Tech News
← Back to articles

Phoenix: A modern X server written from scratch in Zig

read original related products more articles

Phoenix

Phoenix is a new X server, written from scratch in Zig (not a fork of Xorg server). This X server is designed to be a modern alternative to the Xorg server.

Current state

Phoenix is not ready to be used yet. At the moment it can render simple applications that do GLX, EGL or Vulkan graphics (fully hardware accelerated) nested in an existing X server. Running Phoenix nested will be the only supported mode until Phoenix has progressed more and can run real-world applications.

Goals

Simplicity

Be a simpler X server than the Xorg server by only supporting a subset of the X11 protocol, the features that are needed by relatively modern applications (applications written in the last ~20 years).

Only relatively modern hardware (made in the last ~15 years) which support linux drm and mesa gbm will be supported, and no server driver interface like the Xorg server. Just like how Wayland compositors work.

Security

Be safer than the Xorg server by parsing protocol messages automatically. As it's written in Zig, it also automatically catches illegal behaviors (such as index out of array bounds) when building with the ReleaseSafe option.

... continue reading