A roundup of new X11 server projects emerging in the Linux FOSS world. The headline entry is Frame, a new X11 server written entirely in x86-64 assembly by Norwegian developer Geir Isene, part of his broader CHasm stack of dependency-free tools. A second new server, yserver, is written in Rust. Both were built with significant LLM assistance (Claude, Codex, Copilot), raising questions about authorship. A third server, Phoenix, is written in Zig and remains active. The XLibre fork of X.org has 27 releases and broad distro support. The piece also highlights Arcan, a decade-old ambitious rethink of the entire Unix display stack with its own protocol, desktop environments, X11 and Wayland compatibility layers, and remote 3D acceleration — all hand-coded without AI assistance.
