I’m not a super-savvy user. Can someone explain to me why I should care about X vs Wayland? Everything seems to work with X, and as I’ve just read, many programs don’t support Wayland. So will this transition just lead to lots of broken software once someone decides they won’t ship with X by default anymore?
Wayland is basically the direct successor to X11. It basically fixes tearing, makes HDR possible, makes scaling way better, and is all-round just better prepared for the future. I’ve been using it for years without much trouble. The only issues I keep having are scripts which expect x11-specific tools to be there, but that seems to be quickly solving itself while people realize that x11 is quickly loosing support. If you want to try it, I recommend setting up a fresh installation of a distro with KDE, Gnome, Sway, or Hyprland, just to make sure all the right dependencies are installed.
You basically shouldn’t until you are forced to move. Almost all of the improvements so far are in the internal architecture.
You might notice some tiny differences if you switch, like logging in doesn’t show a black screen at any point, and window choosers when screen sharing show a (totally broken) grid of previews instead of a plain list of window titles.
Hopefully when X is fully dead (give it another 10 years) we’ll see some actual improvements, e.g. RDP-style remote desktop, good support for multi-monitor, HDR, HiDPI, etc.
I’m not a super-savvy user. Can someone explain to me why I should care about X vs Wayland? Everything seems to work with X, and as I’ve just read, many programs don’t support Wayland. So will this transition just lead to lots of broken software once someone decides they won’t ship with X by default anymore?
Wayland is basically the direct successor to X11. It basically fixes tearing, makes HDR possible, makes scaling way better, and is all-round just better prepared for the future. I’ve been using it for years without much trouble. The only issues I keep having are scripts which expect x11-specific tools to be there, but that seems to be quickly solving itself while people realize that x11 is quickly loosing support. If you want to try it, I recommend setting up a fresh installation of a distro with KDE, Gnome, Sway, or Hyprland, just to make sure all the right dependencies are installed.
Wayland is nothing like X and definitely isn’t a successor
You basically shouldn’t until you are forced to move. Almost all of the improvements so far are in the internal architecture.
You might notice some tiny differences if you switch, like logging in doesn’t show a black screen at any point, and window choosers when screen sharing show a (totally broken) grid of previews instead of a plain list of window titles.
Hopefully when X is fully dead (give it another 10 years) we’ll see some actual improvements, e.g. RDP-style remote desktop, good support for multi-monitor, HDR, HiDPI, etc.