Yserver: A modern X11 server written in Rust

Source: Hacker News

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 (multiple screens, 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 now run full MATE/XFCE/Cinnamon desktops. Other tested window managers include FVWM3, e16 and wmaker.

We support the following extensions:

• BIG-REQUESTS

• Composite

• DAMAGE

• DPMS

• DRI3

• GLX

• Generic Event Extension

• MIT-SCREEN-SAVER

• MIT-SHM

• Present

• RANDR

• RENDER

• SHAPE

• SYNC

• X-Resource

• XFIXES

• XInputExtension

• XC-MISC

• XKEYBOARD

• XTEST

GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap

Implemented and tested on AMD, intel, Asahi and Qualcomm. It can NOT (read: NEVER) work on nvidia proprietary driver, and on the only nvidia card I have (GTX 1050), the nouveau driver can not even bring up Xorg. Nouveau may work on other cards, but untested.

Demo

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

compiz-720p.mp4

Hardware tested

yserver (standalone DRM/KMS) has been tested end-to-end against a MATE / xfce4 / Cinnamon desktop on:

AMD — Ryzen 9 6900HX (Rembrandt, RDNA2, RADV); i9 13900k + RX580 (Polaris/GCN4, RADV).

• Intel — i5-7200U (Kaby Lake, ANV) 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).

Running the standalone DRM/KMS server

yserver uses libseat for seat management if available. It can also drive atomic KMS directly, but then your user needs access to /dev/dri/ and to /dev/input/.

It requires a recent stable Rust toolchain and the following dependencies:

Arch

sudo pacman -S just gcc seatd libxshmfence libxkbcommon libinput shaderc systemd-libs fontconfig

Ubuntu

sudo apt install just gcc libseat-dev libxshmfence-dev libxkbcommon-dev libinput-dev glslc libudev-dev libfontconfig-dev

Alpine

export RUSTFLAGS=“-C target-feature=-crt-static” apk add gcc musl-dev fontconfig-dev freetype-dev libxshmfence-dev libxkbcommon-dev libinput-dev libseat-dev shaderc

Use with a display manager (lightdm)

lightdm can launch yserver as its X server for a graphical login (its X-server command is configurable, unlike gdm/sddm).

• Install the binary (requires sudo): just install (installs it at /usr/local/bin/yserver).

• Point lightdm at it — create /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf.d/99-yserver.conf:

[Seat:*] xserver-command=/usr/local/bin/yserver

• From a free TTY, restart lightdm: sudo systemctl restart lightdm.

The greeter appears, you log in, and the login keyring is unlocked by lightdm’s PAM stack.

Use directly on TTY

switch to a free TTY, then run:

just startx

which will start yserver and then execute your ~/.xinitrc (or fall back to /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc)

Some convenience keybinds are available:

• Ctrl-Alt-Backspace: zap the server, return to console

• Ctrl-Alt-Enter: create a screenshot/scanout of the framebuffer in CWD

• Ctrl-Alt-D: dump all drawables as PPM files to CWD

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.

License

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