Wayland vs X11

sglbl · July 6, 2026, 10:47am

Read this for comparison:

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/probonopd/9feb7c20257af5dd915e3a9f2d1f2277

Wayland.md

# Think twice before abandoning X11. Wayland breaks everything!

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tl;dr: Wayland is **not** "the future", it is merely an **incompatible alternative** to the established standard with a different set of priorities and goals.

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.

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Personal opinion: Stay away from wayland on gnome.

There are many issues from 5 years ago such as:

Also many apps are still have problems with title bars etc on wayland (such as spotify, you can read here):