Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig • Hacker News Board

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#361

Post by foxrider » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

reppap wrote: post #73

ccakes wrote: post #13

This is a great project! I like and use Wayland but the portal protocols and extension mechanism does leave a lot to be desired. Wayland is still quite a way behind Windows and macOS in terms of what productivity users need An X11 rewrite with some security baked in is an awesome approach. Will be watching!

I don't really understand what is supposedly missing in Wayland for productivity users? At work I have been using gnome with the wayland backend for years at this point and I can't really figure out anything that's missing.

The xdg-desktop-portal stuff is still too immature. For example, my friend wanted my help after upgrading his Pop_OS to 24.04, and 24.04 replaced GNOME with COSMIC. COSMI had no RemoteDesktop portal (and still doesn't have it), so we couldn't use RustDesk like we always did without him installing a GNOME session just for that.

I've been an i3 user for almost two decades, but eventually switched to Sway - to this day there's no InputCapture portal, so I can't use Synergy with Sway, forcing me to switch to i3 while I'm working.

It's been over 10 years of things like that. There's always SOMETHING missing.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#362

Post by foxrider » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:42 PM UTC

gen2brain wrote: post #184

bloppe wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not technically behind on window positioning. Rather, it was a deliberate choice not to support it. You can very reasonably object to that, but it is sorta a necessary measure to prevent clickjacking.

Did such an attack with crazy moving windows happen in the past?

Happened a lot in browsers.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#363

Post by lproven » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:43 PM UTC

yxhuvud wrote: post #316

maxdamantus wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Per-display DPI settings fwiw, Xorg already had this, since you can set the DPI for each display through RandR/xrandr. In both X11 and Wayland it's up to the toolkit to actually detect the setting and rasterise accordingly. Wayland actually went backwards in this respect by using "integer scales" (eg, 1, 2, 3) instead of fine-grained DPIs (eg, 96, 192, 288), so using a scale of 1.5 would result in downscale blur (t…

You can have different dpi and refresh rate per monitor in X, but you cannot do it while having a shared desktop across them.

X11 can do it. It's Xinerama that can't.

These days Xinerama is the only mainstream tool for dual head, but there used to be others. Nvidia Twinview was one. I bought my first dual head box in 1996 with two Matrox Millennium cards (although it mainly ran NT4) and those cards later went into my dual Athlon XP machine. That ran SUSE until Ubuntu came out.

Xinerama isn't a sine qua non. It's just easy so it became ubiquitous. Maybe it's time to replace it.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#364

Post by singpolyma3 » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:48 PM UTC

Izkata wrote: post #263

singpolyma3 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long term if x11 starts having issues then probably https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayback/wayback will be it

> which allows for running full X11 desktop environments using Wayland components Wait so is this turning Wayland into a client/server model like X11, where eventually it could support existing window managers and other stuff separate from the compositor? I remember a year or two ago wondering if that would ever happen and I think I only got one reply saying it wouldn't happen because it was unnecessary.

Yes basically. It's one full screen xwayland context you run a normal x11 wm in

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#365

Post by coryrc » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:51 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #343

coryrc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the issues are trivially resolved, why did the authors of X decided to abandon X? They convinced their employers Wayland would be better? > Xscreensaver/lock screens on Qubes are still broken. Most people aren't nation-state-level targets and don't worry about security to that degree. But they do like global hotkeys.

By now I am not sure if these posts can stil be given the benefit of the doubt or are just dishonest. Who were the developers pushing wayland because of their employers? Kristian Høgsberg (who was a significant xorg developer, because people always deny that wayland was written by xorg guys) originally developed wayland in his free time, it then became a freedesktop project (I would argue not a group run by corporate…

I didn't think my explanation implied how you interpreted it.

I thought everybody knew Wayland was started by some people working on Xorg already; I did not mean to imply otherwise. Many or all were paid for their work. They believed Wayland was a better approach, and, AFAIK, at some point switched to be paid full-time to work on Wayland instead of X. Which, sounds a lot like they convinced their employer (or a new employer) to pay them to work on Wayland instead of X. Do you believe this is a fair summary of the situation?

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#366

Post by zingar » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:52 PM UTC

socketcluster wrote: post #116

The name Phoenix is overused. There is an Elixir framework called Phoenix. I think I also heard of other projects with that same name before. It's a bit like the name 'Apollo'; besides the moon landing project, I know like 2 dev projects called that and also there is a sales SaaS platform with that name. Surely people should run a search first before choosing a name...

There’s an AI coding tool called phoenix.love as well

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#367

Post by coryrc » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 8:59 PM UTC

gf000 wrote: post #311

coryrc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the issues are trivially resolved, why did the authors of X decided to abandon X? They convinced their employers Wayland would be better? > Xscreensaver/lock screens on Qubes are still broken. Most people aren't nation-state-level targets and don't worry about security to that degree. But they do like global hotkeys.

What employers? Also, this level of security is wanted even on a "I don't want my sister to look at my stuff" level, no need to go nation-state level.

Kristian Høgsberg, for example, was a Red Hat employee. Then he worked at Intel, where it appears he continued work on Wayland? So Red Hat and Intel at least? People are being paid full-time to work on Wayland, so those companies.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#368

Post by uecker » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 9:02 PM UTC

grim_io wrote: post #139

nish__ wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the worst argument ever. The choices in the Linux community is what's made it the best OS in the world today.

Linux on the desktop only took of because Ubuntu, with mixed results and a lot of controversy, decided to standardize and polish the experience for "normies". The distribution sprawl I largely see as a detriment to the ecosystem.

I remember seeing Linux gaining some traction 15 year ago, and Ubuntu focusing on polishing the user experience (with initiatives such as fixing "One hundred paper cuts"), but then this changed instead of keeping this stable the great rewriting began. Seeing Wayland (which is just one example) users having a problem with screen sharing just convinces me how much of a self-own this was from the Linux community.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#369

Post by coryrc » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 9:11 PM UTC

eptcyka wrote: post #340

coryrc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the issues are trivially resolved, why did the authors of X decided to abandon X? They convinced their employers Wayland would be better? > Xscreensaver/lock screens on Qubes are still broken. Most people aren't nation-state-level targets and don't worry about security to that degree. But they do like global hotkeys.

I care about being able to use the same password between the display manager, tty and lock screen auth. Yet, I cannot. I think the original maintainers and developers of Xorg would be the best people to choose if it is worthwhile to continue working around X or do something else. Yes, X provided functionality that now WMs get to implement themselves - since the developers of Xorg worked closer to Gnome and Qt people,…

What? My screensaver password is the same as my login.

> I think the original maintainers and developers of Xorg would be the best people to choose if it is worthwhile to continue working around X or do something else.

"I think the owners of the Internet infrastructure would be the best people to choose what websites I'm allowed to visit"

No, the users have spoken and continue to speak up that Wayland doesn't serve their use cases.

Re: Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

#370

Post by bashkiddie » Thu, Dec 25, 2025, 9:22 PM UTC

grim_io wrote: post #76

iamnothere wrote: post #34

This is the kind of initiative I’d prefer to see from X preservationists. Great job, I hope it succeeds. I prefer Wayland, but there’s still a place in the world for X; it just needs new dev teams to shoulder the burden.

I disagree. The choices in the Linux ecosystem lead to unnecessary fragmentation and development/packaging nightmares. I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again. Then we can all focus on making just one display server as good as possible.

> I say let X11 die, bury it, and never let it rise again.

totally awesome! And once we are done with X11, lets put pulseaudio to the grave! We can all focus on having an audio stack that does realiably stream to many sinks!

And polkit... su and sudo should have been enough