GNOME 50 completes the migration to Wayland, dropping X11 backend code

Post by exe34 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:21 PM UTC

gabrielgio wrote: post #24

ur-whale wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> x11 is in maintenance mode at this point and Gnome is not going anywhere True. But does not address the fact that Wayland is a bad solution to X11's problems, and that its architecturally broken from inception.

I don't know the implementation details but I can't really complain about the state of wayland today. It used to be annoying to get working many years ago (worse because I had a nvidia gpu). But today I drive a nigthly build of niri, run it by just spawning an dbuss session and everything works. Bluetooth audio, screen sharing, fractional scaling, no tearing, no font blurring. Every utility I needed has been created…

Post by vidarh » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:41 PM UTC

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #46

ur-whale wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> x11 is in maintenance mode at this point and Gnome is not going anywhere True. But does not address the fact that Wayland is a bad solution to X11's problems, and that its architecturally broken from inception.

I don't think it's true that anything is architecturally or fundamentally broken in Wayland (though if you disagree, I'm very curious what you think is so deeply broken). Most of the issues and slow adoption were because the core protocol was deliberately kept extremely minimal, and agreeing on all the needed extensions took a long time. Don't take it from me, but rather from KDE developer Nate Graham: https://pointi…

Post by woleium » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:09 PM UTC

wltr wrote: post #70

christophilus wrote: post #34

I haven’t booted into an X11 environment in maybe 4 years. Wayland has been fine (Fedora + Gnome, Fedora / Arch + Niri). I think this is one of those issues where hardcore users overestimate how much anyone else cares or will notice.

I used X when I started with Linux in my high school. When I finally stopped tolerating macOS almost a decade ago, I started with Wayland only, and never looked back. I even ditched Krita in favour of Gimp, solely because Gimp supports Wayland (from version 3, and on 2.99 before that). To this day, I don’t understand X, like at all. It’s all some super complicated pile to me. While I don’t understand Wayland either,…

Post by NoGravitas » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

ColonelPhantom wrote: post #61

benterix wrote: post #53

What a strange title. X11 is still more popular than Gnome, and formulating a wish like a fact doesn't make it so.

Anecdotally, I strongly doubt this is true, although my environment is probably quite biased. I know a ton of people who use Gnome, some who use KDE, and I think roughly all of these people use them with Wayland. The standalone-WM users I know are also mostly on Sway or other Wayland ones. The only real X11 holdouts seem to be people using X11-only DE's, such as Xfce or Cinnamon.

Post by NoGravitas » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 3:19 PM UTC

graemep wrote: post #22

gabrielgio wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

x11 is in maintenance mode at this point and Gnome is not going anywhere. Gnome is used (and financed) by major distributions. Nothing new is being created with x11 and the people from freedesktop don't seen to be thrilled to maintain it. I don't think should change just for the sake of changing, but I'd start looking to migrate whatever you use that depends on x11.

The problem is that I find Wayland to be a lot buggier than x11. For example, terminal transparency using Konsole on KDE flickers for me. Its nearly there, but not quite. Maybe Gnome has no such issues?