25 engineers on Hacker News describe using X Window System first-hand: 4 endorse it, 5 regret it, 4 are mixed.
“Technically Xorg can handle fractional scaling across mixed dpi and refresh rate monitors... For HDR there is no support for it Xorg though.”
mixed · personal · badsectoracula · 2025-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Xorg is still my go-to in spite of limitations Wayland aims to solve... but I can't for the life of me seem to be able to make it stable/reliable/usable.”
mixed · personal · lloeki · 2024-12-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“x11 is absurdely gigantic and dirty compared to core wayland. We am still running native x11, only because we run the steam client”
regret · personal · sylware · 2024-06-22 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've wasted quite a lot of time trying to get things to work on Wayland that just worked on X11.”
endorse · personal · mydogcanpurr · 2023-12-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“they're both old and clunky, but they both also work, and allow me to get stuff done”
mixed · personal · antisol · 2023-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I have been using up to three monitors with different resolutions, up to 4k, under X11, for almost a decade, without any problems whatsoever”
mixed · personal · 9 yr · adrian_b · 2022-12-30 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Yes, Linux and Xorg. I doubt it's flaky RAM, as this happened on at least 2 machines.”
regret · personal · imiric · 2022-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using X11-based terminal emulators for 30 years now, and I can't recall ever having the terminal emulator itself crash.”
endorse · personal · 30 yr · dsr_ · 2022-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“the main driver of me switching was screen tearing. I was heavily invested in the X11 ecosystem”
regret · personal · dijit · 2021-12-15 · source ↗ · wrong label?“Yeah even on my cloud boxes it works great. They are physically close though.”
endorse · personal · _abox · 2021-02-02 · source ↗ · wrong label?“in freebsd I have to struggle a little with xorg and the end result is a little worse than ubuntu.”
regret · personal · mvanotti · 2013-09-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I've been using them for well over 10 years, sometimes on a daily basis for years at a stretch”
regret · production · 10 yr · ghshephard · 2010-11-14 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We use X11 forwarding to get this interface on our local machines with little fuss.”
endorse · production · seldo · 2010-10-26 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I, myself, used to brag about or show-off having set up .Xcompose keybindings”
neutral · personal · jamesdutc · 2026-10-29 · source ↗ · wrong label?“our companies dev servers where we run a bunch of simultaneous VNCs and independent mate desktop sessions can really only work with X11 for now”
neutral · production · seiferteric · 2026-08-19 · source ↗ · wrong label?“It was snappy enough running plain X11 or Athena (Xaw) applications”
neutral · production · __d · 2024-07-18 · source ↗ · wrong label?“have wasted no more time configuring X, fonts, compositors, themes, key binds, etc.”
neutral · personal · raggi · 2023-05-31 · source ↗ · wrong label?“A quick restart of Xorg, and I had full GPU support.”
neutral · personal · thomastjeffery · 2023-03-27 · source ↗ · wrong label?“We have clusters with tens of thousands of Linux machines and access them via a remote X11 desktop session”
neutral · production · lizknope · 2022-12-25 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My keyboard didn't work out of the box on X11.”
neutral · personal · SequentialDSG · 2021-12-17 · source ↗ · wrong label?“External displays require Nvidia mode, and mode switching can only be done with an X11 server restart.”
neutral · production · kesslern · 2021-12-09 · source ↗ · wrong label?“xorg screen changes wasn't reflected in synergy and it would start having weird boundaries”
neutral · personal · Foxboron · 2020-12-16 · source ↗ · wrong label?“we were afraid to upgrade the kernel without upgrading a pile of userspace (udev, X, libGL, etc.) in concert”
neutral · production · geofft · 2017-11-20 · source ↗ · wrong label?“I convinced them to recycle the 3/50s and 3/60s as X terminals by replacing init and booting straight into X.”
neutral · production · 1 yr · technofiend · 2016-03-23 · source ↗ · wrong label?“My base desktop - the stuff that gets loaded after logging in - is just X, Awesome, Wicd and XScreensaver.”
neutral · personal · icebraining · 2011-11-06 · source ↗ · wrong label?