Given who founded Xlibre (Metux) has some...interesting history (he was banned from the X.org project due to poor code quality and practices [1]) I would say no
Metux himself also has some "fascinating" takes as archived from other projects such as the LKML [1] and Devuan [2] mailing lists
it seems that there are only two additional significant contributors (an anonymous "stefan1111" and Alan Coopersmith, an X.org member who maintains the Solaris port), and a larger number of people who contributed a couple of commits here and there - and Enrico Weigelt (metux)'s commits are about three times as many as everyone else's combined. So, it is still very much his project, although not exclusively.
As for your links: You point to some exchanges which indicate problematic opinions, and an exchange which indicates, or at least, in which the project founder is accused of being somewhat reckless in making changes. The first kind of are legitimate to point out, and would make me wary of befriending him, but not directly relevant to his technical capabilities. The second kind is more worrying. Do you have a link to someone analyzing/considering the changes made to Xlibre relative to Xorg?
Be that as it may - while this does not sway me into belief in Wayland, it does introduce a grain of salt into my view of the X side of things, and thank you for that.
Ah yes, "he doesn't agree with me, therefore he must be [insane|incapable|inept]" argument tied in with some nothing burger about Metux pushing code that could break things.
While I'm over here having to move to Xorg as Wayland breaks my applications about once every two months. Breaking changes, poor code quality, LLMs, or maybe it's just that the devs of Wayland were more motivated by their own personal needs/wants then the Xorg users.
I can never get back the hours I lost troubleshooting graphics drivers only to realize that Wayland claimed it should work, but doesn't. I'll take whatever Metux gives me if it works, or from anyone else for that matter.
Not the person you're replying to, but years ago Metux used to send PRs to a different project that I maintain. He was difficult to work with, insisted that his way was the right way when I wanted something else, and his code quality was usually middling at best. Some of his PRs were of the annoying "tidy this up" form, where it felt like someone who just wanted more commits in a repo and lines in `git blame`.
I hope his xlibre project is successful, but my opinion of the project is certainly tainted by my past interactions with him.
I don't doubt you. I think it's a good way to look at it. I appreciate what he's trying to do with Xlibre but I would never work in that environment with or without him.
As I said to the other guy I just hope this is better than what we have and I'll take about anything at this rate. I don't care to deal with people on that level anymore, which is why I stopped developing OSS over 10 years ago; everyone has their opinions about the code, if they can't solve that they fight over politics to "justify" forking and the downward spiral ever goes downward.
Ah yes, [...] some nothing burger about Metux pushing code that could break things.
Not could break, did break. Multiple times. When a contributor repeatedly submits broken and untested PRs, the correct solution isn't to let him keep trying as often as he wants.
In context if you read what I said I didn't imply Metux was the best out there; I was highlighting how absolutely terrible Wayland is and how I will take anything at this point.
You can do that without misrepresenting the issues that got him banned. This happens almost every time there's a discussion on Xorg-related stuff, and I'm tired of seeing the maintainers getting slandered over and over.
So, here are a few direct links to the comments/issues/MRs (in chronological order), some very minor stuff, some bigger. I also didn't cherrypick examples where the maintainers acted perfectly, but IMO metux is far more difficult as you can see. Note I didn't search very long, so keep looking if you want to see more before you're sure:
Citations from people who want the whole platform die. (Actually they get paid for that, it's their dayjob to kill X11, but it can be their personal belief as well)
Yep, it is important to remember Metux was a sole guy supporting Xorg for many years while everybody else outright refused to touch the codebase. Then they blamed Metux for "breaking compatibility." While this sounds like a plausible reason, long time Linux users could recall that every major X release broke something in one way or another. It's just how it is, there is no way around it. They blamed Metux for doing something that cannot be avoided while maintaining the project, and claimed that Xorg must burn.
They also claimed features like namespaces would be impossible to implement in Xorg, which was later proven false as Xlibre brought XNamespaces -- as well as HDR and seat management. :)
I'm personally a Wayland user because I have AMD iGPU and use whatever comes by default, but I couldn't imagine Nvidia users having the same experience as me, even with their new drivers. I know it sucks because I used to own Nvidia. Removing Xorg while Nvidia users make up the majority is insane.
IIRC they blamed Metux for unnecessarily breaking BC, e.g. renaming & moving around symbols when it wasn't necessary and didn't improve features or fix bugs.
When you're working on something this foundational, BC breaks should always have a good reason, and he repeatedly didn't give any. This causes churn for all downstream consumers.
It's just how it is, there is no way around it.
There literally is a way around it: not doing unnecessary BC breaks.
You're trying to cancel this guy's project on hackernews comments because he quoted winston churchhill in 2025 and didn't get a vaccine donut in 2019?
What do you get from it? Is he your enemy? Seems like you are trying to destroy him using this comment as attack vector. And this comment is well prepared and sourced and easily repeatable, so I presume you use multiple attack vectors like this.
Just an observation. And as an observer, this is annoying to see.
Comments
Given who founded Xlibre (Metux) has some...interesting history (he was banned from the X.org project due to poor code quality and practices [1]) I would say no
Metux himself also has some "fascinating" takes as archived from other projects such as the LKML [1] and Devuan [2] mailing lists
[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/work_items/179...
[2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2021/6/10/957
[3] https://web.archive.org/web/20190404153507/https://lists.dyn...
I was about to reply that it is now a project with many contributions, but looking here:
https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver/graphs/contributors?from...
it seems that there are only two additional significant contributors (an anonymous "stefan1111" and Alan Coopersmith, an X.org member who maintains the Solaris port), and a larger number of people who contributed a couple of commits here and there - and Enrico Weigelt (metux)'s commits are about three times as many as everyone else's combined. So, it is still very much his project, although not exclusively.
As for your links: You point to some exchanges which indicate problematic opinions, and an exchange which indicates, or at least, in which the project founder is accused of being somewhat reckless in making changes. The first kind of are legitimate to point out, and would make me wary of befriending him, but not directly relevant to his technical capabilities. The second kind is more worrying. Do you have a link to someone analyzing/considering the changes made to Xlibre relative to Xorg?
Be that as it may - while this does not sway me into belief in Wayland, it does introduce a grain of salt into my view of the X side of things, and thank you for that.
Ah yes, "he doesn't agree with me, therefore he must be [insane|incapable|inept]" argument tied in with some nothing burger about Metux pushing code that could break things.
While I'm over here having to move to Xorg as Wayland breaks my applications about once every two months. Breaking changes, poor code quality, LLMs, or maybe it's just that the devs of Wayland were more motivated by their own personal needs/wants then the Xorg users.
I can never get back the hours I lost troubleshooting graphics drivers only to realize that Wayland claimed it should work, but doesn't. I'll take whatever Metux gives me if it works, or from anyone else for that matter.
Not the person you're replying to, but years ago Metux used to send PRs to a different project that I maintain. He was difficult to work with, insisted that his way was the right way when I wanted something else, and his code quality was usually middling at best. Some of his PRs were of the annoying "tidy this up" form, where it felt like someone who just wanted more commits in a repo and lines in `git blame`.
I hope his xlibre project is successful, but my opinion of the project is certainly tainted by my past interactions with him.
I don't doubt you. I think it's a good way to look at it. I appreciate what he's trying to do with Xlibre but I would never work in that environment with or without him.
As I said to the other guy I just hope this is better than what we have and I'll take about anything at this rate. I don't care to deal with people on that level anymore, which is why I stopped developing OSS over 10 years ago; everyone has their opinions about the code, if they can't solve that they fight over politics to "justify" forking and the downward spiral ever goes downward.
Not could break, did break. Multiple times. When a contributor repeatedly submits broken and untested PRs, the correct solution isn't to let him keep trying as often as he wants.
idk man, it seems like a bunch of glass houses.
In context if you read what I said I didn't imply Metux was the best out there; I was highlighting how absolutely terrible Wayland is and how I will take anything at this point.
You can do that without misrepresenting the issues that got him banned. This happens almost every time there's a discussion on Xorg-related stuff, and I'm tired of seeing the maintainers getting slandered over and over.
So, here are a few direct links to the comments/issues/MRs (in chronological order), some very minor stuff, some bigger. I also didn't cherrypick examples where the maintainers acted perfectly, but IMO metux is far more difficult as you can see. Note I didn't search very long, so keep looking if you want to see more before you're sure:
- Small procedural issues: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
- metux being difficult regarding work with nvidia: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/commit/095e8ee...
- metux causes regression & it stays unaddressed for weeks, even though he was pushing on other branches: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
- metux is marking threads as resolved when comments are unaddressed: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
- metux causing unnecessary API breakage in commits marked trivial: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/work_items/176...
- metux isn't properly testing his PRs: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/work_items/179...
- metux breaking downstream again: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/xserver/-/merge_requests...
None of these are terrible on their own, but IMO taken together I can't fault the maintainers at all.
What applications?
That's quite a disingenuous response to something I said with citations and no direct stated opinions on the person.
Be better
Citations from people who want the whole platform die. (Actually they get paid for that, it's their dayjob to kill X11, but it can be their personal belief as well)
Yep, it is important to remember Metux was a sole guy supporting Xorg for many years while everybody else outright refused to touch the codebase. Then they blamed Metux for "breaking compatibility." While this sounds like a plausible reason, long time Linux users could recall that every major X release broke something in one way or another. It's just how it is, there is no way around it. They blamed Metux for doing something that cannot be avoided while maintaining the project, and claimed that Xorg must burn.
They also claimed features like namespaces would be impossible to implement in Xorg, which was later proven false as Xlibre brought XNamespaces -- as well as HDR and seat management. :)
I'm personally a Wayland user because I have AMD iGPU and use whatever comes by default, but I couldn't imagine Nvidia users having the same experience as me, even with their new drivers. I know it sucks because I used to own Nvidia. Removing Xorg while Nvidia users make up the majority is insane.
IIRC they blamed Metux for unnecessarily breaking BC, e.g. renaming & moving around symbols when it wasn't necessary and didn't improve features or fix bugs.
When you're working on something this foundational, BC breaks should always have a good reason, and he repeatedly didn't give any. This causes churn for all downstream consumers.
There literally is a way around it: not doing unnecessary BC breaks.
What year are we in?
...Did we suddenly abandon bettering ourselves in 2026?
The "be better" comment was used exclusively by the worst people i knew for 4 years straight. So for me, absolutely.
It's condescending, unnecessary, and it is a polarizing comment people who are miserable leave to annoy the rest of us.
Sorry that self-improvement hurts you so
Sorry that you are incapable of seeing how others perceive you
You're trying to cancel this guy's project on hackernews comments because he quoted winston churchhill in 2025 and didn't get a vaccine donut in 2019?
What do you get from it? Is he your enemy? Seems like you are trying to destroy him using this comment as attack vector. And this comment is well prepared and sourced and easily repeatable, so I presume you use multiple attack vectors like this.
Just an observation. And as an observer, this is annoying to see.
That's a deliberate misreading of events but okay :)