Microsoft Windows Support

[ris-work]

Hey! Thank you for this project. Do you have any plans to support Microsoft Windows (R) target like Xming/VcXSrv? I sometimes use them and not that long ago I used to use them a lot. It is one of the most exciting features of X11 that Wayland has not even come close to: supporting Microsoft Windows (R) and AOSP (AOSP port is currently broken).

Thank you.

Regards,
Rishi.

[joske]

The architecture is based on linux APIs/technologies: KMS/DRM/libinput. Support for BSDs is probably feasible, but macOS or windows is out of scope for the foreseeable future.

[joske]

Well thinking about this some more, it's not completely impossible. I was thinking too much in terms of yserver, which means running the server directly on the HW, but on windows/macOS, that is not feasible anyway. We'd have a 'nested' server running on top of the host windowing system. And we already had an abstraction like this for X11 host (ynest), but it wasn't maintained anymore in favor of yserver.

I'll reopen this.

[ris-work]

Thank you for reconsidering this, I am willing to test if something gets built, since I am a cross-platform X11 enthusiast and have been running X11 in all the weird combinations and I have regularly used both XMing and VcXSrv.

[deathtrip]

I'll reopen this.

So you consider running yserver nested on top of windows/mac, where barely anyone will use it, but not on top of Linux/Wayland , where it could gain wide adoption? It makes no sense.

[AprilGrimoire]

I'll reopen this.

So you consider running yserver nested on top of windows/mac, where barely anyone will use it, but not on top of Linux/Wayland , where it could gain wide adoption? It makes no sense.

If it could work as a window manager for native Windows apps, it could gain some popularity. I don't know whether there it's possible to wrap Windows windows so that they speak X11.

[ris-work]

I'll reopen this.

So you consider running yserver nested on top of windows/mac, where barely anyone will use it, but not on top of Linux/Wayland , where it could gain wide adoption? It makes no sense.

If it could work as a window manager for native Windows apps, it could gain some popularity. I don't know whether there it's possible to wrap Windows windows so that they speak X11.

This ticket is not about making native GDI/GDI+ apps speak X11. Well, there are Unix apps on Microsoft Windows (R) that work natively with X11. There is WSL which also can use the X11 socket. Also, there are a lot of usecases like connecting to a remote computer or a VM locally to have seamless window switching experience. X11 runs on far more than Linux, that includes WebAssembly (Microwindows), Illumos and forks, RedoxOS, MS-DOS and the AOSP, even if you exclude Microsoft Windows (R).

So you consider running yserver nested on top of windows/mac, where barely anyone will use it, but #51 (comment) , where it could gain wide adoption? It makes no sense.

IME the most widely used Xserver instances are headless/VNC or purely software rendered and could be far outnumbering the "desktop" Linux with proper drivers / DRI and hardware acceleration which is pretty niche. There are still many embedded devices that don't even have hardware, or software that draw to virtual X11. Having a full software rendered, self-contained X11 server with an input source [X socket] and an output sink [VNC/RFB or GDI or another X11 even Wayland] with no "hardware" or Linux dependencies would make it available to the majority of the platforms where X11 already works, instantly (except maybe MS-DOS). I have set up and torn down many X11 sessions for UI Automation Testing, for instance, on non-Linux. However, I agree that XWayland replacement is great too.