X11 Server Development Pace Hits A Two Decade Low

It shouldn't be news to you that most of the corporate-backed developers working on the Linux desktop are no longer investing in new feature work around the X.Org Server and have shifted their efforts to a Wayland-focused environment moving forward. In looking at the Git statistics for the X.Org Server over the course of 2022 it shows how the development has pulled back dramatically and now at a two decade low for the commits and code changes.

While Mesa's development has been very vibrant this year, the X.Org Server development pace has continued pulling back greatly from its late 00's and early 10's highs.

This year saw just 156 commits to the xserver Git master branch, down from 331 last year and well off the highs of 2,114 as the most ever back in 2008. This jives with the downward pace over the past decade of the number of new commits continuing to slide. But it's not just on a commit basis but in overall code churn, 2022 was another low for the X.Org Server. With the 156 commits this year, there were just 3,618 lines of new code added and 888 lines removed.... Compared to last year with its 331 commits seeing 31.4k new lines and 179k lines removed.

The X.Org Server development this year on a commit basis hasn't been as low since 2003 when there were just 125 commits under their old development model and even back then meant there was +865k lines /680k lines removed across that span of commits. There hasn't been so little code churn to the X Server since 2002. Of course, it's not that X.Org Server is feature-complete and great as there still are issues around HDR support, synchronization improvements, and other enhancements that could be made along with better tackling the X.Org Server security, but that the corporate-backed developers have turned their attention to a Wayland-first world.

This year saw commits from just 32 different email addresses, down from 48 in prior years and that number of different authors hasn't been so low since 2003 when there were just 10 recorded. Olivier Fourdan of Red Hat was the most prolific committer to the X.Org Server this year with nearly a quarter of the commits. Following Olivier was Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia, Peter Hutterer, Michel Dänzer, Alan Coopersmith, and Sultan Alsawaf.

Needless to say, on a line basis the X Server has pretty much flat-lined...

Those wishing to go through this year's X.Org Server development metrics can do so via this GitStats dump.