GNOME 50 completes the long migration to Wayland, dropping X11 backend code and relying on XWayland for any remaining compatibility needs.

Although Wayland has been GNOME’s default session since 2016, X11 has continued to linger in the codebase—until now. That changed with the recent merging of two PRs (here and here), which completely removed the X11 codebase from both Mutter, GNOME’s default window manager and compositor, as well as the GNOME Shell itself.

In other words, the GNOME project is finally closing one of the longest chapters in Linux desktop history. With the upcoming GNOME 50 release, scheduled for mid-march 2026, the desktop environment will officially drop support for the native X11 session, making Wayland the sole display system moving forward.

  • kbal@fedia.io
    0·
    12 days ago

    For me the X11 era continues for now (until the next version of xfce I expect) and the era of GNOME ended 23 years ago.

    • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      12 days ago

      Gnome is so bad it hurts. I was reading a blog post by factorios linux dev earlier.

      Once Wayland support was implemented, I received a bug report that the window was missing a titlebar and close buttons (called “window decorations”) when running on GNOME. Most desktop environments will allow windows to supply their own decorations if they wish but will provide a default implementation on the server side as an alternative. GNOME, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that all clients must provide their own decorations, and if a client does not, they will simply be missing. I disagree with this decision; Factorio does not need to provide decorations on any other platform, nay, on any other desktop environment, but GNOME can (ab)use its popularity to force programs to conform to its idiosyncrasies or be left behind

      • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
        1·
        12 days ago

        Ah yes, client-side decorations. One of their most controversial decisions (and for the GNOME project, that’s really saying something). And yet, no amount of user feedback will ever break them out of their “we know your needs better than you do” attitude.

        • imecth@fedia.io
          1·
          12 days ago

          People just want things to never change. How many of those users do you think actually bothered to look into why GNOME won’t implement SSDs?

          • namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev
            1·
            11 days ago

            I don’t understand what change has to do with it. The problem is, lots of people have used it, tried it, criticized it, and been ignored. It has nothing to do with change.

            Change is fine, as long as the new version is better than the old one. Look at how KDE evolved. Sure, there were a lot of people that didn’t like the 3 -> 4 transition (not me personally, I loved KDE4), but very few people lament what KDE has become today and it certainly is very different from what it was during the 3.x days.

            Personally, yes, I and a lot of other users have read why GNOME does not implement SSDs, and frankly their reasoning is not very convincing, but I don’t think it matters that much. The fact is, users don’t care why it’s not implemented - if they don’t like it, they’re just going to criticize the project and that’s just why GNOME is so widely hated.

            Trust me, I don’t want to hate GNOME - I wish I could just make my life easy and use it as a sane default. But if it’s not good, then I can’t do that - and by “good”, I mean how I define a good desktop, not whatever creative definition they dreamed up.

            • rarsamx@lemmy.ca
              1·
              10 days ago

              People compare gnome to Desktops with a 30 year old interface which is painfully cumbersome but that they are used to.

              I was on the no Gnome camp after Gnome 2 but came back around Gnome 40 (2022) and I was surprised at how simple and stable it is. I agree that many things that are extensions should be built in, but I also agree with the filosophy of not spreading resources to thin and if people want a feature, they can build it.

              I only use two or three extensions but mostly need only one: Forge.

              I still use Niri as my primary environment but I think that Gnome is good.

              I grind my teeth every time I need to use an environment with an old style menu and cumbersome tiling.

              C’mon. End users haven’t used drop down menues to start apps for a long time. The iOS/Android drawer style is more comfortable and can adapt to the user’s organizational preferences.