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Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig, 20 days ago, 445 comments https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46380075 https://news.ycombinator.com/ite

• powerwordtree 10mo ago
  Thanks for the link — Phoenix is a great project, and it clearly shows that a clean, modern X11 implementation still resonates with many developers. What I’m talking about is something different. My post is not about building an implementation myself, but about advocating for a direction. The idea is not to keep Xorg’s implementation or its internal abstraction layer, but to preserve the design philosophy of X itself — the distributed, protocol‑based, client/server model that enables remote graphics, composability, and implementation diversity. A key advantage of following the X philosophy is that we don’t need to change GPU drivers, because modern Linux already has Mesa/KMS/DRM as the real driver layer. A new protocol and a lightweight, strictly‑scoped abstraction layer could sit above that, combining X’s distributed design with modern techniques from Mesa, without inheriting X11’s legacy complexity. This layer would not implement any concrete rendering or window system logic — only provide the minimal interface needed for distributed graphics and multiple implementations to coexist. This avoids the “Android-style” direction where the graphics stack becomes local-only and loses distributed capabilities. Instead, it keeps the door open for a healthier, multi‑implementation ecosystem. (English is not my native language, so this reply is translated with AI.)
  • wmf 10mo ago
    the distributed, protocol‑based, client/server model that enables remote graphics, composability, and implementation diversity This mostly sounds like Wayland to me. Anyway, build it.