January 27, 2026
Rust vs Rest: Xfce sparks flamewar
Xfwl4 – The Roadmap for a Xfce Wayland Compositor
Xfce rewrites its window brain in Rust; fans cheer, skeptics ask 'stay lightweight?'
TLDR: Xfce is funding a brand-new Wayland window manager in Rust to modernize without changing its feel. Fans cheered the safety and speed, but others worry about staying lightweight and how long a full rewrite will take—making this a big test for Xfce’s future and its loyal donor base.
Xfce just dropped a bombshell: they’re funding longtime dev Brian Tarricone to build xfwl4, a fresh Wayland compositor (the part that draws and manages windows) from scratch in Rust. Translation for non-nerds: Xfce is upgrading its window engine to a modern system called Wayland, aiming to feel exactly like the old setup—just smoother and safer. The crowd went wild… and then split. Superfans like hu3 are hyped for Rust’s safety and new contributors, even rallying donations with links to Open Collective. But jchw threw a careful side-eye: keep Xfce lightweight and don’t alienate long-time donors who love the “just works” vibe. The big drama? Rewrite vs retrofit. tasn summed it up: bold move, but how long will writing a whole new compositor take? Meanwhile, bergutman flexed a workaround—“you can already run Hyprland with Xfce”—dropping a Gentoo link like a mic. And rawxtl basically said: “Wayland now, please; I’d switch yesterday.” Fans joked about the eternal “Wayland when?” meme, while others teased a “Rust vs. Rest” showdown. Under the hood, Xfce picked smithay for deep customization and Rust safety, promising the same old feel with modern guts—and a smoother future if they nail the landing.
Key Points
- •Xfce is funding core developer Brian Tarricone to build xfwl4, a new Wayland compositor.
- •xfwl4 aims for feature and behavior parity with xfwm4, reusing its configuration dialogs and xfconf settings.
- •The compositor will be written in Rust using smithay; a rewrite was chosen over modifying xfwm4 due to architectural and risk factors.
- •Smithay was selected over wlroots for protocol coverage, deep customization, documentation, and Rust compatibility.
- •Project scope includes session-root changes, support for xdg-session-management and XWayland, CI upgrades via Meson, and a first dev release targeted around mid-year.