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.

    • vivendi@programming.devEnglish
      4·
      14 hours ago

      X11 has a shitload of unwanted and unused features that your favorite X11 compositor is actively fighting AGAINST to render your GUI.

      I implore you to pick up the X.Org source code and your favorite X11 shitshow’s source code and realize why Wayland follows the same paradigms that apple adopted in 2001 and Microsoft in 2006.

    • spartanatreyu@programming.dev
      16·
      1 day ago

      Counterpoint: X11 wasn’t designed with today’s security needs in mind, and developers were building based on the assumptions that those security holes would remain. We don’t actually want everything that X11 had, we only want the good bits.

      Or to put it another way, the switch from X11 to Wayland = https://xkcd.com/1172/