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.

  • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
    41·
    1 day ago

    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.

    • LeFantome@programming.dev
      1·
      7 hours ago

      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).

    • vivendi@programming.devEnglish
      1·
      12 hours ago

      Yes, the insane old ways are being phased out for a reason. Sorry that we don’t keep the world in a heavily romanized version of 2003 forever.

      • mycodesucks@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 hours ago

        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.

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
          2·
          7 hours ago

          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.

          • I have one box that uses XFCE on Wayland but if I wanted to use XFCE as my main desktop, I would probably use X. My daily drivers are Niri and Plasma Wayland.