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.

  • thanatotus@lemmy.ml
    12·
    1 day ago

    This is an skill issue

    1. Developers can still make apps with server side decorations on GNOME.

    2. If they choose to support CLIENT side decorations, its the CLIENT’S responsibility to have window buttons.

    3. Most such apps are open source, so even if the window decorations are buggy, those can be fixed.

    GNOME exists along with KDE, XFCE, Cinnamon DE etc. GNOME is for minimalism, the others have
    different levels of customization support.

    People are free to choose!