I wholeheartedly agree with the following article
I fall more on the skeptical side of the X11Libre fork; such as Libre Arts - Weekly recap — 8 June 2025
It doesnt fill me with much confidence; happy for others to run the gauntlet of X11Libre but if UM goes down that path I'll switch to a Wayland desktop-based distribution.
I'm hoping that all the issues related to Wayland "falling short" with respect to X11 scope of functionality at both local and remote Desktop, will have been resolved before Ubuntu commits to switching for Wayland as core integrated engine.
That way, we would all have the best of both worlds!
If anyone's interested in KDE's stance on X11 support. Nate published a blog post about it today.
I admire their approach to the transition; but especially:
Our plan is to handle everything on that page such that even the most hardcore X11 user doesn’t notice anything missing when they move to Wayland.
Today, I decided to switch my work (KDE) laptop from Wayland back to X11. Not bad for 2 months.
It was the little bugs like:
- Dragging files between apps to open them, did nothing.
- After unlocking and the monitor was asleep, Electron apps are blurry until resized.
- When sharing the screen in Firefox, it doesn't integrate that well any more. Firefox lets me share the "Use operating system" window, which opens a portal window to actually select the screen/window. Too many clicks.
- CTRL+SHIFT dragging didn't create the symlink as it should, it copied files.
- Menu rolling (click & hold over menus) didn't work in GTK apps, unless I used
GDK_BACKEND=x11
. - My Git GUI client crashed with autocompletion pops up (Qt bug?), so ironically,
QT_QPA_PLATFORM=xcb
to use X11 backend. Sometimes the window misplaced itself, depending where I started the app.
I'm happy to trade these nibbles for one bigger X11 (AMD?) bug affecting that machine: When locked, there is a chance the fans spin up because the compositor goes haywire with CPU. The workaround is to restart or stop the compositor - sounds good to me!
Granted, some/most of these are compositor (KWin) bugs. I'm sure they'll get fixed with time.
I haven't tried Wayland on other desktops (well, maybe briefly on Ubuntu/GNOME, but not serious work) so I am curious how things will pan out when MATE gains support. Rather then X11 being the thing everyone has in common, it's now largely the compositor's role to take care of this stuff.
Also: a link back to the original topic and a new x11-wayland tag to track this stuff!
A page you have already mentioned above has link listing more incompatibilities
Yep, I was just sharing my experiences with Wayland (KWin).
On second thoughts, my experience will still only ever be specific to KDE, like that wiki page. That's why I'm curious when MATE gets support whether we'd have to catch up to reach the same feature parity.
That said, if the larger desktop environments (and users) from GNOME/KDE already report & fix the issues, that could be useful to learn from. Maybe by then, any remaining limitations became part of the Wayland spec.
I'm keen to hear about anyone's experience with Wayland and, say, Wayfire or other compositors. Eventually I'll start testing them out but probably not for six months or so.
Ahh! I just connected the dots - good to know. MATE's Wayland session is based on Wayfire:
Apparently Wayfire's quite similar to Compiz. I wonder how the 3D-ness performance will be for anyone on older graphic chipsets.
Wayfire seems like an odd choice. I'm not sure how Miriway compares. Then there's all the problems with theming.
Here's a brief example of Miriway running different desktops including MATE.
I'm a simple man. X11 still runs better so I use it. The only appreciable difference I have in Wayland is support for Variable Refresh Rates (I have one 60hz monitor and one 144hz)... but honestly, I can't tell the difference.
On the flip side, in X11, I don't have any global hotkey issues, window positions are more predictable, I understand the configuration better, drag and drop works, and I can screenshare with my girlfriend with sound and no weirdness.
All that said, I don't mind using Wayland either as those concessions are not horrible.
For those looking at other developments; there's also the possibility that this helps replace an ageing Xorg tech stack - but provides support for X11-based apps (or desktops): GitHub - kaniini/wayback: experimental X11 compatibility layer
Here is another twist being curious enough
I really don't understand all the issues myself, but it seems every attempted improvement in Linux ends up causing more fragmentation. Systemd vs Init is another example. People are dedicated their preferece, but I suspect somewhat stubborn too.
I just hope the best one wins out.
Back in the 80s we had the MIT Athena project, which led to development of the X Window System (X11), Kerberos, and Zephyr ... still used today.