The Linux Kernel Has Been Forcing Different Behavior For Processes Starting With 'X'

"An ugly hack within the Linux kernel that has been in mainline for over three years has been called out," writes Phoronix's Michael Larabel. "Due to a buggy X.Org Server / xf86-video-modesetting DDX, the Linux kernel has been imposing different behavior on whether a process starts with 'X' and in turn disable the atomic mode-setting support." Linux security researcher and WireGuard creator, Jason Donenfeld, discovered the 'ugly code' within the kernel and commented on it via the kernel mailing list. "The commit to this kernel with the 'X' first character check was made back in September 2019," notes Larabel. "The 'good' news is that since then on user-space side back in 2019 the xf86-video-modesetting code went ahead and disabled atomic support by default. So technically if running an updated X.Org stack within the past three years, this kernel hack isn't necessary anymore since user-space is just then avoiding the atomic API."

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