What’s the difference for a real user between using X11 or Wayland nowdays? I haven’t found anything useful on the internet, so I’m asking you. Internet articles on the topic (and about WMs too) seem to be advertising slop since they explain anything but the real things. Also, if anyone used the XLibre fork, I would love to hear about your experience with it.
Wayland is more secure than x11 by design and more concise in scope. Notably it supports contemporary display technologies like display independent scaling, VRR, colour space (HDR) and several others.
Wayland is made by the x11 people.
X11 is dead don’t bother with it. The same people who wrote X11 are working on Wayland because X11 became to here maintain.
X11 is still being actively maintained. It isn’t an install risk or anything like that. It isn’t going to add any shiny new features, but not everyone needs shiny new features. (That being said, if Wayland works for you, go ahead and use it. Just don’t spread FUD, please.)
I wish the distributed computing utopia where we would send X windows over the network came true, but unfortunately it didn’t, and the whole X11 paradigm is inadequate for the modern tech reality
Is it even a debate at this point? x11 is on it’s way out and wayland transition is pretty much complete within the gnu/linux ecosystem. Vast majority of distros and desktop environments ship with wayland as the default and keep developing with wayland in mind, with holdouts like debian and mint that still use x11, I think. X11 is basically dinosaur software for legacy. Vast majority of end users will just take what is the default and that is Wayland and they don’t even notice.
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t find much searching the web, because this is one of the most hot topics in Linux and everyone has an opinion and discussions are endless.
I use Wayland for years by now and it improved vastly during that time. One of the advantages over X11 I appreciate is the better handling of multiple monitors, with different resolution, refreshrate and VRR in effect. This was simply not possible in X11 in this form. I like its more secure by design, in relation to keyboard input. X11 can read all keyboard input by any application at any time. Wayland works different here, but for the time being I enabled X11 compatibility for this in KDE, until a all applications support Wayland fully.
Think twice before abandoning X11. Wayland breaks everything! is more of an anti Wayland posting, but its good to have a view from all angles. So I post it here.
Have in mind that Wayland improved in recent years drastically. Searching the web is either full of Ai nonsense or old content about the old state of Wayland. Also it depends which desktop environment you are using, because some are better at Wayland than others; notably KDE is on the front regarding Wayland. So even if some Wayland features are already developed, does not mean that all desktop environments supports them already.
I’m a bit surprised you didn’t find much searching the web, because this is one of the most hot topics in Linux and everyone has an opinion and discussions are endless.
it’s 2026. OP probably only found useless AI slop articles after a couple searches before getting discouraged and asking here
I realized this later in my reply too and answered that to myself. Should have read it in full before pressing the reply button, as my thoughts changed a bit during a research phase. I realized its Ai bullshit all over the place when doing research to give links.
Jesus, there’s so much FUD in that gist. A lot of information out of date and emotional tone to the brim. Makes you wonder who’s putting that much time and effort to support an outdated system like x11 and what they gain from that.
The reality is that the main desktop managers, and by extension the most popular distros are abandoning x11, so that’s just a silly hill to die on.
Think twice before abandoning X11. Wayland breaks everything! is more of an anti Wayland posting, but its good to have a view from all angles. So I post it here.
I like how you slightly poison the well there ("more of an anti Wayland posting) rather than pointing out that Wayland has very real problems even after >10 years of development.
You accuse me of poison? What nonsense is this? The author is anti Wayland and the entire post is about reasoning why you should not use Wayland. This is anti Wayland, not my opinion, no poisoning, nothing. I don’t agree with that person but still included it here, so we can see others perspectives too. I did not include any opinion or judge of me about that article, so nobody is poisoned by my opinion before reading it.
rather than pointing out that Wayland has very real problems even after >10 years of development.
Why don’t you do that? As you clearly know more than me.
The author is anti Wayland
The authors’ point of view does not matter. You’ve poisoned the well by presenting the data collected as potentially “tainted” by a bias that, even if true, does not change the data presented.
So yes - clearly and very obviously poisoning the well. Textbook really.
Why don’t you do that?
The link you provided actually did that. But they are “anti-wayland”…
Edit: and I’ll push back hard on the “anti-wayland” language as well. This is propaganda-style speech. People can “not like things” and disagree. But labeling somebody “anti-x” diminishes their opinions and ideas.
Wayland breaks everything is right in the title. Did you even look into the link before you accuse ME of propaganda? I did not poison the well and left my opinion out. The article IS anti Wayland, and that is not my opinion and does not reflect my opinion. You should stop right there.
Edit:
you: rather than pointing out that Wayland has very real problems even after >10 years of development.
me: Why don’t you do that?
you: The link you provided actually did that. But they are “anti-wayland”…
But you expect ME to do it, when I ask you to do the same?
Wayland breaks everything is right in the title. Did you even look into the link before you accuse ME of propaganda? I did not poison the well and left my opinion out. The article IS anti Wayland, and that is not my opinion and does not reflect my opinion. You should stop right there.
You’re just anti-X11.
You just attack me personally the whole time with wrong accusations, instead bringing arguments for or against Wayland and X11.
Edit: You call me doing propaganda, you call me poisoning the opinions of others, you call me anti X11. Just because I call the article Anti Wayland. That’s it, that is your basis. Even though I provided that link to have a different view in the mix our discussions too. I ask you, would you not consider the article I linked being Anti Wayland? Strange because it ONLY speaks about its problems (some not even true anymore), but not about its strengths. Also you call me anti-X11 (to me personally), but you say its propaganda speech if I say Anti Wayland (about the article).
You just attack me personally the whole time with wrong accusations, instead bringing arguments for or against Wayland and X11.
I very clearly attacked your argument (not you) as “Poisoning the Well”. Sounds like you’re not familiar with logical fallacies, I highly recommend reading up on them.
you call me anti X11
Yes - that was me doing to you what you did to the author to show by example. You took that as an insult which is why I say calling the author of that article “anti-wayland” is well-poisoning. You’ve set the tone that the article is not to be taken seriously because of a perceived bias on the part of the author. You “besmirched” their reputation to, by association, attack the argument. This is practically the definition of Poisoning the Well.
Just because I call the article Anti Wayland. That’s it, that is your basis.
Yes - that was the fallacy. The “well-poisoning” if you will. If you simply said “Here is an article that points out some of the problems with Wayland” or something to that effect I wouldn’t have taken any issue.
And X11 does not have problems? Atleast post the issues you still have today(!) with wayland so people can make an informed opinion.
“I like pancakes”
Internet morons: “Oh so you hate waffles and anyone who eats them???”
As an average user, I notice input issues, multi-monitor issues and incorrect animations in Wayland. X11 just works fine. But somehow pointing out problems with Wayland always gets you downvoted because it’s “newer and more secure”.
Multi-monitor issues surprises me, considering multi-monitor support is kind of a sellingpoint for wayland. I don’t think animations being incorrect has anything to do with wayland itself though, it’s up to the individual compositors to handle that.
Specifically, it’s windows opening in the wrong screen. In some full-screen Wine games it means games crash when you move them.
And for animations, if I use touchpad 3-finger touch to switch desktops, the animation is reversed.
But somehow pointing out problems with Wayland always gets you downvoted because it’s “newer and more secure”.
That’s not the reason why he got downvotes. In fact, he didn’t even mention what problems Wayland has. Contrary to him, I even posted a huge link with massive listings why Wayland sucks. I also pointed out 2 problems in my comment he is replying to.
On most distros Wayland is trouble free and x11 is a thing of the past. X11 made some things simpler like screen share with somebody , but Linux is growing large enough that Wayland (that is secure) is the best choice. You don’t want your x11 screen duplicated on a malware attackers screen etc.
One thing that’s annoying in Wayland is new window placement where app can’t control it at all*. Wayland would place it on a screen it wants. This gets hugely annoying when you have more than one monitor and/or virtual desktops and you’d want to restore billion of browser windows, for example.
- A solution is being worked on, luckily
If you use a feature complete Wayland compositor and compare it to equivalents (RIP velox), then Wayland basically offers more consistent pen and multitouch support and stuff, while being faster.
There’s no 2D acceleration in Wayland and that’s by design, it’s made for new GPUs that don’t have 2D anyway anymore. Programs either draw pixels or start up 3D.
XLibre is trying the opposite and is actually merging various 2D drivers for old and niche hardware, like ct65550 as found in the Toshiba Libretto 50ct among others. Most of these originate from distribution forks (NetBSD in this case). T2 Linux also maintains a patch to bring back lots of more ancient 2D drivers that were removed in 2012.
As someone who has used X11 and Wayland, it doesn’t matter for the typical user. If you, like me, have a penchant for some smaller desktop environments like XFCE or window managers, you will be stuck with X11, but many are already working on porting to Wayland.
Couple edge cases for gaming, namely screen tearing on some X11 configurations and certain Nvidia hardware running into issues on Wayland. For multi-monitor or high DPI users, Wayland handles per-monitor DPI and fractional scaling far better than X11. Maybe a couple more edge use cases for remoting into the desktop, but Wayland support is also improving quickly on that end. In any case, Wayland is by design more secure than X11.
I thought I’d never have to care about X11 or Wayland if I was a typical user. I thought it was just a debate for really passionate Linux user.
I turned out to be false since the reason I had bad playback on my HTPC, was the fact that Wayland was preventing the refresh rate of my TV to be adjusted to the content.
Switching to a distro using X11 solved the issue and apparently Wayland doesn’t plan on changing anything about this issue.
Wayland doesn’t plan on changing anything about this issue.
This seems to be a common pattern with the Wayland team. They seem very focused on some technical ideology for how “things should work” to the point of ignoring or dismissing real-world issues.
Perhaps in another 20 years they’ll get around to addressing it.
There are still things that work on X11 that don’t work on Wayland but Wayland has more security, more features and is actually being developed now.
Pick your distros default, if something graphical doesn’t work switching might do the trick.
Common issues with wayland are mostly related to screen sharing or lower level thingies like programmatically pressing the mouse.
Common issues with X11 is VRR, HDR, fractional scaling and multi monitor configuration.
Every time I setup my desktop up for Wayland I always go back to X11, I find Wayland sluggish compared to X11 and don’t have the time nor energy to troubleshoot applications that had no issues working on X11.
I did not have any problems with Wayland for 6 months on Arch (personal PC for hobby projects and gaming). I also don’t want to troubleshoot, it just works. Most applications are installed via flatpak.
also don’t want to troubleshoot, it just works. Most applications are installed via flatpak.
I’m not surprised Flatpaks work with Wayland without issue, however Flatpaks containerize the application which is something I don’t want to do for everything I download as it adds extra overhead for something that could’ve just been built and installed as a native package (.deb, .rpm).
To each their own though.
I mean the ELI5 for the uninitiated is that X11 is older, and Wayland was made as the successor to X11. It aims to address issues that a lot of people had with X11. X11 is not in active development whereas Wayland is, and for support for modern tech, it’ll be added to Wayland but not X11. These days I’d advise to go with Wayland unless you either have hardware that doesn’t place nicely with it or you have a specific use-case for X11, i.e. Wayland unless you have a reason not to. Although most “beginner” distros choose for you without prompting you to pick, in which case go with the default (it’s probably Wayland anyway).
If you mean to explain the debate, basically some people have particular things they want to do, or they want to do something a certain way, and it’s not supported by Wayland, usually by design due to things like security concerns or philosophical differences with X11. X11 will continue to work for a long time but it’s not getting new features, so if these issues are a concern with you, you could stick to X11 for the foreseeable future.
The average user is not supposed to notice a difference (apart from maybe QoL differences like performance, screen tearing, etc)—that’s the goal of both projects. It should just display your desktop.
X11 is stable and maintained but not getting new features. It will generally work well for most people but over time it will and is drifting to obsolesence.
Wayland has some flaws but is not basically stable and feature rich enough for most people to use. It is not a complete drop in for X11 and won’t necessairly ever will be but for the vast majorory of desktop users it is.
The problem with Wayland is that there are still issues for people with graphics drivers. Nvidia in particular has had serious issues with it although they are improving.
I personally still use X11 with my KDE set up because i still have problems woth Wayland. Thwyre not as bad as they were but its still not quite stable above for me.
I personally haven’t really seen much difference between the two except Wayland eating more CPU and being rather tedious for hybrid (Ryzen/Nvidia) setups (still haven’t resolved it crashing when I change TTY). I’d personally say stick to whatever default your desktop environment runs on…XWayland helps with the whole compatibility concerns at least.
Just my experience though, yours could be different depending on your machine and general setup
The difference is that some things work on one and some things don’t work on the other.
For example: the literal whole way you’ve ever been able to use a computer will only work on x11. That’s because x11 comes directly from the lineage of human computer interface that you’re used to. Everything just works. Unless…
Counter example: new stuff is phasing out (or has already phased out) x11 support! Kde and gnome for example, are Wayland only in the most recent builds. That doesn’t mean your rich copying and accessibility tools still work. They just didn’t implement those parts.
If you believe that open source is an impenetrable monolith that cannot be changed then you’d better get on the Wayland ship now and figure out how to deal with its shortcomings before you’re left behind.
If you believe that open source projects can respond to their users and improve, stick with x11. It works and someone will support it.
I knew GNOME dropped support for x11 only but never heard of KDE doing the same. But that was expectable anyway
My Xpenguin won’t work in Wayland 😢
