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Comment by josteink | Hacker News Reader

> All I want is init scripts and X11, but the horizons are shrinking. I've already compromised with systemd, and I don't like it. I see BSD in my future

Freedesktop wants to kill X11 and are working continuously on that, to the point if rejecting patches and banning developers.

Popular desktop environments are increasingly depending on Linux-only things. KDE has officially removed support for FreeBSD in Plasma login manager (because of logind dependency).

Gnome 50 plans to obsolete X11 completely.

If you want that simple, bright future of yours, you’ll have to fight/work for it.

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> Freedesktop wants to kill X11 and are working continuously on that, to the point if rejecting patches and banning developers.

Are you referring to the developer of Xlibre, who submitted multiple broken patches & kept breaking ABI compatibility for little to no reason[0]? Or someone else?

[0]: see discussion & linked issues in the announcement https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44199502

I’m talking about that developer, yes. And I’m sure there’s more to the story than just ABI compatibility.

He wanted X11 to thrive. Freedesktop however has a goal for Wayland ultimately to replace X11, right? X11 should die. This is not hyperbole. It’s a stated goal.

So I think there’s more to the story than the simplified ABI aspect often mentioned here on HN.

Also Gnome killing X11 support is real.

So is KDE backing down on BSD-support.

These are facts, not opinions.

> I’m sure there’s more to the story than just ABI compatibility

The number one goal for the Xwayland / Xorg devs is stability. Breaking ABI compatibility is a pretty big problem if stability is your goal.

We don't have to guess, the PRs & history are still there. You could easily go through them and find examples of the project members being unreasonable about ABI compatibility.

But of course that would destroy the narrative.

> Freedesktop wants to kill X11

There is a difference of opinion. Freedesktop wants to "stabilize" X11. That does mean that they do not want to evolve Xorg. However, it does not mean that you cannot keep using it or that they are going to take it away. In fact, it is still being maintained and will be for a long time.

You can interpret the rejecting of patches and banning of developers as political. However others see the rejection and banning as protecting the stablity that is the goal.

If your goal is for Xorg to evolve and not to stabalize (fair), you may prefer Xlibre as a project.

Phoenix looks pretty cool too.

KDE Plasma and GNOME are trying to kill X11. Or, at least, they do not want to maintain support for it in their projecs. And COSMIC did not bother to add support for X11 at all. That will probably be the trend on desktop Linux.

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