Linux has a lot of distribution - here is the popularity ranking. Do all Linux distributions share the same X Server implementation ?
2 Answers
Of course nobody can know all X server implementations nor all Linux distros. There will be distros for specific use cases and they will ship legacy software, because of some specific reason.
But to the best of my knowledge, there is only one fully-featured standalone open source X Server implementation that targets Linux and still is being supported, the X.org Server, and so every Foss Linux distro that tries to support X natively will have to ship exactly that.
Not that not every Linux distro has to support X natively. With Wayland, there is at least a partially viable alternative to X (and with XWayland you could even run X applications; but XWayland is also part of the X.org Server, so that's also the same server). It is generally hoped that Wayland ecosystem reaches maturity, and that Wayland replaces the X protocol and architecture one day, getting rid of 40 years of questionable design decisions.
answered Nov 2, 2023 at 9:53
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1And the X.org developers have mostly switched to working on Wayland components, so from a community perspective there’s lots of overlap between X.org and Wayland. Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 12:47
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2For now it seems we are stuck with the X/Wayland dichotomy as Wayland brings its own questionable design decisions, many of which are no better than X's. Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 18:05
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@user253751 yes, but that's evoking a false balance. Just as we're stuck between steam engines and 4-stroke engines, and both have their downsides and kinks, but one is clearly technologically superior, even if it has problems the other doesn't. Commented Nov 2, 2023 at 18:17
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@MarcusMüller Wayland is not clearly technologically superior. It might look that way in the marketing, but when you delve a little bit deeper, it isn't. It's just technologically different in ways that certain influential people happen to like. Commented Nov 3, 2023 at 0:10
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@user253751 sorry. I know sufficiently well from working on direct memory access and on patching DRM drivers to get freaking acceleration to work on X.org how bad the X architecture works for that. Wayland is technologically superior. Not surprising - it's literally decades less of cruft. Sorry to shatter your conspiracy theory, but: it's not "influential people". It's basically everybody who's formerly been working on X.org that's now working on Wayland. Not because of "powerful people", but because X in 2023 is simply a technological deadend, and people who know graphics systems know. Commented Nov 3, 2023 at 0:36
Tiny Core Linux, a Linux distribution that focus on being as lightweight as possible, uses its own fork of Xvesa, an old minimal alternative X implementation, called TinyX. It might not support all of X.org features, but it worked well when I used Tiny Core. You have to sacrifice some things to make a modern Linux distribution that fits on 11 MB of disk and that only requires 50 MB of RAM.
So, yes, it's official, not all Linux distro ships with the X.org version of X11.
I'm also going to add that OpenBSD use its own fork of X.org called Xenocara. I don't believe they change much other than what they need to make it compile, so not really a different version than the X.org everyone else uses.
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how cool is that :) Yes! when performance and modern feature-completeness isn't your primary goal, but being able to build an absurdly compact system: what a nice thing! Commented Nov 3, 2023 at 0:43