Two popular free software projects, X.org/Freedesktop.org, are facing an unexpected crisis as their primary hosting provider, Equinix Metal, is discontinuing its bare-metal sales and services. The projects have until the end of April to find new, funded hosting with significant bandwidth and development needs.
Equinix’s decision has left both X.org foundation (home to the 40-year-old window system) and Freedesktop.org (a shared base for free software desktops) without a reliable source of donated space. The issue has prompted Benjamin Tissoires, admin for the project, to lay out its needs, including over 400GB of database storage and nearly 100TB of storage data.
The projects have expressed concerns about maintaining their security with AI-powered attacks on the rise. Tissoires mentions that they are currently facing an onslaught of “AI bots literally pumping our entire GitLab instance.” To mitigate this threat, they are seeking a reliable delivery service like Cloudflare or Fastl to safeguard their infrastructure.
With the deadline looming, X.org and Freedesktop.org must rally their millions of users to secure new hosting arrangements before it’s too late.
Source: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/02/popular-linux-orgs-freedesktop-and-alpine-linux-are-scrambling-for-new-web-hosting