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Are there any other display servers aside from Wayland and X11 with its forks? (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 4 days ago by pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] zarenki@lemmy.ml 42 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Mir is a pretty notable example. In 2013, around the same time development on Wayland sessions was picking up for the other desktops, Canonical decided to try doing their own incompatible thing and designed their own display server system to replace X for the then-upcoming version of their Unity desktop.

Ubuntu switched from Unity 7 to Gnome 3 before Unity 8 and Mir were ready, leaving both projects abandoned by Canonical and handed off to the community. Long after it had already lost what little relevance it had, Mir eventually was converted into a Wayland compositor.

[–] hexagonwin@lemmy.today 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

i believe it's still being used by ubuntu touch (ubports) though

[–] chronicledmonocle@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

AFAIK they replaced Mir with Wayland on Unity a while ago. They basically rewrote Unity to run on it instead.

[–] Katherine1@midwest.social 25 points 4 days ago
  1. Technically Wayland isn't a display server. It's a protocol compositors implement.
  2. Technically, xorg is a fork of an older x11 project.
  3. No.
[–] wgs@lemmy.sdf.org 20 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There is arcan which is its own thing. I'm not aware of any mature application using it for the desktop though.

Otherwise if you assume that every wayland compositor basically endorse the role of a display server, there are plenty of them.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 3 points 4 days ago

Interesting! I can't believe I haven't come upon Arcan before. I looks as if it's approaching display servers and an evolution in management in a smart way.

TY

[–] provectus@lemmy.ml 20 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

There is pheonix, and it is written fully in zig. I think it is a X11 protocol built from scratch, but will include modern features like HDR and VRR. It will also become compatible with Wayland apps along the way. I do not know the status, and I did not do much research on it.

[–] vas@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Interesting, checked it now. Phoenix: https://git.dec05eba.com/phoenix/about/

[–] markstos@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

The spec looks reasonable. I could see it replacing XWayland as a more modern and secure alternative for X11 apps not yet ported to Wayland.

[–] wlfrn@lemmy.ml 7 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

The register published an article about this last month. Titular "frame" is addressed first, but the story also describes XLibre, wayback, arcan, and others

https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/07/14/frame-a-new-x11-server-implemented-directly-in-assembly/5270498

[–] vas@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

"Frame" is AI slop. I think it was explained that the whole or most of the project is written by Claude Code. https://github.com/isene/frame#license

How many bugs there are and for how long it's going to be maintained, anyone can guess themselves.

[–] turbowafflz@lemmy.world 10 points 4 days ago (1 children)

There was W, which came before X but I don't think any copies of it or even authentic screenshots of it are available on the internet.

[–] daggermoon@piefed.world 5 points 4 days ago (8 children)

Unrelated to your question but why do people hate Wayland?

[–] novafunc@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 4 days ago

Wayland wants to avoid problems that X11, Windows, and MacOS have. It deliberately avoids some "features" that application developers expect. A lot of it relates to security and privacy.

An example is that a window does not know where it is positioned on your screen and it cannot choose where to place its windows. Personally, I love this behavior. It means I can open an open and it opens in a consistent location (for most Wayland compositors, that's centered on the screen). But others don't like that. They would like the app to control where it opens; for some apps (a niche nowadays) you may have an application window and multiple more supporting windows, but on Wayland, they would all just get opened on top of each other rather than being placed around the main window.

[–] wgs@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Here's my 2cts as someone who (used to) hate Wayland:

The main reason is frustration. Using Xorg was simple. You install xorg-server (and its million dependencies), a window manager and you're good to go. Fire up the server, and then run all the software you need. The window manager is just one of them (and is entirely optional).

Wayland is another story though. You don't "install Wayland". It's only a spec. Just like you don't install HTTP to browse the web. You either install Firefox, epiphany or dillo, which all support a different amount of that spec. For example dillo is ultra light but doesn't support javascript. It's the same with Wayland compositors, except that the spec changes every week (or used to, back in Wayland's early days). And it was so frustrating to come from Xorg where everything works to another system where you couldn't even copy/paste between windows !

Wayland being only a protocol is it's greatest strength and main weakness. It's good because it's extensible and everyone's free to implement whatever extension they need. Unfortunately it went in all directions with everyone coming up with new extension everyday, causing fragmentation when there was barely 3 competitors (kde, gnome and wlroots). As a developer, it's ultra confusing, just like on the web when you used to add support for chrome, mozilla and IE. And requires a lot of effort because the landscape is constantly changing. So if devs are lost, imagine users...

Hopefully nowadays there's some kind of consortium that's voting Wayland extensions, which is a great thing. Things move at a pace that is okayish to keep up with, and most basic expected features are there (copy/paste, screen save/lock, desktop shells, etc...).

[–] provectus@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

I totally agree. Install xorg and wm, and boop startx. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of a wayland compositor, and it is still troubling me. When I do have a Wayland compositor set up, it definetly feels like a cleaner setup. I do not hate Wayland, but consider it different.

[–] jumping_redditor@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago

the answers to most hardware specific questions with wayland are compositor specific, which is annoying.

[–] HieroProtagonist@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

I don't hate Wayland, but I don't like it either. I just grew up with xorg and I know how to use the tooling around it intuitively and really like some of its features. For me personally there is simply no reason to move away.

[–] deadbeef79000 11 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Second System Syndrome otherwise know as 'throwing the baby out with the bath water'.

X11 is old, extraordinarily old for software. As such, the problems it solves are not really problems anymore.

Rather than gradually evolving X11, into say X12, the whole thing got dumped on the trash pile and a brand new entirely incompatible thing called Wayland was started from scratch.

Replacing software with literally hundreds (if not thousands) of person-years of development devoted to it over its lifetime is hard. Which meant that Wayland had an unfeasibly steep hill to climb, as such it's early days were tumultuous and it got a bit of a bad rap.

There is far more (qualitative and quantitative) history than will fit into this ~~margin~~ comment.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

The developers of Wayland are the same who did X11. They determined it was to patched together to continue adding modern features.

[–] BananaTrifleViolin@piefed.world 12 points 4 days ago

Well the other side of that is managing software with hundreds (if not thousands) of person-years of development over it's lifetime is also hard. There is a sunken cost fallacy with X11, and X11 was constantly extended to be what people needed it to be rather than the best design for the problems arising.

Having said that, I'm not sure Wayland is the ideal solution. X11 doesn't get in the way of solutions to problems, while Wayland really does. We needed a new and modern display server, but the Wayland project has decided to make that quite restricted - I personally think the security model is too far in the other direction from X11.

[–] olafurp@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

Because they have issues because of their specific setup/hardware/software. I don't so I like it, it has more features.

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (2 children)

It was not truly ready for end users until the latest years but was shipped despite. It also broke some kinds (I mean a lot of) software, I cannot imagine how many lines of code had to be rewritten because of Wayland. And it also lacks screensavers. And is more resource-demanding.

[–] daggermoon@piefed.world 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Now, I like a good screensaver but I don't think that's useful to anyone without a CRT.

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It simply looks cool. If screensavers are redundant, then LED keyboards, animated wallpapers, and a lot of other common things are as well.

Weird how people downvote my comment with obvious and objective reasons why people dislike Wayland, as if I personally hated Wayland. Why does shit like Wayland vs X11 become some kind of religion?

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

You might be getting down voted because of your claim that it doesn't have screensavers, which is just flat out wrong.

Behold, a screensaver on Wayland:

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

It does not lack screensavers and there is no reason it has to be more demanding. The protocol isn't more demanding, the implementations are

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works -1 points 4 days ago (4 children)

There is no way to get a real screensaver work, prove me wrong. And no one cares if it is the protocol or the implementation. It just works worse than X11 on modest hardware, and people dislike it.

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

prove me wrong.

Ok

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Sauce?

[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

My desktop sitting right in front of me.

[–] communist@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-Mint-Wayland-Screensaver

It was never impossible or difficult it's just nobody bothered because screensavers are actually bad.

Not all implementations are slower, only certain ones.

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

no one cares if it's the protocol or the implementation. it just works worse than x11 on modest hardware

Actually, people that are not hell bent on using x11 do care... That is because the protocol is inherently more efficient than x11, and the compositor matters.

So if you try to run kwin or mutter, there's no doubt they are going to be more demanding than a plain xorg server (but not more than xorg+KDE or xorg+gnome). But if you try to use a compositor made for low hardware like labwc, it's gonna run laps around xorg. And you can even use labwc on lxqt, so you get your familiar desktop environment but with a modern Wayland compositor.

Just try it. Dig up an old intel atom netbook and see if you prefer using xorg or labwc

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

The old machines I have are that old, that they barely get along with LXQt (X11 if I memory serves), and my main one can even stand KDE (with Wayland ofc)

[–] edinbruh@feddit.it 3 points 3 days ago

Well, try lxqt+labwc. You'll need to set it up, but if you are already willing to tinker with xorg in that machine it won't throw you off too much. You'll be pleased with the result

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Why do you want a screensaver in 2026? Who still uses them.

[–] pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works 2 points 3 days ago

Cuz I like them. And many people do. They're beautiful and have been around for decades, why deprecating them now?

[–] PanArab@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Yes, NeWS (Network extensible Window System) from Sun Microsystems but it hasn't been maintained for years and had commercial licensing fees, and DirectFB used in embedded systems.

And as others mentioned Mir from Canonical which now implements the Wayland protocol.

[–] kragil@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/gamescope

Not that useful, but the answer is Yes.

[–] vas@lemmy.ml 11 points 4 days ago

It's Wayland though (and partially Xorg)? I mean, the protocol that the client has to speak with gamescope is wayland (or, somewhat indirectly, Xorg).