Linux: Simple Wayland environment to replace Xorg

Ariadne Conill has presented the experimental Xorg compatibility layer Wayback. This enables Linux distributions to completely abandon the Xorg server without taking the ground out from under the feet of desktop environments such as Mate or Xfce, which currently still require one.

X server with Wayland substructure

Wayback does not directly implement the X11 supported by Xorg, which has been used by common Linux distributions to generate and output user interfaces by default for over a quarter of a century. Rather, Wayback is a simple compositor based on the modern Wayland protocol that executes X11 applications with the help of Xwayland.

Gnome Shell or KDE Plasma do a similar thing when they run in Wayland mode. However, these two only take individual windows from Xwayland to then compose the output image with them and the interface elements of native Wayland applications. With Wayback, on the other hand, Xwayland runs in “rootful” mode and therefore has control over the entire screen area – which is necessary, among other things, so that desktop environments can position their control elements as usual. A Red Hat and Xfce developer optimized this “rootful” mode specifically for such purposes almost two years ago.

Wayback to replace Xorg in Alpine Linux

According to Wayback's project description, it is intended to replace Xorg on Alpine Linux; Ariadne Conill helped start this distribution and is still one of the main developers. Elsewhere, however, she emphasized that she wanted to get Wayback up and running, but did not want to support it in the long term.

Meanwhile, other developers praised Wayback's approach. Among them was Asahi Lina, who was one of the main developers of the kernel graphics driver for Asahi Linux: “Anyone who needs a full X11 environment had better forget about the fuddy-duddy Xorg forks (a reference to X11Libre, which released its first version last week) and rely on this future-proof path.”

As is so often the case, however, the trick with Wayback lies in the details – so the developers still have a lot of work to do before everything runs smoothly. As other distributions also want to get rid of Xorg sooner rather than later, with a bit of luck the approach will receive sufficient backing.

(mho)