything "modern" seriously if it seems firmly archaic, my problem I get it.

lloydatkinson 10mo ago
Very much your problem.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
Zambyte 10mo ago
https://git.kernel.org https://git.kernel.org

cardanome 10mo ago

Please prioritize to keep accessibility features working. This is really the main issue with wayland. Yes, it might be more stable these days and work fine for you. We can talk how how it makes writing you own WM needlessly complicated and all that but the one thing that makes wayland unacceptable is its lacking accessibility story. After so many years. Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later. It is the first thing you should think about when designing new software.

hambes 10mo ago
As someone who is not deep into linux desktop history: Can you please elaborate on the missing accessibility features in wayland or direct me to resources on that? I've been using wayland for a while now and am very happy with it, but my accessibility needs are pretty basic.
- cardanome 10mo ago
  See this comment for example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075#46381858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075#46381858 Here is a slightly-hopeful article: https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-doesnt-love-me-back-post-4-wayland-is-growing-up-and-now-we-dont-have-a-choice/ https://fireborn.mataroa.blog/blog/i-want-to-love-linux-it-d...
  - hambes 10mo ago
    thank you!
bigyabai 10mo ago
> Accessibility is not something you can worry about adding later. I don't think there's any concrete proof of this. Ideally I think people want accessibility handled by their WM/DE; you're not getting Windows or macOS-quality a11y "for free" unless your desktop embraces it. At which point you might as well make it a separate, aftermarket protocol and slap it into d-bus. If the Linux ecosystem is going to be fragmented and move past single-point-of-failure, polishing Xorg's accessibility works against the goal of standardized a11y.

maximgeorge 10mo ago

[dead]

coretx 10mo ago

[flagged]

mkoubaa 10mo ago

The Wayland people were right about everything

morshu9001 10mo ago

Funny that this shows up now. I just started trying to write an entire window server + DE combined in Rust, for educational purposes.

HolyFenrir 10mo ago

Between this and zigx zig can become the whole x11 stack https://github.com/marler8997/zigx https://github.com/marler8997/zigx