Ubuntu Resolute Raccoon spits out Xorg, but still lets you run X11 apps Ubuntu 26.04 "Resolute Raccoon," the latest LTS release from Canonical, arrives with GNOME 50, Linux kernel 7.0, and drops the Xorg option from Ubuntu Desktop while still running X11 applications through Xwayland. This release is based on kernel 7.0, uses GNOME 50, and comes with Firefox 150. These are a pleasingly round set …
...advanced things like screen capturing, screen sharing, and remote control, and so on, will need to find and adjust to new tools.
It looks like the replacement is not ready for the big league.
If the old system offers greater usability, why kill it off if it means inconvenience and disruption for certain classes of user?
Would it really hurt to leave the option open for those who wish to use it, or are we all being forced to use the new square wheels on our bike?
I am old and getting reactionary but I thought that one of the best things about Linux was that you always had a choice.
No longer it seems. All will march in lock step to systemd and their ilk.
I see you bang on about this in a lot of comments, but I'm yet to actually see exactly why it's a problem?
Don't get me wrong, the ideology of free software has some merits but lots of ideologies can look good when you don't apply reality to them.
I prefer use Ubuntu or flavours thereof because It Just Works with minimal config needed on pretty much any computing device I have barring my old 32-bit only Netbook. On the laptop I'm typing on right now it happily works with the NVidia GPU and Intel NICs.
Moving to something that isn't proprietary in your view isn't really a realistic option for most users.
Free software was developed to fight against the proprietary reality - although of course every effort is undertaken to ensure reality stays proprietary.
>NVidia GPU and Intel NICs
Intel NIC's work with free software.
Nvidia GPUs work with free software with the free Nouveau driver - although the last good range was the 700 series, as those models aren't digitally handcuffed and Nouveau has free peripheral software and not bad reclocking.
Trisquel will go just fine for users of the latest Intel computers, with Integrated Graphics and a wired NIC.
Using something not proprietary by default is a realistic option for all users - Debian used to be such OS.
Something as trivial as adding an optional proprietary installer and/or adding an option in the installer to install proprietary software, allows the user to realise that there is a problem.
Don't let the perfect be the enmy of the good.
When idealism meets reality there has to be compromise.
Blah, blah, blah ... it would be lovely if everything in life was 'free', but that ain't the way the world works, especially where human beings needing to earn a living is concerned.
And then we have 'Greed'.
Oh yes, it's a big old nasty world, full of corruption and compromise, but that's reality, and somehow we all have to learn to live with it.
Some of us manage that more positively, creatively, and compassionately than others.
Out of curiosity I backed up my files and thought "hey sure, let's see what works"
This laptop isn't exactly exotic in terms of hardware specification (Lenovo Legion 5, Ryzen 7 4800H with Radeon Vega iGPU, NVidia GTX1650M dGPU, Intel AX200 WiFi NIC). It has run Ubuntu 24.04 happily for over a year, and more recently MX Linux when the new release came out. Both were very simple to set up "out of the box" and installed without a hitch. MX Linux is very fast, very stable, and gives excellent battery life.
Triquel wouldn't even boot outside of text-mode install, which I aborted partway through as it doesn't have intel WiFi drivers or any obvious means to add them. As a result I can't install packages.
Presumably hardware changes would be required, which doesn't really make it suitable for everyday use.
That hardware is in fact artificially exotic - it has been artificially sabotaged to not work without proprietary peripheral software.
AMD was worse than Intel when it comes to graphics, considering that intel integrated graphics have been working just fine for 15+ years with the i915 driver - intel more recently has proceeded to ensure that the ARC and the very latest integrated graphics are now sabotaged to not work.
The Radeon iGPU could just go into the standard 1080p VESA mode without proprietary software, but the hardware was designed not to meet any standard - instead the only free option is a hacked up radeon driver - which has the unfortunately side effect that sometimes there's a conflict with another GPU, with Trisquel falling back to text mode.
If you were to disable the Radeon iGPU, I would expect the Nvidia graphics to work fine with the free nouveau driver - note that if the dGPU has a dedicated, or assigned fan, Nvidia has sabotaged such card to make even turning the fan on not allowed without a signed proprietary program - nouveau won't apply any reclocking, to avoid cooking the card.
Trisquel does ship half of the intel Wi-Fi driver that was provided in source from - although Intel refuses to supply the source code for the other half of the driver, instead supplying a handcuffed proprietary program, without source code, which Trisquel cannot distribute if it wants to remain free software.
"You won't have much ongoing luck with Devuan"
I find this comes into the same category aerodynamics proving that the bee cannot fly but the bee, not knowing aerodynamic, flies successfully.
The reason it falls into the same category is the fact that I've been using it successfully for years. It's currently running my laptop, my second laptop, my wife's laptop, my ancient nettop and my NextCloud server on Pi5.
Practice beats theory.
Curiosity compels me to ask what events made you decide the Devuan and Debian became proprietary?
Perhaps we need to remind ourselves why we use computers.
Most computer use is to meet requirements.
My initial requirements, long ago, were tools for science. The computers were initially ICL 1900 series mainframe and later a Z80 running a CP/M close and then UCSD pSystem.
That moved on, in the early 1980s to developing and running, a system whose requirements were managing lab. casework. That was on Unix (7th ed) and Informix (actually I started when Informix was still called Marathon & our serial number was 33).
That was just an adjunct to lab. work but from it I ended up moving into an IT career with various Unix/Informix systems as a career including as a freelance. Most of the requirements there were logistics and sales order processing, etc.
Now in retirement a prime requirement is to have a working environment which matches the familiar Unix of the 2nd half of my working life. For a while that was met by SCO OpenServer* but since then Linux** when it became good enough. SysV init is more Unix like than SystemD.
The secondary requirements, fully met by my particular choice on Linux distro, are a whole lot of functions including WYSIWYG text editing, some image manipulation including annotating maps, drawing diagrams and web browsing including, as I write, tracking my daughter's progress on the Fellsman 2026 (sheer madness!).
A tertiary requirement is meeting the other requirements at a price acceptable to a retired Yorkshireman.
My requirements do not include worshipping at some shrine of philosophical purity. YMMV.
* Yes, I know. Open. Back in the day we talked about Open Standards which tended to mean something like Posix. A different but legitimate meaning of "open" in describing software.
** SCO installation required booting from a floppy and floppy drives have long been on the red list of endangered species so it ceased to become an option, hence the move.
Yea and verily.
My orginal fascination with computers was, well, a fascination with computers -- they were cool -- warehouse sized rooms full of spinning tape drives, and card reader/punches and, of course, the wall of Blinkenlights putting on a show..
But that began to cloy rapidly and I lucked into a job hustling FORTRAN IV for a professor of Electrical Engineering and I quickly realized there was more to computers than dinking with computers -- in other words you could do science on them and that made it all just orders of magnitude more fun.
I won't bore you with the generations of computer technology I've seen (or the fads and fancies of applications and development regimes) but I've probably banged on everything but a Turing Machine at one time or another.
Computing provided me with a great ride -- I got to meet, assist, and sometimes work directly with some of the most fascinating and brilliant people in the world, including at one time or another three Nobel Prize winners, an undeserved privilege for which I will grateful until my own personal shutdown -h now.
I think my biggest annoyance with the field is changes in superficial features being equated with improvement or progress.
While I like eye candy as much as the next person, I'd prefer developers spend more time making things work better and faster and easier and less time fiddling with fonts, color palettes, and icon sizes and layouts. That way I could get on with the privilege of doing science and trying, in my tiny and barely incremental way, to help make the world a little better for all of us.
If you call me pretentious for taking that stance. . . well I'm not going to argue with you and might, after a moment or two of reflection and introspection, be inclined to agree.
Nonetheless, I honestly don't care about Wayland or systemd as long as it doesn't break my stuff at the next update and it stays the heck out of my way.
Computers are for the task of getting any wanted computation done.
Proprietary software is the antithesis of computing - for many programs, instead of being able to run, use, modify and/or share software for any purpose - you can't, as you don't have the source code under a free license.
There's now even anti-computers that refuse to carry out computations that the user wants done (i.e. run this replacement BIOS, or run this replacement Wi-Fi software - which is refused by a signature check with private keys the user does not get).
I didn't even mention the purity extension.
POSIX is a proprietary standard - POSIX-compliance is measured by a proprietary test suite that you're not even allowed to have a copy of, unless you agree to not share it, or even any details about and also pay a massive sum.
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"Computers are for the task of getting any wanted computation done."
Yes. Now this may come as a surprise to you but I spent half my working life getting required computation done using various proprietary Unix OSes and the proprietary Informix RDBMS,
Their being proprietary did not in any way prevent this being achieved.
On one occasion my clients actually had source available for a large chunk of the proprietary ERP application. In fact I ended up using it to do some investigation into the cause of a recurring crash. Now think of this next bit very carefully: There was no way in which I, as a freelancer, was prepared to take responsibility for modifying this code. Instead I explained what they'd missed (a free after use buried several loops deep!) and let them incorporate it into the code they provided to all their customers. This is the situation in the real world where client's jobs and financial responsibility is concerned.
We (client and I) had a good working relationship with that vendor - in fact I later got a short gig with them myself. The client needed to get some customisation to incorporate data from one of their clients into some of the EDI files the application exported. We worked with them so that I added some staging tables into the database and the software to import the data into those tables and they then provided the additional software to import from the staging tables into their own tables and use it to generate the EDI. You and/or your parents will have handled the final product of that particular contract.
I included your parents in the last paragraph as it strikes me you're probably too young to have been aware of the "open standards" vs proprietary (i.e. mainframe OSes, VMS, etc) of the late 80s/early 90s.
Proprietary software being included in the only official available installer, which is automatically installed permanently without asking, was the event that made Devuan first and Debian later become proprietary.
Something going fine in the past, doesn't mean it's guaranteed to go fine in the future.
"Proprietary software being included in the only official available installer"
Unnamed propitiatory S/W.
A driver perhaps? A driver that will only be used on systems with one particular H/W feature.
That does not make the who distro propitiatory but it does make all the other components of the distros available to those with that H/W.
Those components will be able to meet the requirements of those users, To channel a former PM: Requirements, dear boy, requirements.
You only have to wear the hair shirt if you want to.
wget -qO- https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/amd64/iso-hybrid/debian-live-13.4.0-amd64-standard.iso.contents|grep non-free-firmware
It makes the whole distro proprietary, as the user cannot exercise the 4 freedoms with the only official installer - as it contains proprietary software without source code.
The installer installs such proprietary software permanently without asking if it detects that hardware could use it.
The user may not want proprietary software with a license that says; "No reverse engineering, decompilation, or disassembly of this software is permitted." (intel microcode updates) installed on their main processor (no other version installed, as GNUbooted), but the Debian installer will do it anyway without asking.
Previously, the users freedom was partially respected, as the installer was free and asked the user whether they wanted proprietary software installed or not - but not anymore.
The whole idea is to prevent the user from realizing that they are running proprietary software, so the problem is hidden from them, so there's no chance of the user doing something about it.
Having freedom with Debian isn't really even an option anymore - as soon as you download the installer, you've lost it - you are restricted by at least a dozen proprietary licenses.
Really, for a distro to be free software, the user needs to be able to exercise the 4 freedoms with *all* of it.
Actually I usually use the minimal installer unless the networking H/W requires the non-free.
But there's a point you may have missed. We use software to operate the hardware. If the hardware requires a non-free driver to turn it from an inert box into a working computer then non-free drivers go in there.
Mos of us buy computers to work for us, not as a philosophical statement or cult objects.
PS
I should have added that most users are not in the least interested in the four freedoms. The languages in which software is written are foreign to them and they want to use the software rather than study it. Even those of us who might from time to time find source useful mostly just run the applications. There were only a few occasions in my working life when I needed to delve into source of provided software.
Most users haven't been made aware that the 4 freedoms exist, thus they cannot decide whether they are interested or not - it is wrong to decide against the 4 freedoms for those users, for them, rather than give them the choice to decide.
If such users have previously enjoyed how the freedom of recipes is not restricted, they'll likely agree that they do indeed deserve the same freedoms with software.
Everyone benefits if someone can study software and make changes and share those changes, even if 99% of users don't ever do so.
Still it's very odd to want to use a computer, but only ever use one of the many functions of a computer (running software) - but that's fine provided everything else isn't restricted (but of course, anti-computers that artificially restrict what you can run, now exist).
The only available minimal installer now contains proprietary software; https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/amd64/iso-cd/
>If the hardware requires a non-free driver to turn it from an inert box into a working computer
This is not a honest claim.
I haven't found a computer (i.e. something that implements computer standards like ACPI), that is an inert box without a proprietary driver - the free drivers in Linux and all the GNU programs and the programs that work with GNU, are always enough to get a working computer.
Although, there are a lot of defective computers that do work with free software, but are *inconvenient* if you do so.
One example is an included Wi-Fi card doesn't work without a proprietary program loaded onto it, meaning you can't use Wi-Fi unless you;
- Install a decent Wi-Fi card (such as an ath9k card - I haven't had any problems with these cards - you plug them in and they just work).
- Install the proprietary driver, so you can use the defective included card, that is full of bugs (such cards are shipped with totally broken software and typically the manufacturer releases 1 or 2 updates to fix the most glaring bugs - but leaves the rest unfixed - you have to buy the next model and hope that one's fixed).
Even for nvidia GPUs, they work fine without proprietary software, with the free Nouveau driver (ACPI S3 works, full 3D acceleration works with OpenGL 4.5) - too bad it's *inconvenient* as;
- Reclocking is only really available on original 700 series GPUs, which is mostly fine, but isn't yet done.
- Nvidia has sabotaged newer GPUs with a digital signature - the fans will not spin up without a signed, proprietary program, meaning that cards sit at idle clocks.
None of these inconveniences need to exist - manufacturers have rather done extra work to ensure they exist (there is no technical reason why a GPU or a Wi-Fi card needs a special driver to implement a standard such an OpenGL or Vulkan or 802.11n or 802.11ac - all cards could be supported by a standard that includes an example free driver (including free peripheral software if convenient), that all standard-complaint cards are required to at least work with).
If you are going to buy a computer, clearly you should buy a computer *once* that is going to work for you (i.e. that works to its full extent with free software - meaning that it's going to continue working identically pretty much forever), rather than buy a computer multiple times that works for the manufacturer (that has defective hardware that "works" until you have enough of the bugs and decide to throw the computer out and purchase the next model).
> I find this comes into the same category aerodynamics proving that the bee cannot fly but the bee, not knowing aerodynamic, flies successfully.
That's only true if you only use an oversimplistic model.
Though some accounts attribute the claim to scientists like Ludwig Prandtl or Jakob Ackeret, it likely stems from a misunderstood 1934 observation by the French zoologist Antoine Magnan, who applied fixed-wing flight equations to insect wings and concluded — incorrectly — that insect flight defied aerodynamic theory.1Okay, I'll buzz off now.
_____________
1 Sciencing: How Slow-Motion Cameras Solved The Most Annoying Myth About Bumblebees
>If the old system offers greater usability, why kill it off if it means inconvenience and disruption for certain classes of user?
Because it offered things like screen sharing, where that handy North Korean utility could copy the screen of your banking app.
> or are we all being forced to use the new square wheels on our bike?
No you're being forced to lock your front door. The problem with everyone using Unix is that the security that worked when only grad students had workstations is no longer appropriate
You're free to not use Ubuntu, you can always roll your own with XFree86 (or whatever it's called today)
I somewhat agree, however, there has to be a line somewhere. If you keep dragging out Xorg support, the motivation to update compatibility drops. Whether you prefer Xorg or not should not factor into software compatibility. This is for two reasons...I want to be able to choose between Wayland and Xorg...I don't want a software developer to choose for me. As and when I decide to switch between the two needs to be based on the tecnical merits of the two rather than software compatibility...software compatibility is such a lame reason to not choose something because software compatibility is not a choice that you make, it's a choice that the vendor makes...and I ain't beholden to anyone.
If a piece of software works on Xorg and not Wayland, that's not a reason to stay on Xorg, it's a reason to dump the software that doesn't work on Wayland.
I want to be able to choose between Wayland and Xorg...I don't want a software developer to choose for me.
I thought that problem had been solved. Something called WayBack comes to mind. But I may be wrong.
Basically, a compatibility layer for apps built on Wayland only. Which provides the compositor API, but then translates the Wayland protocol to X11. And allows full X11 functionality (network, X Window manager, etc) and operation with remote displays that do Xorg and will never know Wayland.
There are more systems out there other than Linux and the BSDs that probably will never get XWayland and a compositor.
> it is an option in Kubuntu.
Small update to this: I am testing Kubuntu today, and when I said it was an option, I should have been more specific.
The Plasma X11 session is no longer installed by default. As shipped, Kubuntu 26.04 is Wayland-only. _However_ the optional X11 KDE session is still available in the repositories, so you can manually install it and then you can log in via X.org.
I have yet to test this, but I am working on it.
Recalling the horrible roll out on neon of Plasma 6 on Feb. 29, 2024, where I found the x11 session was initially more screwed up than the wayland one, I am not super optimistic as to how well installing plasma-session-x11 will hold up as a way to continue with x11, but hopefully you don't have serious issues to report. I know the new current lts version of kubuntu has plasma 6.6, but looking forwards, if plasma 6.8 is end of the line for x11, and if kubuntu lts is going to get plasma 6.7 with ability to use x11 via plasma-session-x11, then I will be keeping my eyes peeled for indications of how long I can safely use the combo of kubuntu + plasma 6.7 + plasma-session-x11.
But I do use the following (in order of importance): autokey, x2go client, simplescreenrecorder, so since XWayland won't work on these, then alternative plans be needed. Will try to stay with Kubuntu 24.04 until they drop support next year. Then, will try Kubuntu 26.04 with addition of plasma-session-x11 package (which presumably won't be solid). Meantime, my alternative computer runs Asmi Linux 13 Debian (Ultimate for just $10) Edition (thanks LP for info on Asmi at https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/15/asmi_13_debian_edition/ ). Of course, I'd rather not downgrade to something new from my working system at all.
Users need to become GNU users if they want freedom - considering that Linux came out against freedom in 1996 by becoming proprietary software again.
I suspect LLM slop is going to be copy-pasted at mass into Linux in the future, which GNU Linux-libre wouldn't have the resources to clean up - thus it seems long term, the only hope is Hurd.
"long term, the only hope is Hurd"
Ah yes, long term. When will it be production ready?
I have to say I do like the micro-kernel idea. I don't know if that's what's being planned but it offers the option of different admin user IDs so that, for example, storage-admin might allocate raw storage but not have the right to decide what file system, if any, gets written on it nor the right to read what's written on it.
For everyday use, however, we need something that's production ready.
There is the https://agelesslinux.org/ hack to mess with that age APIs, but it seemed to confuse apt use of some deb repositories, so may temporarily need to be removed; instructions are provided for this too.
If Linux Mint fails to revert this FU, I'll probably migrate to MX Linux, which will fortunately also jettison Systemd's overreach and needless complexity. I already have it on an old laptop used to display dynamic web-pages and run pi-hole directly.
The core arguments against Systemd make sense e.g.
* It does too much stuff at kernel privilege level, which makes it dangerously fragile.
* It can allow stupid race-conditions.
* Otherwise treads on itself and other services.
* Has complexity and security issues.
* Still has long unfixed idiotic bugs.
* Is quite bloated.
* There are plenty of alternatives, which work fine.
It effectively turns the lean Linux kernel into a far less-stable and fatter kernel, like Windows has. I suspect that some of my crash-shutdowns in Linux Mint with Xfce4, on Nvidia and AMD GPUs, were enabled by its fragility, and it made crash-dump capture less reliable too!
Linus Torvalds should have told the author of SYstemD to f-off long-ago, because of all the above faults.
NoMachine didn't work for me on CachyOS (Wayland); I far prefer NoMachine to RustBench, in part because I don't trust Rust to be secure including from injection attacks via the Node.js like dependencies or the compiler.
Screen sharing is not an advanced feature. It's a basic requirement for a video call with colleagues/customers in every normal company I know of.
This is now broken on various platforms that worked previously. We don't always get to choose the clients software for video conferencing.
Finally after many many years on Ubuntu, I've moved to arch (BTW) just to keep X11 and get rid of the bloat of slow snaps and flatpaks.
Well that's a hard no to ever running Ubuntu again, due to the idiocy of removing X11 (hence no X11 only Mate desktop) and the insane obsession with partially porting essential tools to RUST (date command).
Luckily Linux Mint will take all Ubuntu's hard work creating a LTS release, remove nonsense like SNAP, and add back in the goodness of X11 and Mate.
> due to the idiocy of removing X11
They did not.
GNOME 50 removed the X11 session. The default Ubuntu graphical edition uses GNOME 50. *ONLY* the GNOME and Budgie editions enforce Wayland. All the other 8 GUI editions offer X.org as the display server.
Xfce, LXDE, KDE, Unity, Cinnamon: all use X.org.
> (hence no X11 only Mate desktop)
Also wrong.
The Ubuntu MATE maintainer quit. Nobody else stepped up yet. That's why no MATE remix.
I think, like Unity, it will be back.
