GNOME 50 completes the long migration to Wayland, dropping X11 backend code and relying on XWayland for any remaining compatibility needs.

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.

  • Scrollone@feddit.it
    6·
    1 day ago

    I used to love GNOME 2, but now it’s unbearable. It looks and it behaves as if it’s a toy for kids.

    Also, why do apps have buttons in their title bar? It makes no sense.

    I’m sad that a good open source project such as GNOME has become so bad.

    • dreugeworst@lemmy.ml
      1·
      22 hours ago

      on the contrary, why do so many old apps waste all the space in the title bar just for the title and 3 buttons? it makes no sense.

    • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
      3·
      22 hours ago

      Become “so bad” is different than “I don’t like it”

      A lot of people use gnome without any issues. It’s stable, it has one of the simplest workflows and it’s generally out of the way.