this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
311 points (98.7% liked)
Linux
48689 readers
905 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's... complicated. Wayland is the heir apparent to Xorg. Xorg is a fork of an older XFree86 which is based on the X11 standard.
X11 goes back... a long time. It's been both a blessing and a liability at times. The architecture dates back to a time of multi-user systems and thin clients. It also pre-dates GPUs. Xorg has been updating and modernizing it for decades but there's only so much you can do while maintaining backward compatibility. So the question arose: fix X or create something new? Most of the devs opted for the later, to start from scratch with a replacement.
I think they bit off a bit more than they could chew, and they seemed to think they could push around the likes of nvidia. So it's been a bumpy road and will likely continue to be a bit bumpy for a bit. But eventually things will move over.