The developers of Xfce4 – one of the oldest desktop environments for Linux – have announced the start of work on a new compositor intended to replace the existing window manager in Xfce4 for Wayland-based systems. The project has been named Xfwl4. It is expected to replicate the functionality and behavior of the current Xfwm4 as closely as possible (as far as it can be implemented on Wayland). For work on the project, developer Brian Terricon has been hired, who has long collaborated with the Xfce4 team.
Initially, it was planned to add Wayland support to the existing window manager Xfwm4. However, the developers quickly encountered a number of issues that made simultaneous support for X11 and Wayland in one project challenging. Instead, it was decided to create a new Wayland compositor as part of Xfce4. For the project, the Rust programming language and the library smithay, which implements the basic set of functions for building a Wayland compositor, were chosen. It is expected that using Rust will help avoid many errors related to improper memory usage and reduce the risk of composer's crashes.
It has been reported that Brian has already started working on the project. The developers hope to present the first working release to the community by mid-2026.
Source: linux.org.ru
