Here's a good video explaining some of X's problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 Long story short:

Here's a good video explaining some of X's problems: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIctzAQOe44 Long story short: the X11 protocol (which Xorg/X is an implementation of) was created in 1980, and was made for drawing stuff like this: http://xawm.sourceforge.net/Xaw.gif http://xawm.sourceforge.net/Xaw.gif The important distinction between X and any modern display server is that nowadays we separate compositor (that which composites application content into what you see on the display) and toolkit (that which draws text boxes, buttons, progress bars etc.) into two. X was designed to do both these things. This isn't practical for several reasons. So far people have worked around this issue, but many feel it's time to stop working around it (since the X codebase is a complete mess due to this "working around"), and develop something from scratch that does what we want for a modern desktop in 2013.