Lauri makes a fair point - I too have a handful of "embedded" systems running some or other cut-down Linux, and in general they only have X11 as a render option (at least one actually has an xf86 server, albeit now running on arm, but I think that gives a sense of how "old" some of these environments are...)

So losing the X11 backend would not be ideal, though of course I still have 1.3...

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As something of an aside, talking to one of the board vendors a while back, it became apparent that the next iteration of their SBC would probably not have any X11 server, or indeed anything other than some sort of OpenGL-ES surface (I had the sense that a lot of what is available for them to use is driven by the folks making mobile phones and similar devices, as that drives the volume in the market, and that GL-ES seems popular there, or something. I dunno. I don't know GL-ES, but assume it is not just GL...) 

So, anyway, at that point, I guess I *would* need something else... Can Cairo render directly to GL-ES for me, for example? And what do I do about a WM in that circumstance (if I need one, that is...)

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