--- title: yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust description: Yserver is an open-source X11 display server written from scratch in Rust, aiming to run real desktop environments and applications on modern Linux rather than... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust | daily.dev og:description: Yserver is an open-source X11 display server written from scratch in Rust, aiming to run real desktop environments and applications on modern Linux rather than... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/5SOfMpjoZ.png og:image:alt: yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary Yserver is an open-source X11 display server written from scratch in Rust, aiming to run real desktop environments and applications on modern Linux rather than clone Xorg. It drives atomic KMS directly without a seat manager, supports a wide range of extensions (RANDR, RENDER, GLX, Composite, DRI3, XKB, XInput, etc.), and has been tested end-to-end against desktops like Cinnamon, MATE, XFCE, and window managers such as FVWM3, i3, and enlightenment. Recent work includes GLX pbuffers with real GPU acceleration for Chrome and Steam, RANDR output identity passthrough, FreeBSD support, and binary packages for Fedora, Debian, Ubuntu, and Alpine. The project intentionally drops legacy baggage like indirect GLX and non-TrueColor visuals, and is regression-tested against the X.Org Test Suite (xts5). ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 2 discussions and 263 comments across hackernews, lobsters (as of 2026-08-16). **TL;DR:** Much of the discussion is a deep-dive into whether dropping legacy multi-screen X11 support is reasonable, alongside significant skepticism about the project being heavily or entirely LLM/AI-generated rather than hand-crafted. **Sentiment:** 15% positive · 45% mixed · 40% skeptical **The case for** - Some see value in the project simply as a learning/exploration journey, regardless of the end result's practical value. - Several clarify that dropping legacy X11 'screens' (as opposed to multi-monitor via Xinerama/RandR) is a reasonable, justifiable simplification. - A few express genuine interest in an alternative to Xorg/Wayland given dissatisfaction with both existing options. **The pushback** - Many are put off upon discovering the codebase appears to be largely or entirely AI/LLM-generated, per the AGENTS.md and contributor graphs. - Some argue dropping indirect GLX is a real regression since it enables 3D-accelerated remote X11, a capability neither Wayland nor most alternatives replicate. - Several question the practical use-case for yet another X server given feature-sparse scope and vibecoded implementation. - Calling multiple screens 'legacy baggage' drew immediate pushback and mockery before people worked out the terminology distinction. - Skepticism that publishing AI-generated code as a 'project' adds little value, likened to committing build artifacts to version control. **By community** - hackernews (mixed): A long, technical thread mostly relitigates X11's multi-screen/Xinerama/DPI/refresh-rate history, with a smaller side debate over whether AI-generated open-source projects are worth sharing. - lobsters (skeptical): Commenters quickly identify the project as LLM/agent-generated and express doubt about its purpose, while also debating the legacy-screens claim and comparing it to other from-scratch X server efforts. **Hottest debate:** Whether excluding legacy multi-screen (as opposed to multi-monitor) support is a reasonable modernization or a dismissive mislabeling of a still-used feature. **Open questions** - Is the codebase substantially or entirely AI-generated, and does that matter for its value as a project? - How does yserver compare in maturity and goals to other from-scratch X server rewrites like Phoenix (Zig) or the X11Libre Xorg fork? **Highlights** > Yes. Modern X uses Xinerama, which lets a single screen span multiple displays. Windows in X11 live in exactly one screen, so multiple screens means Windows can’t span screens. The WM can always emulate the multi-screen model on top of Xinerama, but not vice versa. Indirect GLX isn’t legacy though. It is necessary for 3d acceleration with remote X11, which remains one of the things that X11 and Microsoft’s proprietary RDP extensions can do well and almost nothing else does at all. > — [david\_chisnall on lobsters · 23 points, 1 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/yy8je0/yserver_modern_x11_server_written_from#c_jdo5kd) > Written by LLMs, see the AGENTS.md. > — [Rovanion on lobsters · 23 points, 2 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/yy8je0/yserver_modern_x11_server_written_from#c_o6gedm) > 2007 is when xrandr 1.2 came and made it feasible to use on a laptop - enable/disable outputs dynamically without restarting X. Xinerama (the extension that enables one virtual screen over multiple outputs) existed before but the layout could only be defined statically - so you'd need to restart your X server with a different config if you wanted to connect a monitor or a projector or something. > — [Liskni\_si on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48533799) > I'm just so tired of these lazy, worthless comments about any AI-written software. Look, I've been writing open source software for 20+ years, and after getting seriously burned out by it, I picked it up again with Claude (proof: https://github.com/jleclanche) I can tell you a few things from that: 1. I'm writing better software than before, because AI is less lazy than I am. It's not necessarily always smarter, but writing correct software has gotten so stupidly cheap that it doesn't make sense not to do things right... so when you tell AI to do things correctly, it tends to know what you're talking about. 2. I'm more curious than before, because AI gives me time to explore many paths, very fast. A project like this one, like someone else said elsewhere in the comments, is more about the journey than the destination. There is no "write me an X11 server but do it in rust and post on hn" prompt that does the thing. There's a journey of building, learning, understanding. I'm not saying the resulting software is particularly valuable, but the journey is. This is HN, and you're shitting on someone who is using the most powerful pieces of technology we've achieved to go on a journey of discovery of X11 internals for the past 2 months. It's just shameful. And yeah, if I were the author, I'd run claude over all the transcripts and extract a story with what's been taught and learned throughout. But I'm not the author. Just someone enjoying living in absolute science fiction. > — [scrollaway on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48533486) > The vibecoded part I am not at all keen on, but I for one would rather like a new generation of X. There's very little in Wayland I want -- it seems to have been written by younger people with much better eyesight than me, who care about things I cannot even sense, but who do not care about things that matter a great deal to me. All the GUIs I like using on xNix run under X. Unity, Xfce, Window Maker, and failing that, Openbox, all are based on X. The ones I'm curious about and would like to see revived, like CDE, ROX, Maxx Interactive, EDE, even XPde, all are X based. The ones I _don't_ like -- GNOME and modern KDE -- are moving to Wayland. So, for instance, this means that Asahi Linux is unusable to me, as it only supports Wayland, so it only has my two least-favourite desktops, neither of which I could stomach for day-to-day use. Stuff Wayland does I don't care about because _I am unable to see it_: * HDR * Variable refresh rates * HiDPI display support * Flicker free refresh * Tear free video Stuff Wayland can do I want: * Different DPIs on different screens That's it. The end. (Parenthetical note: Xfce 4.20 can do this on X.org, but it seems to do it by setting the lower-DPI display to a lower resolution that delivers the desired scale -- which works, but makes it go fuzzy. This is not ideal: my use case is modern fairly hi-res laptops, which occasionally I plug into lower-res external screens.) Stuff Wayland can't seem to do that I want: * Primarily keyboard-controlled desktop environments with classic keyboard-operated menu bars * Window moving and resizing controlled by the Windows keystrokes So far there is one desktop on Wayland I can stomach: COSMIC. It's frankly a bit ugly, and it's so clunky that it irritates me, but what it does, it does well and it's very fast. There are next to no standard keyboard controls, menus are a sad joke, but it's quick and somehow it drives my old non-upgradable non-replaceable ThinkPad onboard nVidia GPUs. Bring on X12! > — [lproven on lobsters · 8 points, 3 comments](https://lobste.rs/s/yy8je0/yserver_modern_x11_server_written_from#c_vnvssg) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48531394) · 112 points · 242 comments - [lobsters](https://lobste.rs/s/yy8je0/yserver_modern_x11_server_written_from) · 10 points · 21 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [There is a New X11 Server, Written in Rust, With the Help of AI](https://daily.dev/posts/there-is-a-new-x11-server-written-in-rust-with-the-help-of-ai-dyoxmpdin) · It's Foss · 25 upvotes · 1 comments - [Why Not Yserver? It’s Xserver, But Rust-y.](https://daily.dev/posts/why-not-yserver-it-s-xserver-but-rust-y--l2g3iqwzl) · Hackaday · 7 upvotes · 0 comments - [Vibe Coded X11 Server Written In Rust Adds Xinerama, FreeBSD Support & Other Features](https://daily.dev/posts/vibe-coded-x11-server-written-in-rust-adds-xinerama-freebsd-support-other-features-vzjaxzwl5) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [YSERVER 1.5 Released With Reverse PRIME Support & Other New Features](https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-1-5-released-with-reverse-prime-support-other-new-features-1echhlabr) · Phoronix · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#open-source](https://daily.dev/tags/open-source), [#linux](https://daily.dev/tags/linux), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#graphics-programming](https://daily.dev/tags/graphics-programming) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz"},"datePublished":"2026-08-16T23:50:39.484Z","dateModified":"2026-08-16T23:51:10.378Z","description":"Yserver is an open-source X11 display server written from scratch in Rust, aiming to run real desktop environments and applications on modern Linux rather than...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8f3bcb92dddb263c1dc1567fb286ab5b?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/8f3bcb92dddb263c1dc1567fb286ab5b?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Lobsters","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Lobsters","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--tl8v_Fku--/f_auto,t_logo/v1698841318/logos/lobste.jpg","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/yserver-a-modern-x11-server-written-from-scratch-in-rust-5sofmpjoz","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"open-source,linux,rust,graphics-programming","timeRequired":"PT6M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Lobsters","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"yserver: A modern X11 server written from scratch in Rust"}]} ```