It had to happen eventually. Seems reasonable time to make the moce. It’ll be beneficial for all Linux users, and probably a huge relief for Gnome devs to be be able to focus purely on wayland.
It just will suck a bit for those on rolling release distros who still experience major issues with Wayland, particularly when its not Gnome or Wayland projects that need to make a fox - looking at you Nvidia.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other big DEs, such as KDE, start making firmer plans for dropping X11. I’m one of the 30% of KDE users still using X11 - for me it was Nvidia issues, and I do remain anxious about being reliant on drivers from a notoriously bad manufacturer. Having said the drivers have improved massively over the past 18-24 months for me at least, and maybe everyone moving over to Wayland is what’s needed to force Nvidia to act.
I wouldn’t be surprised if other big DEs, such as KDE, start making firmer plans for dropping X11.
If going by Arch Linux statistics, KDE dropping X11 will have a bigger impact than GNOME doing it.
I think Arch stats are a bad way to compare DE usage in that on Arch you specifically pick one but often people just go with whatever the distro has (as default). It used to be at least that Gnome was more popular default
If we take distro defaults into account, it’s possible Arch stats overestimate GNOME market share.
Based on tecmint list, the top 3 distros are Mint, MX Linux, and Endeavour. Their defaults are:
- Mint - Cinnamon, MATE
- MX Linux - Xfce, Plasma, Fluxbox
- Endeavour - Plasma
Granted, the fourth one (Debian) does default to GNOME, but your typical Debian user is more experienced, so it’s less likely they stick to the default.
…I wish I had actual data instead of a bunch of guesses. :-/
This is why some level of telemetry can be useful. That ranking is just DistroWatch rank which might poorly reflect actual popularity
Indeed. Sadly, corporations abused telemetry so much that it makes users automatically distrust software with it - even when it’s opt-in. As such I’m not surprised it isn’t more common, specially in the Linux ecosystem.
Idle power on my laptop.
KDE Wayland: 10 watts
KDE X11: 6 wattsIt was this way when I checked years ago. Still this way as of a few weeks ago.
I had the opposite for whatever reason
In this video (Odysee link), someone asks X11 users why they’re still using it in 2025. The main answers were
- DE or WM doesn’t support Wayland, or its Wayland session is currently WIP.
- [lack of] support for certain graphic tablets and their features.
- old hardware. Specially old nVidia GPUs.
- [If I got this right] Some software expects to be able to dictate window position, and Wayland doesn’t let it to.
- OpenBSD.
In the light of the above, I think GNOME’s decision to drop the X11 backend is a big “meh, who cares”. If you use GNOME you’re likely not in the first case; #2 and #3 boil down to hardware support, not something DE developers can interfere directly; I’m not sure on #4 and #5, however.
I use Wayland now but there are still apps I run in X mode. Notably mpv and Firefox, because I cannot for the life of me configure them sensibly in Wayland, and I don’t want to write arcane KWin scripts just to get widow sizing/positioning to stay the way I want them on launch. I tried; it was extremely frustrating and still not quite functional.
Perhaps there are other window managers that would make my life easier. I haven’t tried many, but in principle, there is no way for the widow manager to know the correct size and location of new windows for arbitrary applications, so I doubt it. I consider this a user-hostile design choice in Wayland and I pray it will change in the future.
old hardware. Specially old nVidia GPUs.
“Fuck you, Nvidia” was in June 2012. People who bought Nvidia hardware after that really have nobody to blame but themselves.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/06/linus-torvalds-says-f-k-you-to-nvidia/
all existing Nvidia systems suddenly disappeared because Linus said something somewhere
Sure, if I would buy/upgrade my PC now, I would go AMD for the graphics - it’s just less hassle this way, and open drivers are nice to have.
But it just so happened that I purchased my PC 5 years before I switched to Linux. It’s a perfectly functional machine I don’t feel the need to replace, and with many people coming over from Windows right now amid Windows 10 support termination, many more find themselves in a similar situation.
Building a new PC just for Linux is expensive, stupid, and not ecologically conscious. As Linux shows itself as a more democratic and old hardware-friendly option, supporting Nvidia GPUs, old or new, is a must, even if Nvidia itself gets hostile at times.
It’s not up to Linux “to support Nvidia”, it’s up to Nvidia to properly support Linux.
Ideally, yes. But if Nvidia is stubborn, there are two ways to go about it:
- Say “screw it”, shift blame on Nvidia and not do anything to support Nvidia users (halving the userbase)
- Or do something about it and implement what is necessary to keep them supported.
Say “screw it”, shift blame on Nvidia and not do anything to support Nvidia users (halving the userbase)
So keeping the X11 session around for a decade after Intel and Radeon had their drivers ready is “not do anything to support Nvidia users”?
Or do something about it and implement what is necessary to keep them supported.
Who is paying for this task? Have NVidia users set up a pledge drive? Did any PC manufacturer?
You make it look like old Nvidia cards are the only reason X11 is held around.
Heck, I had trouble installing remote desktop for my work (they use Omnissa Horizon) on Fedora, because the app still exclusively supports X11, and Fedora removed it in version 42.
There are plenty of instances of similar things happening here and there, and currently, ditching X11 will still be catastrophic for many users’ workflows.
Heck, I had trouble installing remote desktop for my work (they use Omnissa Horizon) on Fedora, because the app still exclusively supports X11, and Fedora removed it in version 42.
X11 applications still run under XWayland. The X11 session is gone, not all compatibility with X11 applications. Steam wouldn’t run if complete removal was the case.
What’s Omnissa’s stance there? Will they port their application? Will they hire a developer to maintain a X11 session?
ditching X11 will still be catastrophic for many users’ workflows.
Are these users hiring a developer to maintain the X11 session? If not, they need to adapt then and go with the times and migrate to other solutions. RustDesk supports Wayland just fine, for example.
Both Wayland & Linux try to support Nvidia, but Nvidia wasn’t cooperating. Software, especially software as big as DEs can’t stay tied to old tech & hardware forever.
I’d say GNOME kept X11 around for long enough and Linux worked hard on supporting old fussy hardware.
Good
At home, I like that this is happening, but at work X11 is still needed for xrdp. I have tried gnome-remote-desktop, but it isn’t on par with it. I could not get it to work reliably on Debian 13.
Maybe, with the next stable release it will be ready and the X11-drop will be a non-issue.
Our Linux people use nomachine. It costs money, but if it’s for work, they should pay for it.
I can’t comment on how well it works since I don’t use it personally, but I don’t hear grousing.
No machine is faster and more stable. There are open source implementations too.
