I believe this is the correct forum for this. Tell me if this is not the case.
X11 was recently rolled back to its February 2024 version so if Ubuntu continues to receive updates from the main branch, it will actually downgrade everyone’s X11. This will break some things since many bug fixes and security patches were removed. Can Ubuntu swap to X11Libre as it now has higher API compatibility then X11 and is now a more stable project?
I have been testing out Xlibre on Mint for several months and I haven’t found any issues with it. I have tested on both new and old hardware ( 5 years old).
Ubuntu development has already replaced Xorg/X11 with Wayland, as discussed elsewhere, eg.
Ubuntu 24.04 LTS is a stable & released product, so only fixes are backported to it via the Stable Release Upgrade procedures so changes are somewhat limited, as you appear to be asking for a lot more than this.
where I don’t see this as a Ubuntu community or project discussion, but more of a feature request that maybe belongs on a bug tracker. I’ll move this to the Lounge, but it maybe moved again (if a better home is found for it).
If I understand it correctly, the lastest change to X11 is not going to affect Ubuntu since the version for 24.04 is locked and thus cannot be affected by malicious updates like this? Is there any version that could be affected my malicious updates like this? Meanwhile, 25.10 doesn’t support X11 at all so malicious updates will also not affect it.
I’m running resolute or what will be 26.04 when its released, and I’m using an Xorg/X11 session to reply here.
I have no idea what you mean by “malicious updates”.
Malicious uploads can occur (eg. upload to xz-utils ( liblzma) discovered back in 2024) which delayed almost all open-source projects as they ensured the malicious code was not in package code & rebuilt ~everything. That caused delay for the 24.04 beta’s release, but impacted Fedora & other as all malicious uploads can (discovery day/time & where they are in relation to next released being the only significant difference between them). Such malicious uploads by bad actors can occur, but are extremely rare!
I also am quite lost on this “malicious updates” -thing. I have this hunch that either this is “lost in the translation” (which I find most probable) or then OP has stumbled into X11 vs Wayland argument/war/conspiracy/boxin match, that has been going on for some time now after some DE’s have started moving into Wayland, and made assumptions from that.
@dinomonster I was referring to what I mentioned in the first post. Apparently, the maintainers of X11 rolled back X11 to a much earlier date. This got rid bug and security fixes. Any distro that continues to pull from the latest X11 will actually be installing an earlier version of X11 because of this. Thus, freezing X11 version so you don’t let allow the malicious roll back update into the distro or swapping to Xlibre would keep X11 in a more up to date state.
I was asking if there is any plans to swap to Xlibre after the version roll back update.
Since GNOME completely removed all Xorg related code, Ubuntu itself won’t really care anymore about X sessions, if Debian decides to adopt Xlibre, it will land automatically in universe and can be consumed from there by i.e. flavors that want to use it…
I highly doubt any volunteers will step up to maintain it solely in Ubuntu if it doesn’t come from Debian (maintenance of the Xorg (or Xlibre) stack isn’t something you do easily on the side, but feel free to prove me wrong and start maintaining it we’re a community after all, if someone steps up and proves they can do it, nobody will stop them)
I know Ubuntu is eventually swapping full Wayland but guiverc mentioned that Ubuntu 26.04 still uses X11. Was this built with the malicious X11 update? If so, it would benefit from either a locked X11 version before the rollback update or swapping to Xlibre.
X.Org Server 21.1.16, released in June 2025 is the lastest Xorg version before the roll back. For some reason I thought the roll back occurred later then this. The Xorg in the package you linked appears to be from 2/27/26.
The question I was asking is would Ubuntu be better if it either locked itself to the X.Org Server 21.1.16, released in June 2025 version or swapped to Xlibre? This question is both for the last version versions of Ubuntu that supported X11 interface and ones that don’t but still still have it in the Universe repository.
And that question is completely moot in the light that Ubuntu does not decide on the version (it just gets what debian has) and in the light that XLibre isnt in the archive today …
For the version thing you would have to ask debian, and well, XLibre is simply not available to switch to today …
Note that it is likely you wouldn’t have to “swap” anything, if XLibre lands in debian (assuming they accept it) and they do not throw out Xorg (I could imagine that debian does not want to throw out mature and well known old code and XLibre is still very young compared to the 40y of X11 …), both will be available in the Ubuntu archive too and flavors wanting to use either could then pick …
Pretty much what I getting at in the other thread.
And in that thread I never made any implication as to what you said even slightly and yet here we are with the above quote with you throwing out the big “if”.
Regardless I’m done.I know what was said and I’ll leave it at that.
we’re a community after all, if someone steps up and proves they can do it, nobody will stop them)