In a recent announcement, the first edition of the project xlibre was presented, which is a fork of the x.org server. This release is labeled as a beta version and aims to test and identify any potential flaws. Xlibre 25.0 comes with ABI changes, meaning that re-installing X11-drivers is necessary for proper functionality. The project is open to collaboration with distributions and is willing to incorporate patches accumulated during the process of maintaining packages with the X.org server.
The fork was initiated by Enrico Weigelt (enrico weigelt), who has made significant contributions to the X-server. Enrico made approximately 1600 changes to the code base before forking the X.org Server. Enrico is also known for his work on AMD FCH GPIO and Virtio GPIO in the Linux kernel, as well as xnest. Enrico encourages individuals from diverse backgrounds to join the development of Xlibre and contribute to the promotion of X11. Over 10 participants have already joined the development, providing numerous changes to the project.
The decision to fork the project was driven by disagreements with the policies of X.org, which led to stagnation in development. Enrico advocated for active development and a thorough cleanup of the X-server codebase. Tensions between Enrico and the X.org team escalated due to changes causing problems, regressions, ABI violations, and malfunctions. Enrico also spread allegations that Red Hat intentionally hindered the progress of the X-server.
The initial release of Xlibre includes extensive code cleaning, elimination of technical debt, and the following new features:
- Support for X11-namespace xnamespace to isolate clients at the X11 namespace level.
- Translation of XNEST to XCB and removal of XLIB dependencies.
- Possibility of simultaneous installation of different ABI versions for seamless updates in distributions.
- Enhanced support for platforms other than Linux.
- Addressing