Skip to content

README.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
199 lines (155 loc) · 7.78 KB

README.md

File metadata and controls

199 lines (155 loc) · 7.78 KB
Raw

yserver

A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust.

The goal is not to clone Xorg. It is to provide a practical X11 server that runs real desktop environments, window managers, and applications on modern Linux while dropping legacy baggage (non-TrueColor visuals, indirect GLX, the DDX driver ABI, endian-swapped clients, and so on).

See docs/high-level-design.md for the full design and scope.

Name

The yserver name is the 'working' name as it was the first idea that popped into my head when starting the project. But there are multiple projects on GitHub with this name (but none for X11 servers), the name is subject to change. Not a priority now.

Status

yserver (standalone DRM/KMS) can run full desktop environments.

You can run your steam games on yserver and have it perform 'almost' on par with Xorg. Please try it out and report.

See docs/extensions.txt for a list of all supported/implemented extensions.

Recent work

  • X11 server-side window borders, solid and tiled (awesome)
  • damage-clipped repaint on non-composited desktops: only what changed is redrawn, cutting compositing GPU load to roughly a third
  • direct compositor scanout — a fullscreen compositor pixmap is flipped straight to the CRTC instead of being composited first
  • DRI3 1.4 syncobjs served through DRM (@ariel3259), with GPU fences published to the client's release points
  • Present: vsync-off clients uncapped, and no-vsync pacing stabilised (@ariel3259)
  • GLX: GetDrawableAttributes/MakeCurrent parity with Xorg, vendor names derived from the render driver (@ariel3259)
  • per-device pointer acceleration profiles from desktop settings (@ariel3259)
  • Mesa OML MSC rate queries (@erpalma)
  • reverse-PRIME (@AprilGrimoire)
  • a root source Picture now honours IncludeInferiors, so maim no longer captures just the background
  • no more ghost window on the next workspace after switching (i3 + fastcompmgr)
  • a correct cursor with no cursor font installed — the cursor and nil2 fonts are bundled instead of falling back to a text font
  • FreeBSD VT switching fixed, and Ctrl+C no longer kills the server
  • multi-GPU: the render node is resolved on split display/render SoCs, and non-desktop connectors are ignored (touchbar on M2 macbook pro)
  • binary packages for aarch64 as well as x86_64

Previously

  • starty launcher (startx-style: display number picking, MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1, session teardown)
  • Present completions paced to the vblank, and the Present 1.4 acquire timeline honored (fixes free-running clients, fullscreen video, Plasma's spinner)
  • keyboard layout switching: stale per-key overrides cleared and a legacy MappingNotify broadcast, so clients pick up the new layout (@azytar)
  • FreeColors dispatched instead of failing with BadRequest (Tk compatibility) (@erpalma)
  • GLX pbuffers, backed by a real GPU pixmap — Chrome and Steam now get GPU acceleration
  • scanout buffers allocated via GBM and imported into Vulkan (wider driver/modifier coverage)
  • yserver is now truly idle when nothing happens
  • core-loop fairness and backpressure
  • RANDR output properties, read and write (minors 12/13/14)
  • RANDR output identity passthrough: EDID, EDID_DATA, ConnectorType
  • RANDR fractional refresh rates from real kernel mode timings
  • Xorg-compatible output names (HDMI-1, not HDMI-A-1)
  • X-Resource client accounting with LocalClientPID in QueryClientIds
  • per-device libinput settings (mice and touchpads) actually apply
  • XI1 feedback controls, resolution control, real event selections
  • pointer motion history (GetMotionEvents)
  • XI2: relative RawMotion deltas, scroll-stop on finger-lift, implicit pointer grabs, unified freeze state
  • XTEST cursor comparison
  • RENDER: full standard PictOp family, a8-mask destinations for CompositeGlyphs, ClipByChildren parity for Composite/Glyphs/Traps/Tris
  • perf: glyph rendering batched into one instanced draw per text run
  • cursor recoloring, and depth-1 wire bitmaps for XCreatePixmapCursor
  • XKB group state and GetMap component filtering (@AprilGrimoire)
  • CopyArea source resolution simplified (@AprilGrimoire)
  • stable-toolchain build fixed on Ubuntu 26.04 (@erpalma)
  • Direct-only seat model (libseat dependency dropped)
  • much better responsiveness on NVIDIA GPUs
  • newly working apps: Steam (WebGL), ImageMagick import region-select, KDE Plasma RandR resize + ARGB popups (@erpalma), fullscreen games/video under Cinnamon
  • newly tested and fixed desktops: plasma X11 (sonic DE)
  • binary releases for Fedora/Debian/Ubuntu/Alpine
  • FreeBSD now works
  • Display hotplug now works
  • xauth support (no xhost ACL support - not needed as we're unix socket only)
  • XINERAMA support
  • RANDR gamma correction (redshift)
  • direct mode VT switch
  • XKB runtime layout change
  • LEDs driven from XKB state
  • XFIXES pointer barriers
  • XC-MISC XID recycling
  • musl (Alpine) build working
  • newly tested and fixed desktops: bspwm/sxhkd, enlightenment 0.27, icewm, awesome, openbox, picom, blackbox

Demo

With TFP implemented, we now support compiz, demo here:

compiz-720p.mp4

Tested WMs/desktops

yserver has been tested end-to-end against the following WMs/desktops:

  • Cinnamon
  • MATE
  • XFCE
  • FVWM3
  • sonic (KDE plasma X11 fork)
  • wmaker
  • openbox
  • awesome
  • picom
  • compiz
  • icewm
  • blackbox
  • bspwm/sxhkd
  • i3/fastcompmgr
  • enlightenment e16 + e27

Hardware tested

  • AMD — Ryzen 9 6900HX; i9 13900k + RX580 and RX 6800
  • Intel — i5-7200U iGPU.
  • NVIDIA — i5 6500 with GTX 1050 (proprietary driver).
  • Snapdragon X1 X1E80100 (Adreno X1, Turnip).
  • Apple M1 MBA, M2 MBP on Asahi Linux (apple-drm KMS + asahi GPU, Mesa AGX-V).
  • Virtual — virtio-gpu inside virtme-ng (Venus passthrough).

FreeBSD was tested on the i9.

Installation and setup

Full instructions — dependencies per distro, device access, display manager and console startup, key bindings, troubleshooting and packaging — are in docs/setup.md, also installed to $prefix/share/doc/yserver/setup.md.

The short version, from a source checkout:

just install-local                   # builds and installs to /usr/local
sudo usermod -aG video,input $USER   # then log out and back in

Then switch to a free console and run starty. yserver drives atomic KMS directly with no seat manager, so it needs access to /dev/dri/* and /dev/input/event* and a working Vulkan driver.

Packages

  • Arch (and derivatives): yserver on the AUR
  • Fedora, debian, ubuntu and alpine packages in Releases (x86_64 and aarch64)

The release files are loose packages, not repositories, so install them by path:

sudo dnf install ./yserver-*.rpm
sudo apt install ./yserver_*.deb
sudo apk add --allow-untrusted ./yserver-*.apk   # signed with a per-build key

See also yserver(1) and starty(1).

Regression coverage with xts5 and rendercheck

We run the X.Org X Test Suite (xts5) against yserver to gauge protocol completeness.

Latest pass numbers per scenario live in docs/test-status.md.

To run XTS yourself, you need to install the following extra packages:

sudo pacman -S --needed autogen automake autoconf make xtrans xterm xorg-xset xorg-fonts-misc xorg-xdpyinfo xorg-bdftopcf xorg-mkfontscale xorg-util-macros

Then clone https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/test/xts.git next to the yserver repo. Build it with:

./autogen.sh
make

Switch to a free VT and use just xts-yserver-hw. It takes about 50 minutes, don't touch mouse/kb, xts drives the mouse on some tests.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for the toolchain, the checks CI runs, and the signed-commit requirement.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. Please check LICENSE.