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Think twice about Wayland. It breaks everything!
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Wayland.md

Think twice before abandoning X11. Wayland breaks everything!

image

Wayland breaks everything! It is binary incompatible, provides no clear transition path with 1:1 replacements for everything in X11, and is even philosophically incompatible with X11. Hence, if you are interested in existing applications to "just work" without the need for adjustments, then you may be better off avoiding Wayland.

Wayland solves no issues I have but breaks almost everything I need. Even the most basic, most simple things (like xkill) - in this case with no obvious replacement. And usually it stays broken, because the Wayland folks mostly seem to care about Automotive, Gnome, maybe KDE - and alienating everyone else (e.g., people using just an X11 window manager or something like GNUstep) in the process.

Feature comparison

Please do fact-check and suggest corrections/improvements below. Maybe this table should find its home in a Wiki, so that everyone could easily collaborate. I'm just a bit fearful of vandalism... ideas?

✅ Supported ⚠️ Available with limitations ❌ Not available or only available on some systems (requires particular compositors or additional software which may not be present on every system)

Functionality Xorg Wayland
Performance ✅ Best (DistroWatch) ⚠️ Worse (DistroWatch)
Power consumption ? ?
RAM usage ✅ ~150 MB lower (Phoronix) ⚠️ ~150 MB higher (Phoronix)
Nvidia GPUs ✅ Well supported by proprietary Nvidia driver, also older hardware (open source driver Nouveau never worked satisfactorily) ⚠️ Only recent hardware
Multi-monitor ✅ Supported via XRandR, Xinerama (TheServerHost, KDE Blog) ✅ Stable, dynamic hotplug, theoretically better (debatable, comment) multi-monitor support (KDE Blog, CBT Nuggets)
Multi-resolution Multi-screen Support ✅ Can be done (tedu); mixed refresh rates (guiodic, Reddit) ✅ Per-output resolutions and per-output scaling with sharp rendering (CBT Nuggets, EndeavourOS Forum)
Cropping and Scaling ✅ Per monitor with XRandR (xrandr manpage) ✅ wp_viewporter, wp_fractional_scale_manager_v1, per-window ("surface") cropping (Wayland Protos, KDE Dev) - but applications can be blurry
Screen Recording / Capture ✅ Supported via X APIs; easy screen & window recording (Xlib Manual, OBS Wiki) ❌ Not natively available—wlr-screencopy and/or ext-image-copy-capture can be used without Portals but may not be present on every system. Otherwise requires Screencast Portal, which may not be present on every system (GNOME Docs, PipeWire Portal FAQ).
Input Devices / Event Routing ✅ XInput, XInput2, global intercept (XInput2 Docs) ❌ Input routed only to focused window ("surface"), no global interception (Wayland FAQ, Wayland Security)
Input Injection ✅ Via XTEST, XSendEvent (XTEST Spec) ❌ Not natively available—requires Remote Desktop Portal, which may not be present on every system (libei GH, KDE Input) . Workaround: /dev/uinput should work everywhere.
Global Hotkeys / Key Grabs ✅ XGrabKey()/XGrabButton() (Xlib Docs) ❌ Not natively available—requires Global Shortcuts Portal, which may not be present on every system (Portal Docs, KDE)
Window Positioning / Stacking ✅ Clients move/resize windows (Xlib Ref) ❌ Only compositor controls window positioning (Wayland FAQ, KDE Dev)
Clipboard Access ✅ Full/explicit, ICCCM selections (ICCCM) ❌ Not natively available—requires Clipboard Portal, which may not be present on every system (Clipboard Portal, Wayland FAQ)
Drag and Drop / Copy and Paste ✅ Xdnd, Motif (Xdnd Spec), Motif (Motif DND) ⚠️ wl_data_offer, wl_data_device_manager (Wayland Protos, KDE Drag&Drop) but implementations are flaky, especially when dragging between X11 and Wayland applications
Touch / Gesture Support ✅ XInput2 (XInput Multi-Touch) ✅ wl_touch, gestures via zwp_pointer_gestures_v1 (Wayland Protos)
Tablet Support ✅ XInput2 (libinput Tablet) ✅ zwp_tablet_manager_v2 (Wayland Protos)
Remote Display / Network Transparency ✅ X11 protocol, SSH forwarding (OpenBSD FAQ, XForwarding) ❌ Not natively available—requires Remote Desktop Portal, which may not be present on every system (Wayland FAQ)
Screen Configuration ✅ XRandR direct (xrandr manpage) ❌ Only compositor can set layout; clients have no access (KDE Dev). Supported by some compositors which may not be present on every system via wlr-output-management and associated tools like wlr-randr.
Global menus ✅ Works ❌ Not natively available—requires qt_extended_surface set_generic_property which may not be present on every system
Window Management Hints (size, position) ✅ XSetWMHints, XSetNormalHints (ICCCM) ❌ Position not supported, only size
Window Title / Icon Name ✅ XSetWMName, XSetIconName (ICCCM) ✅ xdg_toplevel.set_title/set_icon (xdg-shell)
Window State (iconic, withdrawn, etc.) ✅ XSetWMState (ICCCM) ❌ Not exposed to clients; handled by compositor (Wayland FAQ)
Window Protocols (WM_DELETE_WINDOW) ✅ ICCCM, WM_DELETE_WINDOW (ICCCM) ✅ xdg_toplevel.close (xdg-shell)
Window Class / Instance ✅ XSetClassHint (ICCCM) ❌ Not supported (Wayland FAQ)
Window Transience (dialogs, popups) ✅ XSetTransientForHint (ICCCM) ✅ xdg_toplevel.set_parent (xdg-shell)
Input Focus (active window) ✅ XSetInputFocus (Xlib Ref) ❌ Managed by compositor (Wayland FAQ)
Selections ✅ Selections (ICCCM) ❌ Not natively available—requires Clipboard Portal, which may not be present on every system (Clipboard Portal, Wayland FAQ)
Drag and Drop ✅ Motif/Xdnd (Xdnd Spec) ✅ Native protocol (Wayland/Drag&Drop)
Window Grouping ✅ XSetWMHints group (ICCCM) ❌ No concept/protocol for grouping (Wayland FAQ)
Input Model / Input Hint ✅ Input model hints (ICCCM) ❌ Not exposed/natively supported (Wayland FAQ)
Window Manager Communication ✅ ICCCM client-to-WM (ICCCM) ❌ No standard protocol (Wayland FAQ)
Colormap / Visual hints ✅ Colormap per ICCCM (ICCCM) ⚠️ Handled by compositor (Wayland FAQ)
Icon Pixmap / Bitmap ✅ ICCCM icon hints (ICCCM) ✅ xdg_toplevel.set_icon (xdg-shell)
Urgency Hint ✅ XUrgencyHint (ICCCM) ❌ Not standardized; up to compositor (Wayland FAQ)
Window Shade (roll up/down) ✅ WM_STATE (mapped/unmapped state) ❌ Not supported
Window Always On Top (z-order) ✅ Applications can request stacking/z-order via WM_HINTS, window group, _NET_WM_STATE_ABOVE (EWMH) ❌ Not supported
Exclusive Display Control / DRM Leasing ⚠️ No protocol, possible with libdrm (libdrm) ✅ wp_drm_lease_v1 (Wayland Protos)
Transparency / Compositing ⚠️ With composite extension/compton/picom (wiki.archlinux) ✅ Built-in; always composited (Wayland FAQ)
Color Management ⚠️ Apps/loaders like xiccd (XCM docs) ✅ wp-color-manager-v1 (Wayland Protos)
VSync / Tear-free Rendering ⚠️ Inconsistent, needs correct driver/config (AskUbuntu) ✅ Guaranteed by compositor; always tear-free (Wayland FAQ)
Security / App Isolation ⚠️ Via extensions, e.g., Xnamespace extension (The Register) ⚠️ Wayland tries to separate applications from each other. As a result, applications can't do many things ("We're treated like hostile threat actors on our own workstations")
Click into a window to terminate the application ✅ xkill ❌ Not natively available—some compositors may have proprietary mechanisms, which may not be present on every system
Click into a window to see its metadata ✅ xprop ❌ Not supported
Set and get metadata (properties) on windows to exchange information regarding windows ✅ X Atoms (Docs) ❌ Not supported
One window server used by virtually all desktop environments and distributions ✅ Xorg (and Xlibre) ❌ Every desktop environment comes with a different compositor, which behaves differently, supports different features and has different bugs

Status update

Update 06/2025: X11 is alive and well, despite what Red Hat wants you to believe. https://github.com/X11Libre/xserver revitalizes the Xorg X11 server as a community project under new leadership.

And Red Hat wanted to silence it.

As 2024 is winding down:

For the record, even in the latest Raspberry Pi OS you still can't drag a file from inside a zip file onto the desktop for it to be extracted. So drag-and-drop is still broken for me.

And Qt move() on a window still doesn't work like it does on all other desktop platforms (and the Wayland folks think that is good).

And global menus still don't work (outside of not universally implemented things like qt_extended_surface set_generic_property).

Wayland issues

The Wayland project seems to operate like they were starting a greenfield project, whereas at the same time they try to position Wayland as "the X11 successor", which would clearly require a lot of thought about not breaking, or at least providing a smooth upgrade path for, existing software.

In fact, it is merely an incompatible alternative, and not even one that has (nor wants to have) feature parity (missing features). And unlike X11 (the X Window System), Wayland protocol designers actively avoid the concept of "windows" (making up incomprehensible words like "xdg_toplevel" instead).

DO NOT USE A WAYLAND SESSION! Let Wayland not destroy everything and then have other people fix the damage it caused. Or force more Red Hat/Gnome components (glib, Portals, Pipewire) on everyone!

Please add more examples to the list.

Wayland seems to be made by people who do not care for existing software. They assume everyone is happy to either rewrite everything or to just use Gnome on Linux (rather than, say, twm with ROX Filer on NetBSD).

Edit: When I wrote the above, I didn't really realize what Wayland even was, I just noticed that some distributions (like Fedora) started pushing it onto me and things didn't work properly there. Today I realize that you can't "install Wayland", because unlike Xorg, there is not one "Wayland display server" but actually every desktop envrironment has its own. And maybe "the Wayland folks" don't "only care about Gnome", but then, any fix that is done in Gnome's Wayland implementation isn't automatically going to benefit all users of Wayland-based software, and possibly isn't even the implementation "the Wayland folks" would necessarily recommend.

Edit 12/2023: If something wants to replace X11 for desktop computers (such as professional Unix workstations), then it better support all needed features (and key concepts, like windows) for that use case. That people also have displays on their fridge doesn't matter the least bit in that context of discussion. Let's propose the missing Wayland protocols for full X11 feature parity.

Edit 08/2024: "Does Wayland becoming the defacto standard display server for Linux serve to marginalize BSD?" https://fossforce.com/2024/07/the-unintended-consequences-linuxs-wayland-adoption-will-have-on-bsd/

Wayland is broken by design

  • A crash in the window manager takes down all running applications
  • You cannot run applications as root
  • You cannot do a lot of things that you can do in Xorg by design
  • There is not one /usr/bin/wayland display server application that is desktop environment agnostic and is used by everyone (unlike with Xorg)
  • It offloads a lot of work to each and every window manager. As a result, the same basic features get implemented differently in different window managers, with different behaviors and bugs - so what works on desktop environment A does not necessarily work in desktop environment B (e.g., often you hear that something "works in Wayland", even though it only really works on Gnome and KDE, not in all Wayland implementations). This summarizes it very well: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/233

Apparently the Wayland project doesn't even want to be "X.org 2.0", and doesn't want to provide a commonly used implementation of a compositor that could be used by everyone: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland/-/issues/233. Yet this would imho be required if they want to make it into a worthwile "successor" that would have any chance of ever fixing the many Wayland issues at the core.

Wayland breaks screen recording applications

  • MaartenBaert/ssr#431 ❌ broken since 24 Jan 2016, no resolution ("I guess they use a non-standard GNOME interface for this")
  • https://github.com/mhsabbagh/green-recorder ❌ ("I am no longer interested in working with things like ffmpeg/wayland/GNOME's screencaster or solving the issues related to them or why they don't work")
  • vkohaupt/vokoscreenNG#51 ❌ broken since at least 7 Mar 2020. ("I have now decided that there will be no Wayland support for the time being. Reason, there is no budget for it. Let's see how it looks in a year or two.") - This is the key problem. Wayland breaks everything and then expects others to fix the wreckage it caused on their own expense.
  • obsproject/obs-studio#2471 ❌ broken since at least 7 Mar 2020. ("Wayland is unsupported at this time", "There isn't really something that can just be easily changed. Wayland provides no capture APIs")
  • There is a workaround for OBS Studio that requires a obs-xdg-portal plugin (which is known to be Red Hat/Flatpak-centric, GNOME-centric, "perhaps" works with other desktops)
  • phw/peek#1191 ❌ broken since 14 Jan 2023. Peek, a screen recording tool, has been abandoned by its developerdue to a number of technical challenges, mostly with Gtk and Wayland ("Many of these have to do with how Wayland changed the way applications are being handled")

As of February 2024, screen recording is still broken utterly on Wayland with the vast majority of tools. Proof

Workaround: Find a Wayland compositor that supports the wlr-screencopy-unstable-v1 protocol and use wf-recorder -a. The default compositor in Raspberry Pi OS (Wayfire) does, but the default compositor in Ubuntu doesn't. (That's the worst part of Wayland: Unlike with Xorg, it always depends on the particular Wayand compositor what works and what is broken. Is there even one that supports everything?)

Wayland breaks screen sharing applications

  • jitsi/jitsi-meet#2350 ❌ broken since 3 Jan 2018
  • jitsi/jitsi-meet#6389 ❌ broken since 24 Jan 2016 ("Closing since there is nothing we can do from the Jitsi Meet side.") See? Wayland breaks stuff and leaves application developers helpless and unable to fix the breakage, even if they wanted.

NOTE: As of November 2023, screen sharing in Chromium using Jitsi Meet is still utterly broken, both in Raspberry Pi OS Desktop, and in a KDE Plasma installation, albeit with different behavior. Note that Pipewire, Portals and whatnot are installed, and even with them it does not work.

Wayland breaks automation software

sudo pkg install py37-autokey

This is an X11 application, and as such will not function 100% on 
distributions that default to using Wayland instead of Xorg.

Wayland breaks Gnome-Global-AppMenu (global menus for Gnome)

Wayland broke global menus with KDE platformplugin

Good news: According to this report global menus now work with KDE platformplugin as of 4/2022

Wayland breaks global menus with non-KDE Qt platformplugins

Wayland breaks AppImages that don't ship a special Wayland Qt plugin

  • https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/03/unsetting-qt_qpa_platform-environment-variable-by-default/ ❌ broke AppImages that don't ship a special Wayland Qt plugin. "This affects proprietary applications, FLOSS applications bundled as appimages, FLOSS applications bundled as flatpaks and not distributed by KDE and even the Qt installer itself. In my opinion this is a showstopper for running a Wayland session." However, there is a workaround: "AppImages which ship just the XCB plugin will automatically fallback to running in xwayland mode" (see below).

Wayland breaks Redshift

Update 2023: Some Wayland compositors (such as Wayfire) now support wlr_gamma_control_unstable_v1, see https://github.com/WayfireWM/wayfire/wiki/Tutorial#configuring-wayfire and jonls/redshift#663. Does it work in all Wayland compositors though?

Wayland breaks global hotkeys

Wayland does not work for Xfce?

See below.

Wayland does not work properly on NVidia hardware?

Apparently Wayland relies on nouveau drivers for NVidia hardware. The nouveau driver has been giving unsatisfactory performance since its inception. Even clicking on the application starter icon in Gnome results in a stuttery animation. Only the proprietary NVidia driver results in full performance.

See below.

Update 2024: The situation might slowly be improving. It remains to be seen whether this will work well also for all existing old Nvidia hardware (that works well in Xorg).

Wayland does not work properly on Intel hardware

Wayland prevents GUI applications from running as root

  • https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1274451 ❌ broken since 22 Oct 2015 ("No this will only fix sudo for X11 applications. Running GUI code as root is still a bad idea." I absolutely detest it when software tries to prevent me from doing what some developer thinks is "a bad idea" but did not consider my use case, e.g., running truss for debugging on FreeBSD needs to run the application as root. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1323302 suggests it is not possible: "These sorts of security considerations are very much the way that "the Linux desktop" is going these days".)

Suggested solution

Wayland is biased toward Linux and breaks BSD

  • https://blog.netbsd.org/tnf/entry/wayland_on_netbsd_trials_and ❌ broken since 28 Sep 2020 ("Wayland is written with the assumption of Linux to the extent that every client application tends to #include <linux/input.h> because Wayland's designers didn't see the need to define a OS-neutral way to get mouse button IDs. (...) In general, Wayland is moving away from the modularity, portability, and standardization of the X server. (...) I've decided to take a break from this, since it's a fairly huge undertaking and uphill battle. Right now, X11 combined with a compositor like picom or xcompmgr is the more mature option."

Wayland complicates server-side window decorations

  • https://blog.martin-graesslin.com/blog/2018/01/server-side-decorations-and-wayland/ ❌ FUD since at least 27 January 2018 ("I heard that GNOME is currently trying to lobby for all applications implementing client-side decorations. One of the arguments seems to be that CSD is a must on Wayland. " ... "I’m burnt from it and are not interested in it any more.") Server-side window decorations are what make the title bar and buttons of all windows on a system consistent. They are a must have_ for a consistent system, so that applications written e.g., Gtk will not look entirely alien on e.g., a Qt based desktop, and to enforce that developers cannot place random controls into window titles where they do not belong. Client-side decorations, on the other hand, are destroying uniformity and consistency, put additional burden on application and toolkit developers, and allow e.g., GNOME developers to put random controls (that do not belong there) into window titles (like buttons), hence making it more difficult to achieve a uniform look and feel for all applications regardless of the toolkit being used.

Red Hat employee Matthias Clasen ("I work at the Red Hat Desktop team... I am actually a manager there... the people who do the actual work work for me") expicitly stated "Client-side everything" as a principle, even though the protocol doesn't enforce it: "Fonts, Rendering, Nested Windows, Decorations. "It also gives the design more freedom to use the titlebar space, which is something our designers appreciate" (sic). Source

Wayland breaks windows rasing/activating themselves

Wayland breaks RescueTime

Wayland breaks window managers

Apparently Wayland (at least as implemented in KWin) does not respect EWMH protocols, and breaks other command line tools like wmctrl, xrandr, xprop, etc. Please see the discussion below for details.

Wayland requires JWM, TWM, XDM, IceWM,... to reimplement Xorg-like functionality

  • Screen recording and casting
  • Querying of the mouse position, keyboard LED state, active window position or name, moving windows (xdotool, wmctrl)
  • Global shortcuts
  • System tray
  • Input Method support/editor (IME)
  • Graphical settings management (i.e. tools like xranrd)
  • Fast user switching/multiple graphical sessions
  • Session configuration including but not limited to 1) input devices 2) monitors configuration including refresh rate / resolution / scaling / rotation and power saving 3) global shortcuts
  • HDR/deep color support
  • VRR (variable refresh rate)
  • Disabling input devices (xinput alternative)

As it currently stands minor WMs and DEs do not even intend to support Wayland given the sheer complexity of writing all the code required to support the above features. You do not expect JWM, TWM, XDM or even IceWM developers to implement all the featured outlined in ^1.

Wayland breaks _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR protocol

  • https://git.521000.bestelectron/electron#33226 ("skipTaskbar has no effect on Wayland. Currently Electron uses _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR to tell the WM to hide an app from the taskbar, and this works fine on X11 but there's no equivalent mechanism in Wayland." Workarounds are only available for some desktops including GNOME and KDE Plasma.) ❌ broken since March 10, 2022

Wayland breaks xclip

xclip is a command line utility that is designed to run on any system with an X11 implementation. It provides an interface to X selections ("the clipboard"). Apparently Wayland isn't compatible to the X11 clipboard either.

This is another example that the Wayland requires everyone to change components and take on additional work just because Wayland is incompatible to what we had working for all those years.

Wayland breaks SUDO_ASKPASS

Wayland breaks auto-type in password managers

Wayland breaks X11 atoms

X11 atoms can be used to store information on windows. For example, a file manager might store the path that the window represents in an X11 atom, so that it (and other applications) can know for which paths there are open file manager windows. Wayland is not compatible to X11 atoms, resulting in all software that relies on them to be broken until specifically ported to Wayland (which, in the case of legacy software, may well be never).

Possible workaround (to be verified): Use the (Qt proprietary?) Extended Surface Wayland protocol casually mentioned in https://blog.broulik.de/2016/10/global-menus-returning/ "which allows you to set (and read?) arbitrary properties on a window". Is it the set_generic_property from https://github.com/qt/qtwayland/blob/dev/src/extensions/surface-extension.xml?

Wayland breaks games

Games are developed for X11. And if you run a game on Wayland, performance is subpar due to things like forced vsync. Only recently, some Wayland implementations (like KDE KWin) let you disable that.

Wayland breaks xdotool

(Details to be added; apparently no 1:1 drop-in replacement available?)

Wayland breaks xkill

xkill (which I use on a regular basis) does not work with Wayland applications.

What is the equivalent for Wayland applications?

Wayland breaks screensavers

Is it true that Wayland also breaks screensavers? https://www.jwz.org/blog/2023/09/wayland-and-screen-savers/

Wayland breaks setting the window position

Other platforms (Windows, Mac, other destop environments) can set the window position on the screen, so all cross-platform toolkits and applications expect to do the same on Wayland, but Wayland can't (doesn't want to) do it.

  • PCSX2/pcsx2#10179 PCX2 (Playstation 2 Emulator) ❌ broken since 2023-10-25 ("Disables Wayland, it's super broken/buggy in basically every scenario. KDE isn't too buggy, GNOME is a complete disaster.")

  • Wayland might allow the compositor (not: the application) to set window positions, but that means that as an application author, I can't do anything but wait for KDE to implement https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=15329 - and even then, it will only work under KDE, not Gnome or elsewhere. Big step backward compared to X11!

Wayland breaks color mangement

Apparently color management as of 2023 (well over a decade of Wayland development) is still in the early "thinking" stage, all the while Wayland is already being pushed on people as if it was a "X11 successor".

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/pq/color-and-hdr/-/blob/main/doc/color-management-model.md

Wayland breaks DRM leasing

According to Valve, "DRM leasing is the process which allows SteamVR to take control of your VR headset's display in order to present low-latency VR content".

Wayland breaks In-home Streaming

Wayland breaks NetWM

Extended Window Manager Hints, a.k.a. NetWM, is an X Window System standard for the communication between window managers and applications

Wayland breaks window icons

Update 6/2024: Looks like this will get unbroken thanks to xdg_toplevel_icon_manager_v1, so that QWindow::setIcon will work again. If, and that's a big if, all compositors will support it. At least KDE is on it.

Wayland breaks drag and drop

Wayland breaks ./windowmanager --replace

  • Many window managers have a --replace argument, but Wayland compositors break this convention.

Wayland breaks Xpra

Xpra is an open-source multi-platform persistent remote display server and client for forwarding applications and desktop screens.

  • Under Xpra a context menu cannot be used: it opens and closes automatically before you can even move the mouse on it. "It's not just GDK, it's the Wayland itself. They decided to break existing applications and expect them to change how they work." (Xpra-org/xpra#4246) ❌ broken since 2024-06-01

Wayland breaks multi desktop docks

  • "Unfortunately Wayland is not designed to support multi desktop dock projects. This is why each DE using Wayland is building their own custom docks. Plus there is a lot of complexity to support Wayland based apps and also merge that data with apps running in Xwayland. A dock isn't useful unless it knows about every window and app running on the system." zquestz/plank-reloaded#70 ❌ broken since 2025-06-10

Xwayland breaks window resizing

Workarounds

  • Users: Refuse to use Wayland sessions. Uninstall desktop environments/Linux distributions that only ship Wayland sessions. Avoid Wayland-only applications (such as PreSonus Studio One) (potential workaround: run in https://github.com/cage-kiosk/cage)
  • Application developers: Enforce running applications on X11/XWayland (like LibrePCB does as of 11/2023)

Examples of Wayland being forced on users

This is exactly the kind of behavior this gist seeks to prevent.

Summary what is wrong with Wayland, by one of its contributors

image

Source: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/issues/179#note_2965661

History

  • 2008: Wayland was started by krh (while at Red Hat)
  • End of 2012: Wayland 1.0
  • Early 2013: GNOME begins Wayland porting

Source: "Where's Wayland?" by Matthias Clasen - Flock 2014

A decade later... Red Hat wants to force Wayland upon everyone, removing support for Xorg

What now?

Following the professional application KiCad's advice:

Recommendations for Users

For Professional Use

If you use KiCad professionally or require a reliable, full-featured experience, we strongly recommend:

Use X11-based desktop environments such as:

XFCE with X11 KDE Plasma with X11 MATE

Traditional desktop environments that maintain X11 support

Install X11-compatible display managers like LightDM or KDM instead of GDM if your distribution defaults to Wayland-only

Choose distributions that maintain X11 support - some distributions are moving to Wayland-only configurations that may not meet your needs

Source: https://www.kicad.org/blog/2025/06/KiCad-and-Wayland-Support/#

Similarly, for Krite: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article1030/debian-12-kde-plasma-2024-install-guide#d-krita-as-appimage

References

@JupiterSky11
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JupiterSky11 commented Aug 31, 2025 •
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The idea that the window on top has to be the one you're typing into is such a primitive idea.

Agreed. Maybe I misunderstood the feature they were describing, but Hyprland has focus-follows-mouse and also you can have floating windows. The Z-index is un-effected by focus, which is just... so nice. I prefer to keep everything tiled, but there are always cases where floating windows are nice, and not being worried about their order when switching is quite convenient.

@affhp
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affhp commented Aug 31, 2025 •
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Found a post on reddit

https://reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1n1lvce/is_fedora_43_dropping_x11_support/

OP was so worried about Fedora dropping X11, because one of the software he relied on no longer work under XWayland and other solution.

Some people told him to report to XWayland, and this is the following conversations:

They mention time-tracking, it's probably a spyware app that captures inputs to keep track if you're actively using the computer or not.
So it shouldn't be expected to work, by design.

It should work, as long as the user gives permissions to whatever it needs to do.

actually no. this should not be allowed / supported. it a cancer of an industry.

User should not be allowed to do what they want to do, this is cancer. - Linux 2025.

And someone recommended XLibre to OP, and then he get abundant of downvote.

@guiodic
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guiodic commented Aug 31, 2025

Found a post on reddit

https://reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1n1lvce/is_fedora_43_dropping_x11_support/

OP was so worried about Fedora dropping X11, because one of the software he relied on no longer work under XWayland and other solution.

Some people told him to report to XWayland, and this is the following conversations:

They mention time-tracking, it's probably a spyware app that captures inputs to keep track if you're actively using the computer or not.
So it shouldn't be expected to work, by design.

It should work, as long as the user gives permissions to whatever it needs to do.

actually no. this should not be allowed / supported. it a cancer of an industry.

User should not be allowed to do what they want to do, this is cancer. - Linux 2025.

And someone recommended XLibre to OP, and then he get abundant of downvote.

This is a perfect example of how Wayland is now a cult.

@Gumnos
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Gumnos commented Aug 31, 2025

Forcing Z index is... like, I can see it being used, but how is that something you straight up couldn't live without?

I regularly use it almost daily…it allows me to have one reference document/output/whatever forced to float over whatever I'm currently working on so that I can see it fully while still interacting with another window. Focus-follows-mouse (FFM) behaves similarly and works for some folks but personally drives me bonkers. But that's part of what I love about the X ecosystem—I have a vast number of window-managers that allow me to choose how I work; folks who like FFM can choose a WM that meets their needs. And yes, once there's a Wayland compositor that handles everything that Fluxbox does for me, I'll have a lot fewer gripes about Wayland. But until I have a fluxbox workalike for Wayland, it's not remotely a viable alternative for me.

@richRemer
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And yes, once there's a Wayland compositor that handles everything that Fluxbox does for me, I'll have a lot fewer gripes about Wayland. But until I have a fluxbox workalike for Wayland, it's not remotely a viable alternative for me.

I think the Wayland folks think everyone is going to switch to Wayland, but instead people are just going to stop using GNOME or any other DE/distro that forces them onto Wayland.

@guiodic
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guiodic commented Aug 31, 2025

Wayland's renowned tear-free experience

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025

Wayland's renowned tear-free experience

https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

well on my laptop wayland doesnt have screen tearing but it does on x11

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025

And yes, once there's a Wayland compositor that handles everything that Fluxbox does for me, I'll have a lot fewer gripes about Wayland. But until I have a fluxbox workalike for Wayland, it's not remotely a viable alternative for me.

I think the Wayland folks think everyone is going to switch to Wayland, but instead people are just going to stop using GNOME or any other DE/distro that forces them onto Wayland.

actually i use both ! i3 for x11 and hyprland for wayland

@affhp
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affhp commented Sep 1, 2025

Wayland's renowned tear-free experience
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

well on my laptop wayland doesnt have screen tearing but it does on x11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgtvXkUHSM

well on my laptop and my desktop X11 doesnt have screen tearing

@affhp
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affhp commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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Someone is talking about this on reddit r/AlpineLinux.

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Release_Notes_for_Alpine_3.22.0

KDE Plasma
The X11 session for KDE Plasma has been removed. If you had plasma-workspace-x11 installed make sure to remove it from /etc/apk/world. Wayland is the only available option now.
...
This page was last edited on 5 July 2025, at 02:15.

They just cut KDE X11 support before KDE officially dropping it.
Reddit people think "Alpine wanted x11 gone so XLibre wouldn't get a chance to swoop in."

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025

Someone is talking about this on reddit r/AlpineLinux.

https://wiki.alpinelinux.org/wiki/Release_Notes_for_Alpine_3.22.0

KDE Plasma
The X11 session for KDE Plasma has been removed. If you had plasma-workspace-x11 installed make sure to remove it from /etc/apk/world. Wayland is the only available option now.
...
This page was last edited on 5 July 2025, at 02:15.

They just cut KDE X11 support before KDE officially dropping it. Reddit people think "Alpine wanted x11 gone so XLibre wouldn't get a chance to swoop in."

because it is cause this is what alpine want, the maintainer already said they want to ban XLibre for "politcial reason"

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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Wayland's renowned tear-free experience
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

well on my laptop wayland doesnt have screen tearing but it does on x11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgtvXkUHSM

well on my laptop and my desktop X11 doesnt have screen tearing

imagine having to setting my laptop just to avoid tearing when wayland doesnt have those out of the box 🤣 🤣 and how to do this on i3 ???? i cant comment on youtube due to my account being shadowcomment ban for the fourt time for no reason ...

here is my commemt youtube deleted : How to do on i3 on a nvidia laptop on arch ??? i am a linux noob and on Hyprland they were no tearing out of the box.

@darkhog
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darkhog commented Sep 1, 2025

xorg.conf is not useful if you are on a laptop when you go to a different setup time to time ... i cant hardcode my setup config cause it keep changing ...

If changing your setup involves plugging/unplugging hardware, maybe it's possible to create an udev rule that switches from a variety of xorg.conf (each for a different setup) and replaces one on the laptop with one from that repo and then restart xserver. Probably not explaining it correctly so in pseudo code:

if projector connected:
-> cp /opt/xorgconfs/projector.conf /etc/xorg.conf
-> killall x
-> startx

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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xorg.conf is not useful if you are on a laptop when you go to a different setup time to time ... i cant hardcode my setup config cause it keep changing ...

If changing your setup involves plugging/unplugging hardware, maybe it's possible to create an udev rule that switches from a variety of xorg.conf (each for a different setup) and replaces one on the laptop with one from that repo and then restart xserver. Probably not explaining it correctly so in pseudo code:

if projector connected:
-> cp /opt/xorgconfs/projector.conf /etc/xorg.conf
-> killall x
-> startx

yes and not, and it is not a project and the monitors i use are different resolution and refresh rate then my tv

on hyprland or wayland i dont need to that, it does it automatically and does not have tearing unlike x11

@affhp
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affhp commented Sep 1, 2025

Wayland's renowned tear-free experience
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

well on my laptop wayland doesnt have screen tearing but it does on x11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgtvXkUHSM
well on my laptop and my desktop X11 doesnt have screen tearing

imagine having to setting my laptop just to avoid tearing when wayland doesnt have those out of the box 🤣 🤣 and how to do this on i3 ???? i cant comment on youtube due to my account being shadowcomment ban for the fourt time for no reason ...

here is my commemt youtube deleted : How to do on i3 on a nvidia laptop on arch ??? i am a linux noob and on Hyprland they were no tearing out of the box.

For the compositing method:

  1. Run nvidia-settings GUI tool
  2. Click X Server Display Configuration
  3. Click Advanced button at the bottom-right corner
  4. Click Force Full Composition Pipeline
  5. Click Apply

Done.

Imagine I can do it under 10 seconds 🤣 🤣.

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025

Wayland's renowned tear-free experience
https://www.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/1n58ak5/comment/nbqx2no/

well on my laptop wayland doesnt have screen tearing but it does on x11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfgtvXkUHSM
well on my laptop and my desktop X11 doesnt have screen tearing

imagine having to setting my laptop just to avoid tearing when wayland doesnt have those out of the box 🤣 🤣 and how to do this on i3 ???? i cant comment on youtube due to my account being shadowcomment ban for the fourt time for no reason ...
here is my commemt youtube deleted : How to do on i3 on a nvidia laptop on arch ??? i am a linux noob and on Hyprland they were no tearing out of the box.

For the compositing method:

1. Run [nvidia-settings](https://archlinux.org/packages/?name=nvidia-settings) GUI tool

2. Click `X Server Display Configuration`

3. Click `Advanced` button at the bottom-right corner

4. Click `Force Full Composition Pipeline`

5. Click `Apply`

Done.

Imagine I can do it under 10 seconds 🤣 🤣.

the official driver gui or an unofficial one ? cause i never heard of it so it is expected to not know it.

@darkhog
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darkhog commented Sep 1, 2025

The nvidia-settings is official, but is often shipped separately as it is not required for the drivers to work. And yes, you need to use nVidia's drivers, not the nouveau garbage.

Also, be advised that full composition pipeline might introduce lag (though it doesn't necessarily do so) and as such you should do that only when you need to play or work on something where tearing is really noticeable and gets in the way of work/enjoyment.

@affhp
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affhp commented Sep 1, 2025

Arch wiki also mentioned it

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/NVIDIA/Troubleshooting#Avoid_screen_tearing

However it is on the Troubleshooting extension page, not in the main NVIDIA page. Maybe that's why you missed that.

Yes it also mentioned the drawback of the setting (e.g. break some games), but for me it is the most reliable way to prevent screen tearing (I need 100% no screen tearing, using other method only have ~98%), and I cannot experience any adverse effect caused by this.

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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ok so wayland have a big advantages : no screen tearing without compromise and out of the box !!!

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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i dont have that setting ... so i am stuck with screen tearing then how is x11 superior if it is soo much issue ? yes wayland security model does suck, but at least it does work well, at least in hyprland and plasma
image

@richRemer
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richRemer commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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ok so wayland have a big advantages : no screen tearing without compromise and out of the box !!!

You can easily find plenty of people online experiencing screen tearing on Wayland. If definitely has nothing to do with X11.

How is it that modern WM/DE have fucked this up so much? CPU rendering used to work fine without tearing.

What is your setup where you see tearing? What WM? What desktop? What graphics card/driver? What resolution(s) and refresh rate(s)?

I haven't experienced tearing since like the 90s. CPU rendering, GPU rendering, proprietary drivers, open source drivers, basic window managers, fancy GPU accelerated desktops, ... I wouldn't even know what kind of setup would be needed to experience tearing.

If people stopped simply pointing at X11 or Wayland for this issue (it's obviously an issue for both and has nothing to do with either protocol), then proper bug reports could be created and fixed.

As long as you blame X11, and X users blame Wayland, screen tearing will continue to be a thing for some people on certain setups. And you won't be able to predict when it will occur.

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025 •
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ok so wayland have a big advantages : no screen tearing without compromise and out of the box !!!

You can easily find plenty of people online experiencing screen tearing on Wayland. If definitely has nothing to do with X11.

How is it that modern WM/DE have fucked this up so much? CPU rendering used to work fine without tearing.

What is your setup where you see tearing? What WM? What desktop? What graphics card/driver? What resolution(s) and refresh rate(s)?

I haven't experienced tearing since like the 90s. CPU rendering, GPU rendering, proprietary drivers, open source drivers, basic window managers, fancy GPU accelerated desktops, ... I wouldn't even know what kind of setup would be needed to experience tearing.

If people stopped simply pointing at X11 or Wayland for this issue (it's obviously an issue for both and has nothing to do with either protocol), then proper bug reports could be created and fixed.

As long as you blame X11, and X users blame Wayland, screen tearing will continue to be a thing for some people on certain setups. And you won't be able to predict when it will occur.

well it is a gaming laptop with an nvidia gpu, on winshit i dont have that issue and also not wayland but on x11, i have see tearing. and i wasnt born in 1990... so yeah it is my first time seeing those ... and no it doesnt happen on windows

setup :
image

edit / PSA : i am linux noob, i use linux only since like 2 year, i have used windows my whole life. and i am still not confortable with reading manual

@guiodic
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guiodic commented Sep 1, 2025

ok so wayland have a big advantages : no screen tearing without compromise and out of the box !!!

I just linked the post of a user on reddit with tearing on Wayland...

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 1, 2025

ok so wayland have a big advantages : no screen tearing without compromise and out of the box !!!

I just linked the post of a user on reddit with tearing on Wayland...

since both x11 and wayland suck in their own right i have to use both ...

@alerikaisattera
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since both x11 and wayland suck in their own right i have to use both ...

since both x11 and waypiss suck in their own right you have to use Arcan ...

@affhp
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affhp commented Sep 2, 2025

i dont have that setting ... so i am stuck with screen tearing then how is x11 superior if it is soo much issue ? yes wayland security model does suck, but at least it does work well, at least in hyprland and plasma image

Try to use picom compositor:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Picom#Screentearing_with_NVIDIA's_proprietary_drivers

Screentearing with NVIDIA's proprietary drivers
Try this setting in picom.conf:
vsync = true;

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 2, 2025

since both x11 and wayland suck in their own right i have to use both ...

since both x11 and waypiss suck in their own right you have to use Arcan ...

STOP BEING ANNOYING ABOUT ARCAN !!!! ARCAN IS NOT MAINSTREAM AND IT IS PROBABLY NOT BETTER ELSE OTHER PEOLE WILL USE IT !!!!

@alerikaisattera
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STOP BEING ANNOYING ABOUT ARCAN !

Don't tell me what to do, filthy dog

ARCAN IS NOT MAINSTREAM

Awesome

AND IT IS PROBABLY NOT BETTER ELSE OTHER PEOLE WILL USE IT !

It is better than both X11 and Waypiss, and the fact that it is not commonly used is evidence of that

@xgui4
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xgui4 commented Sep 2, 2025

STOP BEING ANNOYING ABOUT ARCAN !

Don't tell me what to do, filthy dog

well i am not the only one who thinks you are annoying. so please stop

ARCAN IS NOT MAINSTREAM

Awesome

how is that awesome?

AND IT IS PROBABLY NOT BETTER ELSE OTHER PEOLE WILL USE IT !

It is better than both X11 and Waypiss, and the fact that it is not commonly used is evidence of that

this make absolutely no sense whatsoever... how is being unpopular mean it good????

@alerikaisattera
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well i am not the only one who thinks you are annoying. so please stop

Don't tell me what to do, filthy dog (2)

Arcan haters are so deranged

how is being unpopular mean it good?

Poopularity and quality are mutually exclusive

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