And X11 will never be ready for most modern users. They have different goals. But that's the thing with open source. As long as someone somewhere needs it. Even if 90% of us don't need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.
this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2025
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Currently, X11 is not really being developed, just maintained, which is the real issue. In this piece they are questioning whether Wayland was a good choice or not. I am using Wayland, have for some time, and I do acknowledge it is still a work in progress, validating the articles list of 'issues' yet to be addressed, but unless you are running a really old system, I am guessing the complications affect a very minimal group of users. There are also workarounds, for example on KDE, the gtk apps don't adhere to those using the global menu. However, there is a fix to get around it.
In reference to using a completely different solution, isn't it a little late in the game (16 years in development?) I think we are stuck with Wayland, no?
X11 would have needed almost a complete rewrite. Wayland made sense. Eject the technical debt and focus on your use case. We aren't time sharing on a large central mini computer/mainframe anymore. And even then they generally are full single user systems run in parallel under a hypervisor these days. As wasteful as that might be.
But there's still occasions when you need to run a legacy application on old AIX, Irix, etc, or vax Hardware. And need a workstation. Which right now Wayland simply can't do without x.
X11 isn't gonna disappear, it will always be there as a compatibility layer for old programs. That's okay.
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I need it to run like 3 things via its original use case of "log in to remote computer, run it on linux, see it on your local machine". still works like a charm.
Yep absolutely. It's been years since I've done that myself. But there's lots of Legacy software out there. Especially on Legacy systems that are not being developed for at all anymore. That will continue to require X11. One of the other more Niche uses which Wayland doesn't support I believe are multi graphical users on a single system. Again probably something I don't think I've messed around much with in the last decade. But it was a fun feature. Wayland is much more focused on a single session.
The biggest problem is for new users. Once the dust has settled and Wayland is the default for everything (and there's plenty of searchable threads for how to fix X problem) then it will be great. But currently if you're a noob and you install a distro you don't know what either is. If you have this problem do you fix it with X or Y? Choice is great for enthusiasts, but just another hurdle for new users.
We'll get there. Honestly I think in the long run Wayland will be easier to troubleshoot and maintain. But then that may just be memories of troubleshooting XFree86 back in the 90s. I still have flashbacks.
Most new users won't even know that there is a choice until they're presented with it, and most will just stick with the default option anyway. (which most distros have/are switching to wayland)
I spent 4 years with and external monitor on my desk that I couldn't use because it was absolutely painful to find a consistent way to make the 2 different DPIs of the screens work in a way that made sense. Only now with proper Wayland can I enjoy and use it. Yeah there's hacks, but I'd rather let it be dead in a corner than try to work around it. It was a bunch of black screen, inconsitencies between the order I'd plug the external screen, when i did it (before or after logging in), etc... I can't even imagine all the other pain points about hdr, variable or high refresh rates, etc.
Wayland is great.
Had to wait a bunch of time and tried many times before and it wasn't ready for my needs, but now it is and I'm happy. God knows how many rants I've done on fedi about it not working for a lot of time on plasma and weird bugs everwhere.
As a user of 3 monitors with different resolutions, different refresh rates, some HDR, different UI scaling, who games and wants to use VRR - Wayland is literally why I was able to effectively switch to Linux as my daily driver.
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Even if 90% of us don't need X11 for legacy software. It will still be here.
I most agree with you. The Xlibre project may become popular and do something to make X11 popular again. Who knows?
And I just argued on a forum yesterday that Xorg will keep working for 20 years at least. But a lot of smart people claimed I was wrong about it being able to support new hardware. But I think Xorg is likely to build and run for decades yet.
But the X server implementation that is likely to last the longest is Xwayland. And with Wayback, the “stand-alone” X server that many distros will bundle will be Xwayland running on Wayback (Wayland) and not Xorg.
As I have said elsewhere though, few people will be daily driving an X server (Xorg, Xlibre, or Wayback) simply because many desirable applications will require Wayland.
And what will be the x11 only applications that will make people run an X server to use them? Xeyes? Xfig?
I think even running Xwayland will be pretty niche. X11 is going to be a software preservation project. You can boot up OpenLook, CDE, Trinity, or i3 for the memories (and then go back to Wayland for the apps you need).
I could be wrong. Time will tell. Within a couple of years after the release of GTK5 at the latest, we will know. By 2030 maybe.
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I feel like this is just like systemd, those that want to stick to the old ways are very vocal but are a very small minority.
Edit - Sometimes I want to erase spell checks 1's and 0's.
100% a system D like issue. And I get it. People tend to hate change. The old init scripts work okay back in the day. And if you're familiar with them I can see why you wouldn't want it to change. But system D really has brought something to the game. It's so much easier to enable disable services. No having to dig through init scripts trying to find the one you're looking for which might be called through a script of a script of a script.
And while I hate to see fragmentation between the Linux and BSD space. Part of that is on the BSD space. Reluctance to do anything different than the way it was always done can and will hold you back. Not that BSD has ever been fragment free on its own.
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These “Wayland will never come” articles completely ignore the fact that Wayland is here and has already won.
There are lots of issues with Wayland. They will be fixed, but if this was simply a list of things still needing to be improved, it would be useful.
But most Linux desktop users use Wayland already. It will be 90% in 2-3 years. With the exception of Mint, the big Linux distros already install to Linux by default. So almost every new Linux user starts on Wayland. Few will ever try X11. And if they did, the list of broken and impaired experiences on X11 will bring most back to Wayland.
It really does not matter if every x11 user switches to Wayland. The ecosystem does not need them.
But very few of even the hard core adherents will use an X server 5 years from now. Most normal users will not even use Xwayland. And the simple reason is applications.
Everyday there are more and more apps that are Wayland only. Before 2030, that list will include all GNOME and most GTK apps. Are people really going to give up all these applications because of some obscure advantage they perceive in X11?
Most the the faults the article cites are exaggerated or historical. But it is not worth arguing over the details. Wayland is the future. But it is already the present. It is sad really that the people writing these articles do not realize that they are already in the minority and have already been left behind.
This is a “Linux will never be ready for all UNIX users” article written in 1998. It is both true and irrelevant.
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It doesn't need to be. The goal is not to recreate and be compatible with X11, otherwise it would defeat the idea to create something new. Wayland is here, because it needs to do things differently. It's the same as Linux operating systems will never be ready for every Microsoft user. And that's okay.
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The biggest issue for last ~8 years was that wayland was promoted as "superior" while lacking even most basic functions.
V-Sync control? Nope. Hidpi scaling? Nope. Only in 2024 it got to the point where it's actually usable and these features were implemented.
Who "promoted" it as superior to X11? Pretty much everyone I watch and read said that Wayland had their problems and they are working on it, but it is the future. There are ideas and concepts that are superior to X11, but it does not mean its fleshed out. I don't think anyone said that Wayland is superior to X11 in every aspect. Not even the most die hard fan say it. :D
Canonical. They had that brilliant idea of wayland-by-default in 2017.
It was a great clusterfuck of frustration for me and other Ubuntu users
Fedora even switched to Wayland by default in 2016 (at least for the GNOME release). I don't know what they were thinking. 8 to 9 years before they were already using Wayland... and it still have some "problems". Can't imagine what you were going through. :D
But compared to Fedora, Ubuntu only did change temporarily to Wayland right? I mean it was not an LTS version. I installed LTS 18.04 and don't remember anything like that by default.
It was actually fine (ish)
The basics worked and you could switch back if you wanted to
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Here is an argument that some of the grumpy old men clinging to Xorg may understand.
It is 2003 and all the cool kids are moving to this new web browser called Firefox. But every time you try your favourite websites in it, you find stuff that breaks. So back to trusty old Internet Explorer 6 you go. Call me when it works you say.
Wayland is like HTML. Wayland compositors are web browsers. And yes, all these “modern” web standards are all implemented a little differently or maybe not at all in some browsers. And, annoyingly, a lot of real world websites still work better in Internet Explorer 6 than in any of these supposedly “modern” browsers.
But, as with the web, it will not be long until all websites (Linux desktop applications) will be written to use the modern standards and will work well, and pretty much the same, in all browsers (Wayland compositors).
And, while there will still be websites (Linux desktop apps) that work better in IE6 (Xorg), most people will consider those sites broken and will probably not use them. Alternatively, you can run your browser (compositor) in compatibility mode (Xwayland) for those sites.
You can keep using Internet Explorer if you want. Many people held on for a long time. Just know what your advocacy sounds like to people that have moved on to Firefox and Chrome. Pointing at your corporate website that looks wrong in Firefox will not impress them. And understand that you will not be able to hang on forever. Well, unless you want to be stuck in a tiny corner of the web that still works on your browser. Most websites will stop working on Internet Explorer at some point.
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Well in 120 years, all existing X11 users will be dead and then this stupid argument will finally stop including X11
With all the surface false analogies and general lack of solid knowledge in the comments here, I truly hope that at least half of them are LLM generated.
Guess this is what happens when a post in the lemmy verse gets about 100 comments.
I started linux with wayland and i have no clue why it's such a controversy lmao.
The fact that most new Linux users share your experience is exactly the reality this article fails to perceive. It is a old man who swears his slide rule is faster than your calculator.
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