> Speaking of the future: How much effort do we (does someone) want to put > into a DE which requires an X11 stack?
It is far easier for a DE developer to maintain an X11 DE, since they would only have to be concerned with having certain pixmaps and rectangles drawn to the screen (like a titlebar), and some input handling (like pressing the close button on a window). Wayland on the other hand, requires a DE developer to maintain their own compositor, which may also include dealing with GPU memory management, handling rendering calls, handling input devices directly, and things of that nature. The "DE" would now have to store window locations, handle BLIT operations, handle the mouse, handle display planes, framebuffers, and everything related. Pretty much, the DE would now have to handle all the things previously handled by the X server. It is *far* easier to maintain an X11 DE, than it is to maintain a Wayland DE/compositor. The DE maintainer, with X11, is only concerned with how the user may interact with his machine, and to forward those interactions to the X11 server accordingly. The DE does not have to store window locations, mouse locations, or anything of the like, since the DE can simply query them from the server. The DE does not have to manage GPU memory, since X11 does this for you via pixmaps. X11 will also handle BLIT operations, and rectangle copies/draws. With the Wayland protocol, the DE maintainer would be required to make his own compositor, since the Wayland protocol does not allow for these queries whatsoever. This does make the protocol itself simpler, but it comes at the cost of combining a significant number of responsibilities into one program, which were previously handled separately. Sent with Proton Mail secure email. On Tuesday, June 30th, 2026 at 06:46, Michael J Gruber <[email protected]> wrote: > Justin Wheeler venit, vidit, dixit 2026-06-30 01:30:18: > > Hello i3wm SIG & Fedora community, > > > > I'm reaching out to the SIG about the future of the Fedora i3 Spin as > > we work through the Fedora Linux 45 release cycle. > > > > As some of you know, I was involved with the i3 SIG as a maintainer in its > > earlier days, and I care a lot about the work this community has built > > together. But I want to be honest about where things stand: active > > maintenance of the Spin has been light in recent release cycles. We need to > > determine if there are people ready to carry this forward, or if it's time > > to make a graceful exit. > > > > > > *## What needs to happen* > > > > The Fedora i3 Spin needs active maintainers to keep shipping. > > Thanks for taking care of the i3 spin so far. > > I'm a former i3 user, current sway user, and I've never used a spin > other than Workstation. This is no criticism of any of the spins, just a > point of input that not every "niche DE" user is necessarily a spin > user. OTOH, there's quite some value in maintaining the DE packages and, > in particular, base config, even if there is no such spin. I know this > is different for atomic variants, but I'm wondering whether i3/sway > folks are really those who'd use a pre-baked atomic image, or rather a > base for their own (bootc?) images. > > Speaking of the future: How much effort do we (does someone) want to put > into a DE which requires an X11 stack? > > Michael > -- > _______________________________________________ > devel mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] > Fedora Code of Conduct: > https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ > List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines > List Archives: > https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] > Do not reply to spam, report it: > https://forge.fedoraproject.org/infra/tickets/issues/new > -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected] Do not reply to spam, report it: https://forge.fedoraproject.org/infra/tickets/issues/new
