- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.
In other words, the GNOME project is finally closing one of the longest chapters in Linux desktop history. With the upcoming GNOME 50 release, scheduled for mid-march 2026, the desktop environment will officially drop support for the native X11 session, making Wayland the sole display system moving forward.
Have repeatedly run into issues with Wayland. Have gotten it to do some obscure things I haven’t gotten X11 to do but I don’t need those things. It has failed to do things I need. Maybe it is time to give it another shot but it has been a major downgrade for a long time in my lived experience.
Do you have some examples for someone who has basically no idea about linux?
can’t speak for OP but the only beef I have with wayland is discord. If i’m in voice comms it will ONLY work if I’m either in a game or my discord is focused. if I’m in my web browser or doing something else like in an IDE or terminal etc then voice doesn’t work. It’s annoying.
If anyone has a workaround for that I’d love to hear it. on x11 never had these issues but I can’t use x11 as my primary machine is a hybrid nvidia and amd gpu laptop so no gaming on x11.
My family uses Discord heavily, and I’ve set up a number of different distros and window managers at different times, all using Wayland, and I have not seen this issue. I think that includes running in browsers using Xwayland, and using native Wayland - but I’m not 100% sure because I’ve been running browsers in native Wayland mode for a long time, while my family members usually use the Discord Electron app.
There might be some more specific issue on your system, like a pipewire misconfiguration? Do you use pipewire?
well it’s been happening with me across multiple distros like Arch, CachyOS, NixOS, etc and it’s always been the same. yes I’m using pipewire so I’m not exactly sure what it is.
Gonna chime in and add that I have also not had this issue, Nobara Linux here. My discord voice comms work great in browser, and the various other versions I have run. Hope you figure it out!
are you using push to talk? that’s the only thing I can think of that’s not working for me. because everyone is saying it works fine in wayland but again I’ve used both flatpaks and packaged versions across multiple distros and the push to talk outside of discord or a game never works for me.
That explains things. Non-focused applications cannot read keystrokes on Wayland.
Since Discord is still running in X11, if you are on KDE you can enable one of these options as a workaround:
Hopefully Discord (or a wrapper for it) will eventually get proper global shortcut support, in which case you can set it right in the KDE shortcut settings.
I’m using the Discord Flatpak on Fedora Kinoite (Wayland/KDE) and have no such issue.
The standard workaround seems to be “scream at the developer to rewrite their features around Wayland’s limitations and stop bothering the Wayland developers asking for feature parity”. You know… The same way Android handles updates.
It is pretty hard to improve if you are not allowed to change anything.
Yes, the design of Wayland means that some of the techniques that work on X will not work on Wayland (on purpose). So yes, some apps have to be adapted to use the techniques that do work on Wayland. And no, changing Wayland to support the old ways is not the answer (because they were changed on purpose).
Wayland has been criticized for taking away previous capabilities before providing new ways to do things. That is a fair critique, though somewhat par for the course when replacing old tech. But at this point, almost everything necessary is possible and Wayland users are in the majority (the massive majority soon).
At this point, it really is the apps developers responsibility to support Wayland properly. I mean, they do not have to of course but that means their app will be broken for 80% of Linux users on two years (and more than half today).
You’ll notice the vast majority of the complaints and problems people had about systemd went away when it launched into distros and invisibly did everything init did, often times in a better way. They made big improvements WITHOUT crapping all over everyone’s legitimate complaints and expected features, and things went fine, to the point where I’d say even most naysayers begrudgingly admit they were overreacting.
Compare that to Wayland, which not only didn’t do that, it makes it worse by actively gaslighting power users, mocking them for powerful features in their workflow and demanding they make changes. It’s been active and spreading for years, and the complaints people had on DAY ONE are still there.
It didn’t work for Mark Shuttleworth when he pushed Unity, and it shouldn’t work now. This is not the proprietary Microsoft world where developers can decide they have a new, better way of doing things and take a wrecking ball to the workflows of millions of active users and then scream “my way or the highway”. I do not need others to tell me what is good for me. That attitude belongs in the closed software world.
I don’t particularly care that 80% of users are on Wayland. It’s not relevant - if I cared about what the majority of users were doing, I’d be on Windows. None of that fixes my inability to use Wayland for my daily tasks. I will continue to use X if I have to build it myself and exclusively run outdated desktop environments. I refuse to give up my functionality to add a layer of security that breaks my critical use cases with no option to opt out.
What functionality do you so desperately need that is not available or workable in Wayland?
Yes, the insane old ways are being phased out for a reason. Sorry that we don’t keep the world in a heavily romanticized version of 2003 forever.
Preach all you want. In a practical sense, X works for me and Wayland does not. No amount of yelling about security exploits that have not once been exploited in the wild even by the most resource rich state actors will change the fact that I can not maintain my daily productivity with Wayland, and I’m not going to accept being LESS productive to satisfy anyone’s personal development crusade. That’s the antithesis of how software, especially FOSS software, is supposed to work. Either Wayland will give me every single feature I need, or I will sit here with my old but functioning X installations until the day I die.
You are the one preaching and yelling.
Stay on X if you want. As you say, that is the freedom Open Source provides. I use ancient hardware. To each their own. If I was still using XFCE, I would still be using X myself*.
But if you are going to voluntarily stay behind, stop complaining that the bus left without you.
Wayland users are in the majority. By the time Mint (Cinnamon) flips to Wayland (2026?) and GTK5 is released (2028?) it will be over 90%. Almost all GNOME and Plasma users are Wayland now and that must be 60% already (without even counting Hyprland, Sway, COSMIC, or Niri).
We already have Wayland only distros (eg. RHEL10). GNOME will not even be the first Wayland only DE (COSMIC). The ship has sailed.
In the earlier days of Wayland I was not able to reproduce the custom keyboard mappings that I set up with xkb. Xkb worked, but only in windows running under Xwayland. I know the common xkb presets, like changing caps lock to a control key, are reproduced in Wayland implementations. I had really custom mappings that required more general remapping capability.
I fixed my setup by building a keyboard with a microcontroller that I can program with ZMK. It’s a better setup, although it did take more time, effort, and money. The bottom line is I’m enthusiastic about Wayland, even though I had to find another way to reproduce one of my favorite features.
Kanata does this and more
Oh, kanata looks great! Good to know!
I finally had to switch recently because I use gnome, and they removed the X11 session. I managed to sort out most of the missing parts needed for my workflow, but it still feels like a downgrade. It feels much more sluggish, things that were instant now take a second, and I’ve been under a constant barrage of bugs and glitches. Some make the whole experience feel like using amateur software. I’ll be typing, then press a global shortcut to launch some software, and I’ll end up with whole desktop pausing for a second and the shortcut inserted in my text 20 times. And this happens a few times a day. Just one example.
I’ve almost exclusively used Linux desktop for the past decade and it was a smooth experience, but with gnome-wayland I finally understand the people that were always complaining about everything being broken and glitchy.
I can understand having some bugs, but if text or mouse input doesn’t work properly, or if using my new laptop suddenly feels like using my much slower old one, then I may as well look for a different desktop.
If you want to serve displays to multiple systems. Wayland will never do that. Honestly I’m not sure it even properly supports serving different displays to multiple users on the same system well. And I don’t think they are planning on it.
It’s a really niche paradigm anymore. Remote displays being handled by RDP or something like rust desk. Multiple users handled by hypervisors. Sure it is a bit of a waste of hardware resources. But on the other hand it allows things to be a bit simpler and more secure.
I absolutely have fond memories of setting up a multi seat display server that could access over the internet. Running a full gnome session acessable in Windows. Through the cygwin utilities and windows X client in college 27 years ago.
I þought þere was a way to do þis in Wayland, now?
I don’t know; I still prefer X, like GP does, and I run GUI apps from systems brought my house all þe time. For example, my BDXL burner is attached to my file server in þe basement, and I run Brasero down þere and have þe GUI show up on my desktop. If Wayland can’t do someþing as basic as þat, þere’s no chance I’m switching.
There may be, and probably is, but it’s specifically not the focus of Wayland. Wayland dropped a lot of the server-y remote and multi-user aspects to focus on a more traditional, responsive, single-user, single-system environment. Familiar among desktop users. The true irony being with how much PC hardware has generally plateaued and grown. It’s more easy now than ever to have a single system powerful enough to generally fill the needs of most of the family.
It’s true. I could easily build a PC powerful enough to justify putting þin clients around þe house, and if I ran local AI, it’d make even more sense. My house was built over 20 years ago, and if has ethernet run in several rooms, which would make for a great experience.
gnome-remote-desktop exists, but it isn’t as mature as xrdp. I am on Debian stable anyway and wait until it is ready. Locally I prefer Wayland and for RDP xrdp is still the better option in my opinion.
I think KDE has an rdp session built in as well now. But from outside the lan and even in sometimes. Rust desk has been really good.