Xorg is dead. Long live XLibre

[Brian MasinickModerator]

olsztyn wrote:

Wallon wrote:

This script is designed for systems using systemd, as it relies heavily on systemctl to detect, stop, and restart the display manager. However, antiX does not use systemd by default — it uses alternatives like SysVinit, runit, s6, dinit, or s6-rc.

Thanks @Wallon for your note of caution regarding the script…
I just want to add that on antiX thankfully it is not necessary for such complex scripts (even if script is modified accordingly)for XLIbre. XLibre components are already integrated in antiX repository by @anticapitalista, with some packages modified to nosystemd versions, in place of the original systemd versions.
Thanks to XLibre being already so well integrated in antiX it is sufficient to just install it as documented recently by @anticapitalista, except no extra repository needed, as all is in antiX repository now.

I hope you are right. I may have misunderstood something that @anticapitalista recently wrote concerning Xorg vs. XLibre. I had the XLibre configuration from the dev enabled repo, then took off dev once it was installed. I think that our regular repos will pick up the newer XLibre stuff; as of yesterday they did not, so instead I adopted the instructions provided by @Wallon to obtain the various XLibre packages directly from the XLibre source and I pinned those sources to 900 as opposed to 500 for other locations; the result was that I picked up the latest XLibre packages yesterday, and just to make sure the method worked I did it for both antiX and MX Linux and it worked for both without adding any systemD packaging requirements.

I believe that I shared the latest versions I applied; if not I can share that again. @Wallon already has the same packages as I do; he’s the “champion” of this technology here as far as I am concerned – not me.

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Brian Masinick
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[olsztynMember]

Brian Masinick wrote:

To me it’s clear that neither Xorg nor Wayland are appropriate: Xorg has been solid for a long time but it’s risky to stay there. Wayland has been around long enough to get things right and it has failed to do so. While it’s unclear whether XLibre is the forever answer, it does seem to address shortcomings in Xorg without veering off course as Wayland has done.

Thanks @Brian! This is the essence of the issue users are facing and the third way way seems XLibre… I have tested on many laptops so far, with different video hardware with no issues. Running XLibre antiX full time now…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
http://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[manyroadsMember]

I totally forgot that part. Thanks for the catch.

• This reply was modified 5 months ago by manyroads.

Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - http://many-roads.com
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
dwm-i3wm ~Reg. Linux User #449130
2026- the Second-Coming, Came-- and it's a train wreck

[manyroadsMember]

Brian, you make a good point and one that for us old nix folks find frustrating, I think. So many things have violated the “do one thing and do it well” philosophy, confusion now reigns supreme.

systemd is not the only only violator by any means. Nevertheless, I have been trying to build a robust info structure that is standalone (and fully resilient). The quandry is currency, stability and information sequestration. Xlibre seemed like a great concept, clean up the x11 house and stabilize- but now it’s getting buried in its own politics- I have no idea why that’s productive. I’ll probably just end up giving my script a try (dive in the deep end). My real worry is because I run a Small Language Machine on my gear via a small nvidia card I need nvidia to work. It does using x11- I’ll test it with Wayland and Xlibre next.

Thanks for listening (reading).

Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - http://many-roads.com
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
dwm-i3wm ~Reg. Linux User #449130
2026- the Second-Coming, Came-- and it's a train wreck

[Brian MasinickModerator]

manyroads wrote:

I totally forgot that part. Thanks for the catch.

You’re welcome @manyroads. I know that your intentions are positive.
Take a look at the approach that @Wallon took; he outlined it in a couple of posts; most of them are either on page 1 of this thread; a few additional things, allowing us to get the newer changes, were added; the rest are scattered through the first four pages, though there may be additional comments throughout this thread.

Key posts are

1) https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/xorg-is-dead-long-live-xlibre/#post-200228
2) https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic/xorg-is-dead-long-live-xlibre/page/2/#post-200331

That ought to be enough; @Wallon can weigh in if there are other key posts that help acquire the correct software.

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Brian Masinick
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[olsztynMember]

Brian Masinick wrote:

I think that our regular repos will pick up the newer XLibre stuff; as of yesterday they did not, so instead I adopted the instructions provided by @Wallon to obtain the various XLibre packages directly from the XLibre source and I pinned those sources to 900 as opposed to 500 for other locations; the result was that I picked up the latest XLibre packages yesterday, and just to make sure the method worked I did it for both antiX and MX Linux and it worked for both without adding any systemD packaging requirements.

I think your approach assures the latest versions of XLibre as becomes available from the source. On antiX repo we do rely on @anticapitalista to update as often as possible.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
http://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Brian MasinickModerator]

olsztyn wrote:

Brian Masinick wrote:

I think that our regular repos will pick up the newer XLibre stuff; as of yesterday they did not, so instead I adopted the instructions provided by @Wallon to obtain the various XLibre packages directly from the XLibre source and I pinned those sources to 900 as opposed to 500 for other locations; the result was that I picked up the latest XLibre packages yesterday, and just to make sure the method worked I did it for both antiX and MX Linux and it worked for both without adding any systemD packaging requirements.

I think your approach assures the latest versions of XLibre as becomes available from the source. On antiX repo we do rely on @anticapitalista to update as often as possible.

I agree; to be certain, that’s the way I have chosen and so far it has worked out well.

I spent a lot of time with the antiX setup yesterday. Since I am updating each of my systems I spent solid time with MX Linux, where I also used the @Wallon approach. MX Linux is also responding well to the most recent updates too.

I’ll be checking it today too. I have a @Farmer respin of antiX with Xfce; I’ll give it the same treatment and see if it also works out well.

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Brian Masinick
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[olsztynMember]

Brian Masinick wrote:

I agree; to be certain, that’s the way I have chosen and so far it has worked out well.

I spent a lot of time with the antiX setup yesterday. Since I am updating each of my systems I spent solid time with MX Linux, where I also used the @Wallon approach. MX Linux is also responding well to the most recent updates too.

The way I understand, your (and @Wallon, of course) approach is more general. In principle it should work for any Debian based distro. So far I implemented the antiX specific approach only, although I may not see the latest versions of updates as they become available. Also for MX Xlibre I may have to adopt yours (and @Wallon) approach, depending on availability of XLibre in MX repo…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
http://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[manyroadsMember]

For those who might want to try… here is what I have run and my very early results.

Here is what I ran- a tiny script:

sudo apt install -y extrepo
sudo extrepo enable xlibre
sudo apt update
sudo apt install xlibre

wmctrl and xprop are working for me on dwm right now (on debian test). Rofi, xsetroot,dmenu, j4dmenu-desktop, nitrogen, feh, xterm, firefox-esr, llama.cpp, recoll, thunderbird, geany, nvidia-vram, nano, maestral, mullvad-vpn are all working thus far. I think we have a decently functional environment for dwm. I’ll keep my testing going.

I have the following for rollback if I need it… I have not thus far needed it. If you do, I apologize in advance if it doesn’t work well for you. I do guarantee it to be worth every penny you paid for it though. ;^)

sudo rm -f /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xlibre-deb.sources
sudo apt update
sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg-core xserver-xorg-legacy xserver-xorg-input-all xserver-xorg-video-all
sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg
sudo apt autoremove
sudo reboot

Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - http://many-roads.com
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
dwm-i3wm ~Reg. Linux User #449130
2026- the Second-Coming, Came-- and it's a train wreck

[anticapitalistaForum Admin]

antiX users should use the XLibre debs from the antiX repos (trixie, testing and sid main).

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Brian MasinickModerator]

Brian Masinick wrote:

I setup my repos so that I can get the latest XLibre versions according to the pinning, backup approach, etc. and now I have the most recent version as of today:

X -version

XLibre X Server 1.25.1.4
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Current Operating System: Linux antix1 6.6.119-antix.1-amd64-smp #2 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun Dec 28 20:03:05 EST 2025 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.6.119-antix.1-amd64-smp root=UUID=218534c4-5ca3-416c-9e83-65cfe297eb40 ro quiet selinux=0
Current version of pixman: 0.44.0

I’ve now replicated this on THREE of my installed configurations:
1) antiX 26 first
2) MX Linux 25.1 second
3) antiX Trixie Xfce respin by @farmer

ALL of them are working.

This shows it for 3)

sudo X -version

XLibre X Server 1.25.1.4
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Current Operating System: Linux antix26 6.6.119-antix.1-amd64-smp #2 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Sun Dec 28 20:03:05 EST 2025 x86_64
Kernel command line: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.6.119-antix.1-amd64-smp root=UUID=c03de4d7-0fe7-4143-9182-ccf710e71949 ro quiet selinux=0
Current version of pixman: 0.44.0

dpkg -l | grep xlibre
ii  xlibre                                  1:7.8+5.0antix1                            amd64        XLibre X Window System
ii  xlibre-archive-keyring                  1.0.0-1                                    all          OpenPGP archive certificates of XLibre
ii  xlibre-x11-common                       1:7.8+5.0antix1                            all          X Window System (X.Org) infrastructure
ii  xserver-xlibre                          1:7.8+5.0antix1                            amd64        XLibre X server
ii  xserver-xlibre-common                   2:25.1.4-1                                 all          common files used by various X servers
ii  xserver-xlibre-core                     2:25.1.4-1                                 amd64        XLibre X server - core server
ii  xserver-xlibre-input-all                1:7.8+5.0antix1                            amd64        XLibre X server -- input driver metapackage
ii  xserver-xlibre-input-libinput           1:25.0.1-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- libinput input driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-input-mouse              2:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- mouse input driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-input-synaptics          1:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        Synaptics TouchPad driver for XLibre server
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-all                1:7.8+5.0antix1                            amd64        XLibre X server -- output driver metapackage
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-amdgpu             25.1.1-3.0antix1                           amd64        XLibre X server -- AMDGPU display driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-ati                1:25.0.1-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- AMD/ATI display driver wrapper
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-fbdev              2:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- fbdev display driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-nouveau            2:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- Nouveau display driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-radeon             1:25.0.1-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- AMD/ATI Radeon display driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-vesa               2:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- VESA display driver
ii  xserver-xlibre-video-vmware             2:25.0.0-1.0antix1                         amd64        XLibre X server -- VMware display driver

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Brian Masinick
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[Brian MasinickModerator]

Oh yes, I just HAD to throw this in there: while I was updating one of the non-pure antiX systems, I noticed an update of libelogind! Of course we don’t have that on our pure antiX solution! 🙂

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[anticapitalistaForum Admin]

Brian Masinick wrote:

Oh yes, I just HAD to throw this in there: while I was updating one of the non-pure antiX systems, I noticed an update of libelogind! Of course we don’t have that on our pure antiX solution! 🙂

and that’s why users need the antiX versions of xserver-xlibre-common and xserver-xlibre-core

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[manyroadsMember]

++1.
I’m not ‘very’ good at being PC; but at stirring the pot, I excel.

FWIW. XLibre seems very ‘snappy’ on my gear.

Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau - http://many-roads.com
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." H. L. Mencken
dwm-i3wm ~Reg. Linux User #449130
2026- the Second-Coming, Came-- and it's a train wreck

[Brian MasinickModerator]

anticapitalista wrote:

Brian Masinick wrote:

Oh yes, I just HAD to throw this in there: while I was updating one of the non-pure antiX systems, I noticed an update of libelogind! Of course we don’t have that on our pure antiX solution! 🙂

and that’s why users need the antiX versions of xserver-xlibre-common and xserver-xlibre-core

YUP: I confirmed that on the non-pure implementation. The true “antiX approach” IS important for those who don’t want ANY pieces of that unnecessary stuff. It’s crazy too, just like that Emacs image that also brought in that “unnecessary stuff”! I’m glad I spotted it and you kindly rebuilt an antiX clean version of Emacs!

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