XLibre at 4 months: anyone using it?

[r0ckhopper]

@Mellow

To those pointing out that XLibre is “trashing” X11 and its devs which is against the Arch code of conduct… Ok, fine if you and the arch wiki admin view it that way. but why are other projects that do that fine then?

It’s simple - other projects don’t have a clear and libellous slagging off of other projects in their About and README. The timing of the deletion can be questioned (why now?), but it is a clear and unambiguous breach of the Arch Linux Code of Conduct.

@Mellow

just as an excample, gnome has done something like this multiple times.
One being that they claimed they dont know what XFCE is.

It was a comment by one individual. A stupid comment, even if intended as a joke, but only a comment, not a prominent part of GNOME’s About and README.

@Mellow

Wasnt it recently that some gnome devs also went after X11, being super happy to remove anything from x11 and also calling it x11ism to keep the middle click paste thing? Whenever they remove something that is left over in gnome from x11 they proudly say “goodbye x11” cant that be interpreted as toxic too? just asking.

They have made a development decision to concentrate their efforts on Wayland. The middle click proposal is being challenged. Removing x11 and replacing it with Wayland has been an explicit goal of GNOME for several years. “Goodbye x11” could also be seen as a celebration of a long & hard development effort.

@Mellow

Gnome is also not really friendly to its users, as any ticket from a user or contributer has to adhere their “my way or the highway philosophy”. any proposal or contribution will be rejected that goes against their way. They are not very open to ideas.
It is known that it isnt easy to work with them.

Absolutely! But that’s not a breach of the Arch Linux Code of Conduct.

@Mellow

i like having options, i like having alternatives should something with “the standard” not work

As a Xfce user I am happy that a fork of x11 exists. But based on the quality of previous commits to x11 by the lead XLibre developer, the regressions since the project has launched, and the combative & dishonest statements about x11, I’m not confident about its success. I would like it to suceed, but I’m sick of any valid criticism of it being framed as “political” and “Big Tech” (this is a general point, and not in any way directed at you @Mellow ).

@Mellow

I do not like when information gets lost.

Fair point. But the minimal information on that Wiki page can be restored if the XLibre project grows up and removes those sections from its About and README.

[MyNameIsRichard]

@r0ckhopper

But the minimal information on that Wiki page can be restored if the XLibre project grows up and removes those sections from its About and README.

I would say that’s pretty unlikely as it was a very angry fork. Maybe they’ll mellow with time though.

Edit: Typo

[r0ckhopper]

@MyNameIsRichard

Maybe they’ll mellow woth time though.

They need to if they are to get wider adoption and attract more (& better) developers. If you’re advocating for “meritocracy” as this project does, you prove your worth by being better and more widely used than x11, not by libelling it.

[allewyn]

I just made the conversion. Here’s my fastfetch. I don’t know how to change sddm, but that’s not systemd dependent. Is it?

There are manyXlibre packages installed but YAY shows many are not. Are there important ones?

[ajgringo619]

On my Hyprland system, I only have the following installed:

$ yay -Qqs xlibre
xlibre-input-libinput
xlibre-xserver-beta
xlibre-xserver-common-beta

I also have the following Xorg packages (not sure if these will be replaced):

xorg-fonts-encodings
xorg-setxkbmap
xorg-xauth
xorg-xdpyinfo
xorg-xinit
xorg-xinput
xorg-xkbcomp
xorg-xkill
xorg-xmodmap
xorg-xprop
xorg-xrandr
xorg-xrdb
xorg-xwayland
xorgproto

It’s the same for my Xorg-based VMs: Cinnamon, Xfce, I3. Most of the other packages are either for drivers or support for nested sessions.

[allewyn]

Duly noted. Thank you.

My list shows

yay -Qqs xlibre
error: endeavouros: missing required signature
error: core: missing required signature
error: extra: missing required signature
error: multilib: missing required signature
error: xlibre: missing required signature
xlibre-input-libinput
xlibre-video-amdgpu
xlibre-video-ati
xlibre-xserver
xlibre-xserver-common

It’s a wonder it runs.

Anybody know how I get these sigs?

[ajgringo619]

@allewyn

Duly noted. Thank you.

My list shows

yay -Qqs xlibre
error: endeavouros: missing required signature
error: core: missing required signature
error: extra: missing required signature
error: multilib: missing required signature
error: xlibre: missing required signature
xlibre-input-libinput
xlibre-video-amdgpu
xlibre-video-ati
xlibre-xserver
xlibre-xserver-common

It’s a wonder it runs.

Anybody know how I get these sigs?

You shouldn’t need both of the video drivers; one or the other should be enough. As for the signature errors, what does your /etc/pacman.conf contain?

EDIT: you should create a new post with that so you’ll get more eyes on it.

[allewyn]

My bad. I had typed “ppp” in pacman.conf for no apparent reason and entered the path to the repo twice and those were making trouble. All good now.

[manyroads]

Is it possible for someone to make up an idiot’s guide/ script for xorg based EOS conversion to Xlibre — I have managed to blow things up a few times and won’t share my work. (A rare of act of kindness on my behalf - I know.)

[ajgringo619]

Here’s how I’ve been setting up machines, works with VMs and bare-metals installs:
(NOTE: using xlibre’s binary package repo; haven’t used the AUR packages in a long time)

add xlibre repository keys

sudo pacman-key --recv-keys 73580DE2EDDFA6D6
sudo pacman-key --finger 73580DE2EDDFA6D6 
sudo pacman-key --lsign-key 73580DE2EDDFA6D6

add xlibre repository to /etc/pacman.conf (NOTE: I add this to the end of the repo list)

[xlibre]
Server = https://x11libre.net/repo/arch_based/x86_64/

refresh package databases

yay -Sy

install packages (when prompted to replace Xorg packages, select yes)

(for the latest release)

yay -S xlibre-xserver{,-common}-beta xlibre-input-libinput

(for the stable release)

yay -S xlibre-xserver{,-common} xlibre-input-libinput

reboot

[manyroads]

Do you happen to know if this works with Nvidia (NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4050 Max-Q) and cuda. I use those for my local AI (not gaming… ).

[ajgringo619]

I ran the above on the following systems:

• QEMU VM (w/Nvidia 1660 Super)
• Nvidia 4060 (current system - Xfce, I3, Cinnamon, Sway, Hyprland)

[winnyace]

I actually want to ask: why? What’s wrong with Wayland? In my experience, for a few reasons now, Wayland has worked more smoothly for me than X11/Xorg. I’m not in the holy wars here, it’s just that I keep seeing people around saying how Wayland is bad and X11 is better and whatnot, yet no one really seems to be complaining about specific grievances. Maybe something went under my radar?

[Mellow]

For 1 Wayland stopped working for me for no reason for almost 10 months… Not even long ago (happy that X11 still worked)
For 2 there still are occasionally issues with Wayland + Nvidia.. rarely but it does happen, in form of artifacts/flickering. (One game for some reason does this to me sometimes)
3 weird (special) setups with external GPUs, especially when you have more than 2 GPUs (integrated+dedicated+external) don’t really work with Wayland, only X11.
4 backwards compatibility,… Yes, very, very old setups may not work with Wayland, which is in fact the main reason why people want to keep X11, or xlibre supported.

I’m just affected by the first 3 points, but most may be by point 2 and 4

[ajgringo619]

While I’ve switched to Wayland, I still have Xlibre installed for the apps that still require - or just run better under - X.

[manyroads]

Just a suggestion but perhaps the Wayland chat should have its own thread. It is a worthy discussion but not for this thread— methinks.